One question that I get asked a lot is this:
How do I go viral on LinkedIn?
Well, there’s a lot of ways to answer this question.
There are best practices, templates, and other little details that you have to meet.
But, even then, you are still at the mercy of the algorithm.
So, what do we do?
We’ve gone viral many times before.
There isn’t an exact formula for success, but there are a couple of things that you can do to “increase” your chances.
Today, let’s examine how to create viral posts on LinkedIn using real-life examples and the lessons we teach in our influencer program.
Viral Video Repurposing
Now, repurposing videos isn’t a new concept.
We’ve talked about it a lot in the past because it’s worked wonders for a lot of our high-profile clients.
There are three main benefits to using a viral video:
- You have proof that the video works, if it didn’t, it wouldn’t have gone viral in the first place.
- The video makes up for 50 percent of the content, so you already have some of the work cut out for you.
- Video is naturally more engaging than normal posts.
On LinkedIn, after choosing a video to repurpose, you need to make sure that you attach a text post that matches the theme of the video.
Relating industry-specific themes and your own story to the video makes it more relevant to your prospects, and the more relevant it is, the more it resonates with your prospects.
Remember.
The video is there to hook people in, the rest of the post is there to help convert. It’s a two-part system.
However, you still have to be careful as to what video you pick. It still has to be timely, catchy, and relevant to the times/industry you’re in.
So, how do you pull this off?
Let’s go at it step-by-step.
What Type of Video Should You Use?
First of all, make sure that you give credit to the original poster or owner of the video, that’s important because you want to give credit to where it’s due.
As per types of videos, here are three types that you can easily use.
- Short funny videos with a good punchline, always help drive engagement because they’re light and don’t take a lot of time to consume.
- Inspirational videos like in the example we’re going to show you, you can easily apply the themes explored in the video to your own value system.
- Interviews are another great medium if you want to showcase a particular vision that a thought leader has that’s the same as yours.
Example: Change The World in 7 Steps
My favorite example of a viral video repurpose that I did a while back is “Change The World in 7 Steps” which you can check out here.
If you’re used to lurking on social media, you’ve probably already seen this video in the past.
- The Video: A Military General’s Graduation Speech on the “Seven Steps to Change the Word”
- Our Spin: How to Build a Company That Changes The World in Steps
We chose this video because of a number of factors, first of all, it’s because of the authority of the person speaking. We don’t often hear speeches from military leaders, and on this rare occasion, we have the privilege of hearing from someone wiser and more experienced than us.
The length was also another factor, clocking in at just one second over six minutes, it’s a pretty easy video to watch, and people won’t get turned off if they spent this much time watching it.
The most important factor?
The message given to the graduating students was advice that anybody from any walk of life could take, it resonated with people who weren’t from the military or currently in school. It was well written and well said that it could inspire anyone to take action immediately.
This combination of factors allowed us a lot of legroom to repurpose the speech and apply it to how we ran our business here at BAMF and relate it to other aspiring leaders that we were connected with.
Results
The results were stunning.
We were able to rack in more than a thousand reactions and more than fifty-thousand views.
Now building the post and doing edits didn’t even take us an hour, but getting above 54K views was enough to cause for celebration.
Now, this isn’t the only repurposed video that we’ve used in the past.
If you check out my profile on LinkedIn, you’ll find that I have other examples of heavy-hitting videos that have raked in thousands of views in less than 24 hours.
The Template
First, make a statement on how you’re going to solve a major problem using very simple bite-sized steps.
How to build a company that changes the world in 7 steps:
Put in an easy task that almost anyone can do.
1. Start each day with a task completed
Make your bed every morning to set the tone for success.
Explain why something so simple and easy is critical.
If you do have a bad day, you can at least come home to a made bed.
Metaphor time! Stress resiliency.
2. Don’t back down from sharks There are a lot of sharks in the world.
Why is this important?
If you hope to compete, you will have to face them head on.
Emotion time!
3. Respect everyone
Tie it back to your professional or business ambition
Entrepreneurship is the great equalizer. Nothing matters but your will to succeed—
Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education, not your social status.
Remind them of the struggle
4. Know that life is not fair and you will fail often
When you are up against impossible odds, you are still on the right path.
The higher purpose
Believe in yourself and be driven by something deeper.
How do you deal with struggles?
5. Don’t be afraid to take some risks and step up when times are the toughest
How you act when your back is up against the wall will define you as a leader.
Provide a list if you have to.
Don’t lash out.
Do the unexpected.
Turn around, and climb your way to the top of the wall.
Emotion time part 2.
6. Face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden
When everyone else says you can’t do it— that you’re not smart enough, strong enough, experienced enough.
Stress on your core values
Relentless optimism is your secret weapon
Remind everyone of the lesson in this post.
7. And never, ever give up.
Drive the message home.
Because when you do all of these things— You can change the world.
Resource Giveaway
“If you want something, you’ve got to give something away.”
Someone wise.
This is a powerful message that I still believe to this date.
Giving is powerful.
It disarms people, fosters good relationships, and enhances the reputation of the person giving.
On LinkedIn, it works wonders.
By giving you show prospects that you’re willing to help people and that it’s not just about making a sale. You come off as a genuine thought leader.
Additionally, it also tells people that you’re comfortable with your stature in the community.
What to Giveaway?
There’s a lot of things that you can give out:
- Whitepapers
- Templates
- Trial accounts
- Case studies
- Designs
- Workflows
- Calculator Spreadsheets
- Special Content
- Folders on the cloud where they can access resources
- Exclusive videos
- Instructionals
- Printouts
However, these things come with a very important caveat.
They must be useful.
There’s no use giving out a mortgage calculator that is easily available online or a boring case study that has absolutely no relevance to the industry you’re in.
If you do that, it makes you come off as insincere about your giveaway, and that you’re just giving for the sake of giving.
The goal of a giveaway is to give something with value.
Example: Organic Traffic Bundle
A while ago, I put out a pretty bada** organic traffic bundle that I gave out to everyone for free.
Now, I did put in a catch where they had to comment on the post in order for them to get the resource unlocked to them.
By doing this, I was laying my cards down on the table and showing people how they could bring in more traffic.
I didn’t mind as long I was giving people value.
Now a lot of people ask why should they give away the secrets of the trade, but here’s the thing.
You could essentially build furniture using tutorials on YouTube.
But, why do people hire professional carpenters?
Here’s why.
Some people will hire you or buy from you because of your experience, expertise, and expected outcome.
Yes, they could do things themselves, but they’d rather work with you because of what you bring to the table.
Real experts are comfortable with giving knowledge away.
Now a giveaway template is pretty easy to follow.
However, it’s your giveaway that matters the most.
Results
This particular giveaway took off.
How many views?
More than 47,000.
Now, that’s a lot of eyeballs.
As of the time of this writing, we’ve had more than 700 comments – which for LinkedIn standards is more than what you’ll usually get for an informative post.
These comments on the posts work
However, using well-placed CTA, I was able to leverage the giveaway as a lead magnet to generate new prospects for BAMF and grow the number of connections I had.
The Template
Provide the reason why you’re giving this away Remember you want this to appear above the “fold” on your post, so it has to be catchy so that they can “see more”.
My latest post with 60+ places to list your startup for free traffic BLEW UP.
And a ton of you shared awesome submissions for other interesting sites and tools.
So I expanded the resource to make it 100X more EPIC.
Explain what you’re going to give away, put it in detail.
I’m giving away Everything!
Sites That Accept Guest Posts (340+) Branded Properties (300+)
Link Prospects (1,000+)
Directories to List Your Startup on (60+) Search Strings (50+)Links (200+)
Lure them in.
Want to get the full database?
Put in a CTA to help with your conversions.
? Drop a COMMENT below?
And I’ll send you a message with the full resource.
Add your profile tag!
Don’t forget to follow me for more bad*ss resources like this every week:
Houston Golden
Don’t forget to put in relevant hashtags
#marketing #founders #startups
Slides
We like Slides.
We’ve had a lot of success getting them to go viral and we’ve also used them to help our clients grow.
Imagine this.
LinkedIn poured $119 million to buy SlideShare to make sure that slideshows work natively on the platform.
Here’s the reason why they work so well.
People like slideshows.
They make information easy to digest and going through them doesn’t take too much time.
I’ve met a lot of people who request the slides or decks of presenters in events because it’s a great giveaway. All the main points are already factored in and they’re great if you want to take home notes.
Slides on LinkedIn are even better than normal sides because you can present professional information in a more laid-back setting. LinkedIn offers a non-intimidating platform for you to use.
The format also attracts a more serious crowd and this helps with targeting prospects.
What Types of Slides to Post?
There are a bunch of things that you can present in slides format:
- Slides of other companies (don’t forget to get permission!)
- In-house Studies
- Product tutorials
- Old sales decks
- Pitch decks to VCs
- Company outlooks
- Sales reports
Just like the giveaway format, the only reason that they can go viral is if they provide value to your prospects.
Make sure you give out something that can provide value to their lives.
Also, don’t forget.
If you’re running low on ideas, you can always repurpose slides from other sources. This helps keep your campaign running.
Example
I’m sure all of you are familiar with Tinder, but when it was first starting out, it was called Match Box. (I’m loving the puns here.)
Now their pitch deck back in the day drew my attention because it was an eyesore, but it was a really good one.
So, I decided to make it available to people who were curious.
By providing a little background information, we had a post that’s structured to look like a quick case study.
Results
The simple repurposing of Tinder’s sales deck for their VCs allowed us to generate more than 28,000 views.
Imagine that.
How many views does a normal pitch deck get?
By leveraging the power of LinkedIn, you could probably get your in-house presentations an easy thousand views compared to what you’d normally get in the boardroom.
Template
The template for slides is very simple.
- Introduce the information that you want to give out. Something catchy with an emoji will work well.
- Tell people why you’re giving out this template. This helps build your reputation as a thought leader.
- Stick in a CTA for them to follow you back or interact with you – this helps boost engagement numbers and allows your post to have a higher propensity to go viral.
- Add three relevant hashtags. (Yes, they’re very important.)
How do you theme it?
Well, that depends.
In our example, we made it look like a quick case study.
You could use the same approach if you’re posting about company pitches or you could also just simply tell people what it is and let the material do the talking for you.
Now all that’s left is for you to stick in the slides that you’re looking at using and you’re pretty much good to go!
Plain Text Founder Stories
What better way to cap of the guide with a post type that we pioneered and got famous for.
The viral plain text founder stories.
Now a viral founder story can be a biography or an autobiography of how a thought leader has made their way to the top.
And, this is why it works so well.
People love stories.
A viral founder story has to be authentic.
No lies, no fluff, just a true, honest, heartfelt story of how the founder went against the odds and defined the organization that they’re in.
Essentially, you’re telling a story, so talk about where the founder was before the challenge, how they overcame it, and what lessons were learned afterward.
Keep it simple, but describe the raw emotions that were felt every step of the way.
What Should I Include In My Story
There are different types of founder stories that you can write about, but here are the main ones that you can start with today:
- Moving to a new city
- Losing something or someone important
- Keeping commitments
- A new business venture
- Something controversial that you had to deal with
- A seemingly mundane event that led to a realization
These types of stories work because people can easily relate to them.
Surely you’ll have readers that have experienced failures, losing jobs, starting new ventures, overcoming adversity, etc.
Viral founder stories easily resonate with them.
Other tips:
- Don’t forget to use actual quotes. These take the reader straight to the heart of the event that changed the founder’s life.
- And, whatever you do, don’t include links in your founder story. The moment you do, it becomes a piece of sales copy and it removes the authenticity of the piece.
- If you’re writing about someone else, make sure to tag them, but that’s the only link that you should have.
- Optimize for mobile and use shorter sentences.
Example: Hiring an 18-Year-Old Intern
This simple story started with a basic premise: the struggle of an 18-year-old intern.
A lot of people could relate to it because many in our field started out as interns at one point.
We then moved on to how an “intern” defied the odds and defined what it meant to work your way to the top.
This was another subject that a lot of people are very familiar with.
We briefly touched on what he achieved during his time with us and how that translated to the work ethic that I have come to expect from the people in our team.
It was short.
It was simple.
But, more importantly, it was relatable.
Results
That seemingly simple story of one of my favorite growth hackers racked in more than 120,000 views.
We didn’t have to create fancy graphics, create a lead magnet or use any CTA.
That was just a simple, authentic, and heartfelt story about how much appreciation I had for him.
These are the types of posts that can go viral because they’re real.
People feel them and can relate to them.
Additional Tips on How to Create a Viral Post on LinkedIn
- Don’t forget the hashtags. Not only does it help with keyword optimization, but you’re literally telling the platform what category your posts belong to.
Check out our guide on LinkedIn hashtags here! You’ll love it.
- Include CTA. Call-to-action prompts help build engagement and with LinkedIn virality, engagement is key. You need to have as many people engaging with your post as soon as it comes out. This helps build the momentum for your post to go viral.
- Use LinkedIn pods. Tools like lempod will help you get in touch with likeminded individuals that can help give your post the first round of engagement.
- The timing of your post is also significant. There are a lot of factors that go into the timing of your post, make sure that you get it right.
Takeaways
Going viral on LinkedIn isn’t impossible.
We’ve done it, our clients have done it, and we even teach it in our influencer program.
This only means that you can do it, too.
Is it going to be easy?
Heck no.
You might spend a lot of time experimenting, tracking, tweaking, and redoing all of your work.
People change, the market changes, and you could lose objectivity, but what’s critical is that you keep working on the material you have until you get the hang of it.
Going viral isn’t something that we whipped up overnight. There are rules, templates, and best practices, but even then something could go south.
But, you have to at least try.
Now, the question is:
What’s stopping you from going viral?
