Remember when LinkedIn tried 24-hour Stories and pulled the plug in 2021? Those lessons are fueling a new wave of short-form features that are rolling out right now:
• a TikTok-style vertical video feed on desktop and mobile
• an AI-picked “Video Trends” carousel that nudges you to add your own take on hot topics
• side-scrolling in-feed video carousels for binge-watching multiple clips without leaving the post
• deeper video analytics and search placement so high-engagement clips surface above text links
In short: LinkedIn killed Stories—but it didn’t kill the story format. It just rebuilt it for a professional, search-driven context.
Why this matters for your brand (and mine)
| Call-out | What it really means |
|---|---|
| Visibility bump | Vertical video now lands in a dedicated feed and AI Overviews, doubling surface area. |
| Creator credibility | Early adopters look like industry sherpas while latecomers play catch-up. |
| Measurable engagement | Watch-time, swipe-through rate, and UTM-tagged CTAs let you tie video to pipeline. |
The key shifts behind LinkedIn’s next-gen Stories
1. Vertical > Ephemeral
LinkedIn’s bet is that busy professionals prefer scroll-friendly clips they can save or search later—not disappearing content. That keeps your hard-won views compounding instead of evaporating the next morning.
2. AI picks winners
The “Video Trends” module and a new video carousel in search use engagement signals + topic clustering to recommend your clip to fresh audiences. Translation: one well-timed hot take can snowball far beyond your follower count.
3. Mobile behavior, desktop real estate
Full-screen playback has jumped from phones to desktop, capturing the B2B crowd that answers emails on a second monitor. Expect CTR to climb once that view becomes default.
How to ride the wave—Diviner style
Lean, precise, repeatable—just like the rest of our playbook.
• Batch three 20–40 s clips answering one client pain. Shoot vertical, hard-sub captions at 5 % of screen height.
• Hook fast: Question + number (“Struggling with LinkedIn reach? Try these two fixes.”).
• Pin a CTA in comments with a friendly “DM ‘audit’ for the checklist”—that phrase converts 2-3 × better than “link in bio” on LinkedIn.
• Layer schema + UTM: Embed the clip on your blog with VideoObject markup and tagged buttons so you earn both watch-time and domain authority.
• Feed the AI: Add a one-line summary (“30-second Local SEO tip”) as the first caption sentence—the trend algorithm scrapes that text.
• Measure weekly: Average watch-time >15 s is our go/no-go metric; anything lower gets rewritten or repackaged as a carousel.
What’s next?
According to Axios, LinkedIn is openly courting creators as a “professional TikTok,” with uploads up 36 % and new monetization hooks on the roadmap . Expect:
• Sponsored vertical ads stitched between user clips
• Tip jar / paid events tied to video creators
• AI topic prompts (think “Explain GA4 in 60 s”) auto-suggested inside the post composer
The window for first-mover advantage is now. Let’s storyboard our first three clips this week and own the feed before everyone catches on.
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LinkedIn’s Next Stories—Vertical Video & AI Trends | Diviner
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LinkedIn killed Stories but just launched vertical video and AI trend carousels. See why that’s big—and how to score early wins.