The video-sharing service Vimeo had plan for a subscription video-on-demand service, but scrapped the idea, and acquired the video streaming platform Livestream.
Later, it announced the 'Publish to Social' tool which supports its paid subscribers to upload videos to multiple sites at once, including to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This time, Vimeo is adding LinkedIn to its supported website.
"We’re excited to be the first video platform to integrate with LinkedIn, and to extend this feature to an essential destination for professional content," said Vimeo's CTO Mark Kornfilt when announcing the LinkedIn integration news.
The move is another example of the company’s shift in focus from being a video destination site, to one that sells tools and services to professional and semi-professional video creators.
With the LinkedIn integration, marketers who are paid subscribers to Vimeo, can publish videos to their LinkedIn Company Pages directly from their Vimeo account via the ‘Publish to Social’ feature.
In addition to the ability to publish to LinkedIn, Vimeo is also providing marketers with analytics on the videos, including things like video viewership, engagement, and performance stats. These are available on Vimeo's dashboard, alongside the metrics for other social platforms, as well as other websites and blogs.
This should allow video creators to compare their campaign performance across various destinations.
The integration makes LinkedIn in having native uploads through Vimeo, which both companies say can increase reach and engagement when posting videos to the professional network. While LinkedIn already allowed its users to add a video by posting a video link to places like profiles and timelines, the change also brings several tools that were previously missing from video uploads.
"Over the past year, Vimeo has invested heavily in building a central distribution hub for video content to be shared everywhere and across platforms. Our Publish to Social feature makes it possible for creators and businesses to reach audiences in more places, while also enabling them to better understand video performance," explained Kornfilt.
The move also follows Microsoft’s earlier announcement, which said that LinkedIn would open to video uploads as part of a larger video push.
LinkedIn has launched a feature that allowed its users to upload videos to the site from its mobile apps. With Vimeo’s integration, however, the focus is on uploading to Company Pages, where businesses may be using video in a variety of ways.
"Video has become one of the key drivers for member engagement on LinkedIn, and businesses who want to start a conversation with their audiences are increasingly turning to Company Page videos," said Peter Roybal, principal product manager at LinkedIn, in a statement about the partnership with Vimeo.
"Our new integration with Vimeo is an exciting step for anyone who wants to gain more exposure, and understand their reach to LinkedIn’s highly-engaged professional audiences."
This added integration is focused on professional marketers and video creators, rather than everyday Vimeo or LinkedIn users. As this is a quicker way to distribute videos that are intended strictly for business, Vimeo sees this as a selling point.
It might be faster and easier than embedding a YouTube clip or tweet, especially when marketers can share to YouTube and social networks at the same time.