LinkedIn goes video first

LinkedIn’s B2B sales pitch is shifting from polished brand posts to people on camera, as marketers push a “video-first” playbook. (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com) ETBrandEquity reported on April 17 that LinkedIn and Zoho executives used the SaaS CMO Circle podcast to argue that business buyers are now more likely to watch than read on the platform. LinkedIn’s Sachin Sharma said Gen Z and millennials make up 71% of B2B buyers, and those groups grew up with video as a default format. (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com) A separate SaaS CMO Circle report published April 10 said more than 70% of LinkedIn’s global members are millennials and Gen Z. In that piece, LinkedIn’s Sumit Khanna said those buyers prefer short, visual, contextual content over long product narratives. (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com) The shift is showing up in buyer research as well. Edelman and LinkedIn said in their 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report that they surveyed nearly 3,500 management-level professionals in December 2023 and found buyers increasingly prefer a self-directed digital discovery process. (edelman.com) That helps explain why marketers are putting individual employees, founders and subject experts in front of the camera instead of relying only on brand pages and white papers. CreatorFest’s guide on personal branding for LinkedIn says 87% of B2B buyers prefer content from trusted industry voices over corporate messaging. (collective.creatorfest.com) The production side is moving with it. TV Tech reported on April 20 that the 2026 NAB Show added a new Enterprise Video Strategies track because companies, government agencies and B2B organizations are increasing their use of video for both external and internal communication. (tvtechnology.com) That article said enterprise organizations are building in-house studios while also hiring outside production talent, a sign that video is no longer being treated as a side project. Session titles at the show include “From Corporate Video to In-House Studio” and “The Enterprise Studio.” (tvtechnology.com) Futuresource Consulting reported in 2025 that 89% of companies are now producing video content in-house, and TV Tech said sales of broadcast-grade cameras to corporate users tripled from 2019 to 2023. The same report said large-sensor camcorder shipments to corporate users rose 487% over that period. (tvtechnology.com) The message from LinkedIn’s marketing ecosystem is narrower than “video wins over everything.” The argument is that business buyers still want expertise, but they increasingly want it delivered by recognizable people in a format that looks native to the feeds they already use. (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com) So “video first” on LinkedIn does not mean abandoning case studies, research reports or product pages. It means the first handshake is increasingly a face, a voice and a short clip, not a PDF. (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com)