LinkedIn Adds Video Filters; Instagram Beefs Up Profile Links

By: Sophie Maerowitz

March 22, 2018

Whether you’re taking a break from Snapchat à la Rihanna or fed up with Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, LinkedIn and Instagram have got you covered with new features that could make communicators’ jobs a little easier.

LinkedIn, well on its way to becoming a full-fledged social platform in line with Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, continues to add visual storytelling elements to its offerings. This week it unveiled a video filter feature for users, complementing its new native video function.

The new filter feature allows users to add stickers and text to their video updates on LinkedIn. While the change may seem minor to some (it pales in comparison to Snapchat and Instagram’s more robust lenses and filters), it should go a long way toward livening up footage from the trade room floor, interviews with executives and product demo videos. In a blog post, LinkedIn advised users to “keep it short (30 seconds to 2 minutes does the trick in most cases).”

And unlike Facebook, which has slowed organic reach for all content including video, LinkedIn has given organic video content a major visibility boost. A LinkedIn representative told Adweek that videos are getting shared a whopping 20 times more than any other type of content on the platform.

Instagram is also providing a new way for users to discover content. Within a user’s profile, the platform will convert “@” mentions of other profiles into hyperlinks. For brands, this feature acts as a sort of backlink system; when a brand tries to raise awareness of another account, users are linked to that account directly, instead of having to find it using Instagram’s search function.

Hashtags that are part of an Instagram profile will also be hyperlinked, allowing users to click through and see other posts and users using that hashtag. This will be particularly useful for brands trying to associate themselves with a particular trend on Instagram; for instance, an organic food brand might include the hashtag “#vegan” in its profile and find itself included in a list of hundreds of people using the same hashtag—all of them potential brand advocates, ripe for the picking.

Updated 4:55pm ET: Instagram is also testing a new feature that will allow users to choose whether to see posts chronologically, or simply posts they haven’t seen yet. Per the Instagram blog: “We’re testing a “New Posts” button that lets you choose when you want to refresh, rather than it happening automatically.”

Follow Sophie: @SophieMaerowitz