In this article, I’m going to share some tips on how to become a LinkedIn influencer and create viral content. So, let’s get started.
Friday, December 30th was a normal day for me as I was working on creating my list of goals for 2019 with my wife, Sweeta. I was scrolling through Facebook when I stumbled upon an old story in which “Facebook turned down WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton for job in 2009”. I stopped what I was doing and felt compelled to share this ten-year-old story on my Linkedin account. After posting this story, I went to bed. Then I woke up in the morning to this.
24 Hours later this post had 2 million views. (post link)
HOW TO GO VIRAL ON LINKEDIN
LinkedIn is a popular social media platform, which can yield big results when used creatively. It is an incredible source of leads. No less than 106 million users log on to LinkedIn every month and actively engage with content. LinkedIn provides a platform for professionals to actively seek, read, and share content.
The secret of going viral on LinkedIn is to know the right way to post, in order to get results. An amazing feature of LinkedIn is that anyone can go viral on the platform. In fact, it is not a requirement for a user to have millions of followers on the platform before his or her post is seen by millions of people, such as Instagram’s common method. What is required is to simply post on a topic your audience is passionate about which leads to quality engagement in which the post goes viral.
The platform has an algorithm which is incredibly accurate in identifying excellent writing. By following a few simple rules in this post, you will boost your odds of capturing attention on a viral scale.
8 proven steps to go viral on LinkedIn:
- Make Extremely Powerful Introductory Sentences
Ensure that you start your content with an engaging hook. Only the first three lines of a post is usually seen on LinkedIn before a reader clicks “see more” and hundreds of posts are being posted daily.
2. Utilize LinkedIn Engagement Groups
An engagement pod/group refers to a group of people that offer help to one another by liking and commenting on each other’s posts to boost engagement. Since many likes and comments indicate strong content and make them viral on LinkedIn, you can consider using several friends and influencers including LinkedIn editors to comment and like your post immediately after you post it. This strategy has been proven to work.
3. Research The Right Topic
The cornerstone of LinkedIn content success is researching a winning topic that will go viral by using specific keywords to explore different themes. For instance, BuzzSumo can help to identify viral posts on LinkedIn, which are highly ranked via social shares. In short, choose the right topic via research rather than just picking anything to write which will have poor visibility.
4. Respond to Comments
An essential way to boost the odds of your post going viral is to reply to comments after publishing your posts. While it is not easy to reply to each comment on your post, you can respond to most of them in the beginning so that your post will attract the desired attention and boost engagement in order to increase the odds of additional exposure.
Listen to Cup of Jo podcast where I discussed with Cory Warfield (LinkedIn influencer) on how to identify viral posts on LinkedIn.
5. Use Posts With Proven Success
Posting your previously published viral content from your blog to LinkedIn Pulse will increase your chances of producing viral content. For instance, if your previous content that went viral on your blog is posted on LinkedIn, there are chances that it will attract a large audience. Remember that LinkedIn will not penalize you for repurposing your content on its platform. Hence, a good strategy of leveraging your proven content.
6. Understand LinkedIn Hashtags
Create your content with a specific LinkedIn hashtag in mind. These hashtags are various topics with large audiences that are classified into Leadership and Management followers as well as Entrepreneurship and Marketing and Advertising followers. Hashtags allow Linkedin users to “listen” to topics that matter most to them, and in turn, create a better engagement for you. If your post can feature in any of these groups, it can go viral. Remember that your topic must be carefully selected with this specific audience in mind.
#business #work #office #success #inspiration #entrepreneur #HR #jobs #marketing #sales #leadership #worklife #officelife
7. Publish Content At The Optimal Time
There is an optimal time to post contents on LinkedIn and get results. Hence, ensure that your post reaches the targeted audience at the time of maximum impact. The optimal time to publish content according to LinkedIn is early morning, lunchtime and early evening between Tuesdays and Thursdays. The best time is between 10 a.m and 11 a.m every Tuesday.
8. Create A Call To Action (put them in the first comment).
yes, give me a follow me on Instagram :)
Ensure that your post contains an action step for the readers. You may ask your readers, for instance, to download an eBook with powerful marketing insights, with the aim of collecting their email addresses and get in touch. You may even further direct them to your blog to read more posts or any other action that fits into your strategic goals for the content. In short, it is best to define a call to action for your published content on LinkedIn.
THIS IS HOW AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESSES HAPPENS.
Creating viral content on LinkedIn is difficult. Regardless of your industry, most of the content you produce is never going to go viral. You just need to stay focused and show your personality through your posts. Be unique.
So remember, if it doesn’t work the first, second, fifth or twentieth time, don’t give up!!
You know the secret. Are you up for doing the work?
What methods have you noticed boost your engagement that should be on this list? Or did you get one that you didn’t understand? I’m curious to hear. I’m haseebtariq[at]gmail.com, @haseebspeaks on twitter, @haseebspeaks on instagram and haseebtariq on linkedin.
Make sure you give this post 2M claps 👏🏼, so I can write my next post on ‘How to go viral on Medium’ 🤩 and follow me if you enjoyed this post and want to see more.