Principles of virality on LinkedIn
With approximately three quarters of a billion users, LinkedIn is a huge market that you can tap into.
If you want to go viral on LinkedIn, you need to consider two things: value and commitment.
Value
If you want to go viral on LinkedIn, you need to provide content that provides value to your reader.
These are not just gifts or interesting facts that you want to share, but concrete value that can improve a prospect's organization or life in a measurable way.
Also, it is not important that the gift is free. If it's easily available elsewhere, people won't want to know anything about your message because they can get it elsewhere. A free profitability calculator would not be useful to many people since they can easily find it elsewhere.
If you want to know if your item has enough value, ask yourself the following question: “Do I use it in my own organization?”
If the answer is “no” - which is the most of the time with content offered - then you should abandon your idea.
Commitment
Engagement is the key to virality on LinkedIn, and here's why.
The first 2 hours are crucial
The first 2 hours after your message goes live are the most important. That's when the algorithm determines if your message is attracting enough interest to be displayed in the front of a larger audience.
By studying this phenomenon in depth, we found that The More Likes and Comments You Get At the start, The More People Who See Your Message.
Speed of engagement and value matter
However, you should also pay attention to the decrease in the number of contributions.
Plus the Commitments are slow to accumulate on your LinkedIn message, The less likely it is to be shown To a greater number of people.
That's why we talked about value. By nature, people want to engage in something that is valuable to them.
But did you know that there are lots of ways to increase the number of commitments you get?
We'll talk about these techniques later, and you can use them on pretty much any platform you use.
Guided way to go viral on LinkedIn
Choosing the content you want to publish
The first step is choosing what you are going to post.
There are several things that generally work well with viral messages and we're going to share them with you:
- The”Giveaways” - as we said before, make sure they add value. You can create an infographic, a dashboard, a calculation tool, a checklist, a database, etc... Ensure that you are using the model in your organization to determine its value.
- Video - It's naturally one of the most engaging and engaging pieces of content you can post online. However, on LinkedIn, you need to accompany it with text. We generally suggest reusing videos that are already viral and writing great captions.
- Founder Stories - These are high-converting messages about real life stories filled with emotion, passion, and inspiration, and they're not difficult to make. However, it takes some time before they can be used.
- Slides - If you have a lot of information to share with your subscribers, consider using slides to do so. They make complicated information easy to digest and if your subject is interesting enough. It's easy and it favors the time spent by your users on your publication.
Define LinkedIn post caption
Obviously, your caption should be catchy, but you can increase the attention you get by following these few simple steps:
Lead Magnets and Slides
For “gifts” and slides, keep the message short and catchy. Your reader should be able to find the subject of the caption within seconds. You're struggling with short attention spans.
Videos
For videos, ensure that your video caption links to your organization's goals or values. I've found that emotional messages that focus on storytelling are the ones that work best.
Use relevant CTAs
It's not enough to have a great caption, you need to invite people to do something with the message you post.
Ask them what they think, invite them to comment, get your audience involved!
There are a number of ways to write a good message, but make sure it follows LinkedIn guidelines.
Boosting LinkedIn post engagement
Since LinkedIn's algorithm primarily takes into account commitments to determine virality, the 2 hours following the publication of a message are crucial If you want to go viral on LinkedIn.
Add a restriction to your posts
One of the best ways to increase engagement is to add a small restriction.
To do this, you invite people to comment on your article before sending them the gift link.
The advantage of this method is that you get something in exchange for the gift, which promotes virality. But that's not all. The people who take the plunge are technically qualified prospects because they are both interested and belong to a particular audience that you are targeting.
Using LinkedIn Pods
LinkedIn Pods are essentially groups of people who are part of your industry and who will “boost” your message by engaging in it.
Resigning content
Here are the steps for repurposing content:
- Find an article or video that has already gone viral
- If it's a video, repost it - with permission from the author - and edit the caption to match your audience and organization.
- If it's a message, try to imitate what they did in that message to make it your own.
Plus, there's nothing wrong with using templates.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” - Pablo Picasso
You don't need to reinvent the wheel when innovating, but instead rely on other models.
Do you need help going viral on LinkedIn?
Here are tools you can use
- LinkedIn message scheduler - To be sure not to miss the right moment to publish a message on the platform. (Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.)
- Pods - Apps like Podawaa or Lempod can help you get more engagement.
- Analytical - you can use LinkedIn's own tools to help you track the commitments of your messages.
TO GO FURTHER: Best Tools to Automate LinkedIn Prospecting
How does a Pod work
Going viral on LinkedIn is based on two major considerations: the value you give and the commitments they bring.
- Operation is simple : Sending the URL of your message to a pod, and members will automatically engage with it (comments or likes): a first boost that you will need to gain popularity.
- The Timing - Be aware of what time your potential viewers are at. People often say that Monday is the best time to post, but you might be surprised to learn that for a professional like LinkedIn, Wednesday is the best time to post. It's the middle of the week and people are generally more lax. Trust us, we've done this kind of chart before.
How does the Linkedin algorithm work?
LinkedIn's algorithm will get your message in the front of more people, as long as it continues to generate interest.
But why does LinkedIn do that? It's simple.
The economic model of each social network is based on the amount of time people spend on it. The more engaging your article is, the more time people will spend on it and the more the platform will simply promote it.
People spending time on LinkedIn means more advertising time for their customers who buy advertising.
But it's also a victory for you, dear reader. The more engaging your message is, the more beneficial it is for brand recognition and lead generation campaigns.
Now let's see in detail how this famous algorithm works.
Step-by-Step Operation of the Algorithm
- When you Publish your content on Linkedin, the latter is displayed at anSample of your network.
- This post should be optimized as we saw and should (ideally) not have external links (Linkedin Like any other social network Don't Want You to Leave Their Network)
- In addition, if you already have a reputation on the network, LinkedIn will tend to increase the size of this sample compared to a user who would not yet have any fame.
- The algorithm then calculates the Engagement rate of your post on the sample (likes + comments): the better it is, the more Linkedin will choose to present your content to a wider audience.
- If the engagement rate continues to be as good, LinkedIn will continue to present it to people in your audience with profiles similar to those who have engaged. That is why it is important to Maintain a quality audience on your Linkedin network And to not always accept “everyone.”
Conclusion
You see, viral messages are not only there to entertain people, but you can use them to evolve your organization, increase brand awareness, build funnels, and generate revenue.