LinkedIn wants to be TikTok. Not literally. But the signals are hard to miss.

In late 2025, LinkedIn rolled out a full-screen vertical video feed on mobile. Swipe up, next video. Swipe up, next video. The same dopamine mechanic that made TikTok a $200 billion company, dropped into a platform where people post about Q3 revenue targets and "leadership learnings."

The cognitive dissonance is spectacular. One second you're watching someone explain why they cried at their all-hands meeting (set to trending audio, naturally), and the next you're watching a serious breakdown of enterprise cloud migration. It's like someone shuffled a therapy session into a board meeting. And yet, here we are.

They also added CapCut integration for native video editing, a "Videos For You" section in the mobile app and started aggressively surfacing video content in the main feed. Video views on LinkedIn grew 36% year-over-year. The platform is clearly putting its thumb on the scale.

But here's what LinkedIn won't tell you: the creator base hasn't followed. At least not in the way LinkedIn hoped.

We analyzed 10,222 LinkedIn posts from 494 creators. The data tells a very different story than LinkedIn's press releases.

The Gap Between What LinkedIn Wants and What Creators Do

In our dataset, text posts still dominate by sheer volume: 6,533 text posts versus 3,628 image posts. Video posts represent a fraction of total output. The vast majority of creators are still doing what they've always done: writing words and posting images.

And here's the kicker: image posts crush everything on engagement.

Image posts: 0.93% engagement rate, 468 average likes, 85 average comments
Text posts: 0.50% engagement rate, 191 average likes, 33 average comments

LinkedIn is investing billions in video infrastructure. But the creators driving the most engagement are posting static images and carousels. A still image with text on it is outperforming the format LinkedIn is betting its future on. There's something almost poetic about that.

This isn't because video is bad. It's because most LinkedIn creators haven't figured out how to make good video for a professional audience. The skills are different. The production requirements are different. The audience expectations are different. Making a good LinkedIn video requires a combination of expertise, camera comfort and editing skills that most B2B professionals simply don't have yet.

And that gap is exactly where the opportunity sits. Because the gap won't last forever. And the people who figure it out now will have a significant head start.

Why LinkedIn Is Pushing Video So Hard

This isn't just a product experiment. It's an existential strategy. If you understand why LinkedIn is doing this, you can make much smarter decisions about whether to follow.

LinkedIn needs younger users. The platform's core demographic skews 30-55, which is great for ad revenue per user but terrible for long-term growth. Every social platform that failed to capture the next generation of users eventually stagnated. (Pour one out for our friend Myspace.)

Video is how you capture younger audiences. Gen Z consumes video-first content. They grew up on YouTube, graduated to TikTok and Instagram Reels, then entered the workforce. If LinkedIn's feed still looks like a text-heavy bulletin board when these professionals start building their networks, they'll skip it entirely. They'll network on TikTok, on Discord, on whatever comes next. LinkedIn cannot afford that.

So LinkedIn is doing what every platform does when it needs behavioral change: it's juicing the algorithm. Video content is getting disproportionate reach right now. Not because video is inherently better, but because LinkedIn needs creators to make more of it. It's a bribe, basically. "Make video and we'll show it to more people." Platforms have done this forever, and it usually works.

This playbook has worked before. Instagram did it with Reels (remember when your feed was suddenly 60% Reels from accounts you'd never followed?). YouTube did it with Shorts. The platform subsidizes a format with extra distribution, creators follow the attention and eventually the format becomes self-sustaining.

The question is whether you should follow the attention too. And the answer, maddeningly, is "it depends."

The Real Cost of Video (That Nobody Talks About)

Before we get into what works, let's be honest about what video costs. Not in money. In time and energy.

A solid text post takes most people 15-30 minutes to write. A good one might take an hour. A great one, maybe two hours including edits.

A solid video takes 30-60 minutes to film (plus setup, re-takes and the emotional labor of watching yourself on camera). Add 1-2 hours for editing, even with a tool like CapCut. Add 30 minutes for subtitles, thumbnails and posting. A single 60-second video can easily eat 3-4 hours of your day.

That's 3-4 hours for one piece of content versus 30 minutes for a text post that, according to our data, might actually get better engagement.

This math doesn't mean video is bad. It means video has a higher bar to clear before it's worth the investment. You need to be strategic about it, not just follow the trend because LinkedIn told you to.

Pro tip: If you're video-curious but time-poor, start with the simplest possible format: selfie-mode video on your phone, no editing, just a clean 60-second insight. Post it alongside your normal text posts, not instead of them. See how it performs. If the engagement justifies the time investment, slowly increase production quality. If it doesn't, you've only lost 5 minutes instead of 5 hours.

What Video Actually Works on LinkedIn

Not all video performs the same. After studying what's working on the vertical feed, a clear pattern emerges. And it's not what most people expect.

What gets views:

Talking head expertise. One person, looking at the camera, sharing a specific insight in 60-90 seconds. No fancy editing. No B-roll. Just someone who clearly knows what they're talking about. This is the LinkedIn equivalent of a strong text post, just in video form. The reason this works is the same reason text posts work: genuine expertise delivered clearly. The video just adds a human face, which builds connection faster than text alone.
Behind-the-scenes content. Founders showing their actual work process. Engineers walking through a real bug fix. Salespeople sharing what a real discovery call sounds like. Authenticity over polish. People are fascinated by how other professionals actually work. Not the polished version. The real version, complete with messy whiteboards, honest mistakes and "I'm figuring this out as I go" moments.
Quick tutorials. "Here's how I do X in 45 seconds." Tactical, specific, immediately useful. Screen recordings with voiceover do particularly well. The key word is "quick." If your tutorial is 4 minutes long, you've lost the vertical feed audience. Under 60 seconds for tutorials. Ideally under 45.
Reaction content. Taking a trending topic or controversial take and responding on camera. The emotion reads on video in ways text can't capture. When you disagree with something and your face shows it, that's more engaging than typing "I disagree." Humans are wired to read facial expressions. Video gives your audience that extra layer.
"Day in the life" clips. 30-60 second montages of what a day in your role actually looks like. These perform well because they're relatable: other people in similar roles watch and think "that's exactly my day." Or they watch and think "that's nothing like my day" and say so in the comments. Either way, engagement.

What doesn't get views:

Polished corporate videos. If it looks like it was produced by a marketing department with a $10K budget, people scroll past it. The vertical feed rewards rawness, not production value. It sounds backwards, but a shaky iPhone video with good content outperforms a studio-quality video with mediocre content almost every time. The polish actually hurts because it signals "this is marketing," and people on LinkedIn have incredibly sensitive marketing radar.
Long-form webinar clips. Taking a 45-minute presentation and cutting a 5-minute clip doesn't work. The pacing is wrong. The context is missing. It feels like leftovers. Which it is. Repurposing long-form video requires re-editing for the short-form format, not just cutting a clip. If the original video was shot in landscape with PowerPoint slides, it's going to look terrible in a vertical feed no matter how you cut it.
Anything that feels like an ad. LinkedIn users have finely tuned radar for promotional content. The moment a video starts feeling like a pitch, engagement drops off a cliff. If your video includes your company logo animation, a call to action overlay and a "learn more at our website" ending, you've made an ad. People don't watch ads voluntarily. Not on TV, not on YouTube and definitely not on LinkedIn.
Overly scripted monologues. When someone is clearly reading from a teleprompter or reciting a memorized script, it shows. The cadence is wrong. The eye contact is subtly off. It feels performative. The best LinkedIn videos feel like the person just had a thought and grabbed their phone. Even if they actually planned it carefully, it should feel spontaneous.

Pro tip: Watch 20 LinkedIn videos in the vertical feed before you make your first one. Note which ones make you keep watching and which ones make you swipe. Your instincts as a viewer are better than any guide. The videos you keep watching? That's your template. The videos you skip? That's what to avoid.

The 90-Second Rule

The best-performing LinkedIn videos stay under 90 seconds. Some of the top performers are under 30.

This runs counter to what many B2B creators assume. They think "professional audience = willing to watch longer content." But LinkedIn's vertical feed is consumed the same way TikTok is: rapid scrolling, split-second decisions about whether to keep watching. Just because your audience wears suits doesn't mean they have more patience for slow content. They have less patience, because their time is more constrained.

You have roughly 3 seconds to earn the rest of someone's attention. If your opening doesn't create a reason to keep watching, they're gone. Three seconds. That's even less than the 7-second rule for text posts. Video is more demanding, not less.

A few mechanics that matter:

Subtitles are mandatory. LinkedIn reports 72% of its usage happens on mobile. Most mobile users scroll with sound off, especially during work hours when they're "definitely not on LinkedIn during that all-hands meeting." If your video doesn't have burned-in captions, you're invisible to nearly three-quarters of your potential audience. This isn't a nice-to-have. It's table stakes. A video without subtitles on LinkedIn is like a billboard in the dark.
Front-load the hook. Don't start with "Hey everyone, today I want to talk about..." Start with the insight. "Most people get this completely wrong." "I was wrong about this for 5 years." "Here's a mistake that's costing you money right now." The first sentence of your video is the hook, exactly like a text post. The same principles apply: create an information gap, trigger an emotion, signal specificity.
End with a question. The same principle that drives comments on text posts works for video. Ask something specific that invites a response. "What's your take on this?" is weak. "Have you seen this in your team? What happened?" is stronger. The question should be specific enough that someone who watches the whole video feels compelled to answer it.
Pattern changes keep attention. If you're doing a talking head video, change something every 15-20 seconds. Cut to a different angle. Show a screen recording. Add text on screen. The visual change resets the viewer's attention clock. A static shot of you talking for 90 seconds, no matter how brilliant the content, will lose viewers. Our brains are wired to pay attention to movement and change.

Pro tip: Film your video, watch it back, and cut anything that isn't earning its place. If a section makes you think "this is fine but not great," cut it. In short-form video, "fine" is the same as "boring." Every second needs to either deliver value or build toward delivering value. There's no room for warmup, filler or "by the way." Be ruthless. Your editor should be a serial killer, not a librarian.

The Honest Take: Video vs. Text for B2B

Here's where I'm going to be straight with you.

Video is great for reach. The algorithm is boosting it. The vertical feed creates a new discovery surface. If your goal is getting your face and ideas in front of new people, video is an efficient way to do it right now.

But text and image posts still convert better for B2B outcomes.

When someone reads a detailed text post about a specific business challenge, they process it differently than a 60-second video. Text is easier to reference later. It's easier to share in a Slack thread with the note "we should do this." It's easier to screenshot and send to a colleague. It's easier to search for when someone thinks "there was a post about pipeline management I saw last week." For the kind of considered purchasing decisions that B2B involves, written content still carries more weight.

From our data: the posts that generate the most comments (which correlate with meaningful business conversations) are text and image posts. The median comment on a text post tends to be more substantive than a video comment. Text posts get "We implemented something similar and here's what happened" comments. Videos get "Great point" and fire emojis. Both types of engagement have value, but one type is more likely to start a business conversation.

There's also a consumption context issue. Many LinkedIn users are scrolling during work hours, in open offices or shared spaces. They can read a text post discreetly. They can't watch a video with sound in a quiet office without everyone knowing they're on LinkedIn. This matters more than you'd think for B2B content consumption. The most valuable audience (senior decision-makers) are often the ones most constrained by their work environment.

Video builds awareness. Text builds trust. Most B2B creators need both.

Pro tip: Think of video and text as serving different parts of the funnel. Video is your top-of-funnel awareness builder: it gets you in front of new people. Text is your mid-funnel trust builder: it convinces people you actually know what you're talking about. If you can only do one well, do text. If you can do both, use video to attract attention and text to convert it.

Should You Pivot to Video? A Decision Framework

Don't let LinkedIn's priorities dictate your strategy. Let your goals dictate it. LinkedIn wants you to make video because it serves LinkedIn's business goals. That's fine. But your job is to serve your business goals.

Go heavy on video if:

You're building a personal brand from scratch and need visibility fast (video gives disproportionate reach to new creators)
Your expertise translates well to demonstration, where showing beats telling (coding tutorials, design walkthroughs, product demos)
You're comfortable on camera. This sounds obvious but matters enormously. If you hate being on camera, your audience can tell. Awkwardness is not endearing in professional content. It's just awkward.
You're targeting a younger professional audience (under 35) who consume video as their primary content format
You have time to develop the skill. Good video is harder than most people think. Budget 2-3 months of mediocre videos before you find your rhythm.

Stay focused on text/images if:

You're optimizing for direct lead generation and sales conversations (text still converts better for B2B)
Your content is data-heavy or requires detailed explanations that benefit from written format
You've already built a strong text-based presence with consistent engagement (why fix what's working?)
You're resource-constrained and can only invest in one format well. Better to be great at text than mediocre at video.
Your audience is primarily 40+ executives who consume LinkedIn content by reading, not watching

Do both if:

You can repurpose effectively (turn key text posts into video summaries, turn video insights into text posts)
You have a team or tools that reduce production friction
You want maximum coverage across both feed formats (the text feed and the vertical video feed are essentially two different platforms within LinkedIn)

Pro tip: A middle-ground approach that works well: post text/images 4x per week (your proven format) and one video per week (your experiment). Measure the video's performance over 8 weeks. If it's adding reach and bringing in new followers, increase the frequency. If it's not, scale back and try again in 6 months when you've had time to improve. You don't have to go all-in on video. You just have to try it deliberately.

The Early Mover Window

The most important thing about LinkedIn video right now is the timing.

When Instagram launched Reels, early creators got massive organic reach. Some accounts went from 5K followers to 500K in months, purely because Instagram was giving free distribution to anyone making Reels. When YouTube launched Shorts, same thing. The platform artificially inflates distribution for the new format to build supply. Then, once enough creators are making content, the subsidized reach normalizes, and the free distribution party ends.

LinkedIn is in the subsidy phase right now. Video content is getting more reach than it probably "deserves" based on pure quality signals. This won't last forever. It never does. At some point, the algorithm will normalize, the competition will increase and the bar for getting video distribution will rise significantly.

The creators who start building video skills now, even imperfectly, will have a meaningful advantage over those who wait until video is table stakes and the competition is saturated. Early movers get two benefits: free reach now, and skill development that pays off later. The person who's been making LinkedIn videos for 12 months will produce dramatically better content than the person who starts from scratch when video is no longer subsidized.

You don't need a studio. You don't need a production team. You need a phone, decent lighting and something worth saying. The bar for LinkedIn video is still low enough that showing up consistently puts you ahead of 90% of creators on the platform.

Pro tip: If you're going to take the early mover bet, commit to a minimum viable video strategy. One video per week for 12 weeks. Same day each week. Under 60 seconds. Phone only, no fancy equipment. By week 12, you'll know whether video works for your audience, and you'll have enough reps to actually be good at it. Most people who "try video" do it twice, feel awkward, declare it doesn't work and stop. Twelve weeks gives you real data. Two tries gives you nothing.

The Hybrid Strategy (What Smart Creators Are Actually Doing)

The creators who are winning right now aren't going all-in on video. They're running a hybrid strategy that takes the best of both formats.

Here's what it looks like in practice:

Monday: Text post (educational content, framework or how-to)
Tuesday: Image post (your best content of the week, paired with a visual)
Wednesday: Video (talking head insight, 60 seconds, vertical format)
Thursday: Text post (industry analysis or data)
Friday: Behind-the-scenes (can be either text, image or short video)

This approach gives you exposure in both the text feed and the vertical video feed, covers multiple content formats for variety and keeps video to a manageable 1-2x per week frequency.

The key insight: your text posts and your video don't need to be about different topics. In fact, they shouldn't be. Take your best text post from the week and turn the core insight into a 60-second video the following week. Or make a video first and expand the key points into a text post. You're not creating more content. You're creating the same content in two formats for two different audiences.

Pro tip: Save your best-performing text posts. Once a month, pick the top 3 by engagement and turn them into videos. You already know the content hits. You already know the hook works. You're just translating it into a different format. This eliminates the "what should my video be about?" problem entirely.

What Happens Next

LinkedIn isn't going to reverse course on video. The investment is too large, the strategic rationale is too clear and the early data is strong enough to justify continued acceleration. This is not a temporary experiment. This is LinkedIn's roadmap for the next 3-5 years.

Within the next 12-18 months, you'll likely see video become a primary content type on LinkedIn, not just a supplementary format. The vertical feed will get more prominent placement. Video-first features will expand. The algorithm will continue to favor creators who produce video alongside text.

But don't abandon what works. Text posts still generate the highest volume of thoughtful engagement. Image posts still have the best engagement rates. A smart LinkedIn strategy in 2026 uses all three formats, weighted based on your specific goals and strengths.

The creators who will thrive are the ones who see video as an addition to their strategy, not a replacement for it. If you're already doing well with text, great. Keep doing that. And start testing video. If you're not doing well with text, fix that first. Video amplifies your message, but if the message isn't clear, amplifying it just makes the confusion louder.

The vertical feed is LinkedIn's bet on its future. Whether it becomes your future too depends on what you're building. If you're building awareness with a younger audience, video is essential. If you're building pipeline with enterprise buyers, text is still king. If you're building both, you need a strategy that serves both formats deliberately, not one that chases whatever LinkedIn is promoting this quarter.

The best approach, as with most things, is the boring one: try both, measure what works, do more of that. No manifesto required.

Data sourced from ViralBrain's database of 10,222 LinkedIn posts across 494 creators. Want to see how video performs for creators in your niche? ViralBrain tracks engagement across every content format so you can make decisions based on data, not platform hype.