If you are using LinkedIn video for B2B, the formats we see working hardest are founder and expert-led videos, customer proof, short explainers, and content captured around events or behind the scenes.
The important bit is choosing the format for a commercial reason, then filming enough useful material to build consistency. If you need help doing that, our LinkedIn video production service is built specifically around regular B2B content.
What video works best on LinkedIn for B2B?
There is no single type of LinkedIn video that every B2B company should make. A managing director explaining a genuine industry problem can be excellent for building authority, while a customer talking about a problem you solved is much more useful when somebody is already considering buying from you.
The mistake is treating LinkedIn as a dumping ground for whatever videos the business happens to have. Your three-minute corporate film might be very good on your website, but that does not automatically make it good LinkedIn content. People are scrolling through a feed, usually between other things, so the subject needs to earn their attention quickly and give them a reason to stay.
For most B2B businesses, we would concentrate on four areas.
Founder and thought-leadership video
Founder, leadership and expert-led content works when the person on camera has something useful to say. That might be an opinion on a change in the industry, an answer to a question customers keep asking, a common mistake they see, or an explanation of something their audience finds confusing.
The important word there is useful. Thought leadership video becomes painful very quickly when somebody sits in front of a camera and delivers vague statements about innovation, excellence and being passionate about customers. Give people a proper subject instead. A knowledgeable person explaining one thing clearly will usually give you a stronger piece of content than trying to squeeze their entire career into 90 seconds.
This is also where planning makes an enormous difference. For Dr Rafal Niziol, we filmed 40 expert-led videos in a single production day, creating a bank of content that could be published over time rather than arranging a new shoot every time something needed to go on LinkedIn. That is a much more sensible use of the filming day and, importantly, of the expert’s time.
Customer proof and case studies
Customers saying nice things about you is useful. Customers explaining the problem they had, what you did and what changed afterwards is considerably more useful.
Short customer videos work particularly well in B2B because they provide proof without asking the viewer to sit through a full case study. A good 45 or 60-second edit can concentrate on one challenge, one result or one part of the relationship, while the longer interview can still be used elsewhere.
This is where thinking beyond a single finished video pays off. If you have gone to the trouble of getting a customer, crew and location together, there is little sense in coming away with one asset. The interview can potentially produce a main case study, shorter LinkedIn edits, individual quotes and sales content, provided those outputs were considered before filming rather than discovered afterwards.
Explainer videos
B2B companies often sell things that take a bit of explaining. Software, professional services, financial products, technical processes and specialist equipment rarely make complete sense from a photograph and a strapline.
A short explainer can take one question and answer it properly. It does not necessarily need elaborate animation either. An expert talking to camera, supported by a few graphics, screen recordings, product footage or simple animation, can be enough to make a complicated subject much easier to understand.
For LinkedIn, resist the urge to explain everything at once. If your product has six important features, you may have six useful videos rather than one overloaded film. That gives each video a clearer subject and gives the business more content from the same production.
Event and behind-the-scenes content
If customers, partners and experts are already in one place, use the opportunity. Short interviews, reactions, expert answers and customer conversations can all become useful LinkedIn content. Behind-the-scenes material can also work well when there is genuinely something worth seeing: a product being built, a team solving a problem, preparation for an event or access to somewhere customers would not normally see.
Again, the trick is to plan this before everybody arrives. Turning up with a camera and hoping something interesting happens is not much of a content strategy.
How do you make thought-leadership video that gets engagement?
Start with the subject, not the shoot.
Before we film regular LinkedIn content, we want to know what the audience actually cares about. What are customers asking the sales team? What misconceptions keep coming up? What has changed in the market? What can your experts explain that somebody outside the business would genuinely find useful?
Once you have those subjects, scripting should help the speaker become clearer rather than making them sound scripted. Some people are excellent with a few prompts; others are much better with an autocue. Neither approach is inherently better. The aim is to get a natural, confident explanation without wasting half the filming day on somebody trying to remember paragraph four.
The opening matters as well. You do not need a ridiculous clickbait hook, but you do need to tell the viewer quickly why the next minute is worth their time. Starting with the actual question, problem or observation is usually stronger than spending the first ten seconds introducing yourself and your company.
What length and aspect ratio should LinkedIn video be?
There is no magic duration at which a LinkedIn video suddenly becomes good. It should be long enough to make the point and no longer. A simple answer might take 30 seconds; a useful expert explanation may need 60 or 90 seconds.
Format matters because LinkedIn is largely viewed on screens where vertical space is valuable. Square and vertical video can occupy more of the feed than traditional widescreen footage, particularly on mobile, so we often plan framing and graphics with more than one output in mind.
That does not mean everything should automatically be shot vertically. If the footage also needs to work on your website, YouTube, in presentations or elsewhere, it may make more sense to capture it in a way that allows several versions to be created. We have a separate guide on choosing the right video aspect ratio if you want the technical detail.
Should you use captions and native upload?
Captions are a sensible default for LinkedIn video because you cannot assume somebody will watch with the sound on. They also make the content easier to follow and mean the important point is not lost simply because somebody is watching in an office, on a train or while pretending to pay attention to a Teams meeting.
We also plan LinkedIn content for native use rather than treating the platform as somewhere to drop a link to a video hosted elsewhere. The practical point is to remove unnecessary friction between somebody seeing the post and watching the content.
For the same reason, think about the first few seconds visually. The subject should become apparent quickly through the speaker, opening caption, graphics or a combination of them. You are not making television where everybody has deliberately sat down to watch from the beginning.
How do you measure LinkedIn video ROI?
Views are useful, but they are a very incomplete measure of whether your B2B video marketing is working.
A video can get a large number of views from people who will never buy anything from you. Another might reach a much smaller but highly relevant audience and prompt conversations with three prospective customers. If pipeline is the objective, the second one is clearly more interesting.
Look at what happens around the content. Are the right people watching and engaging? Are prospective customers visiting profiles or the company website? Are people mentioning the videos in sales conversations? Are your sales team sending particular clips to prospects because they answer common questions? Are people who have been seeing your experts regularly on LinkedIn warmer when a conversation eventually starts?
Some of those signals can be measured neatly and some cannot. That is normal in B2B, where a contract may involve several people and months of consideration. The answer is not to pretend that every view has a monetary value; it is to connect the content as closely as possible to the commercial activity it is supposed to support.
A better way to think about LinkedIn video
The strongest LinkedIn programmes we work on are rarely based around one heroic video. They are built around a useful bank of content, produced efficiently and released consistently.
That is why our approach to LinkedIn video production is based around planning subjects, filming multiple pieces of content together and creating a library that can be used over a period of weeks or months. A quarterly filming day, for example, can be considerably more practical than organising separate shoots every time marketing needs another post.
It also improves the economics. Once the crew, equipment, lighting and contributor are in the room, the sensible question is not simply, “How do we make this video?” It is, “What useful content can we create while we’re here?”
LinkedIn video for B2B works best when you stop treating the platform as another place that needs feeding and start treating it as part of the sales and marketing system. Give useful people useful things to say, capture enough material to maintain consistency, package it properly for the platform and measure whether it is helping the right conversations happen.
If you want to build that kind of system rather than commission another isolated video, take a look at our LinkedIn Video Production service, our YouTube Channel that has our LinkedIn Content on or talk to us about what you need. Better still, book in a 15 minute discovery call to see how we can accelerate your LinkedIn presence.
