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How I went VIRAL on LinkedIn and reached 237,751 people!
Imagine one day waking up to find your LinkedIn post has skyrocketed to over 349,845 impressions, reaching over 237,751 people!
That was what happened to one of my LinkedIn posts. That was also not the first time I went viral.
In a digital age where visibility is power, going viral can feel like winning the lottery. In my article, I will walk you through what I did that transformed my post into a sensation and show you how to replicate the magic. Ready to discover the secrets behind harnessing the power of LinkedIn and turning your content into the talk of the town?
First, understand what social media platforms want
In my 2014 book, The Google Trap, I wrote that
The Google Trap makes attracting attention harder and harder. This resulted in Digital Producers competing among each other to create works by appealing to the baser human desires in the hope of earning a sliver of advantage in getting noticed.
This is exactly what is happening in social media. You and I are caged in the Google Trap (i.e. social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok Instagram, YouTube), where we are vying with other social media influencers for the crowd’s attention. These platforms are using our desperation to attract the attention of the crowd on their platforms and to trap everyone’s attention inside. They want everyone to waste as much time as possible on their platforms so that they can sell everyone’s attention to the highest bidder (advertisers). This is how their business model works.
So, if you give them what they want, they will reward you handsomely by getting you noticed among the crowd. That is, if you can find a way to make their users spend time on their platform, they will amplify your post.
How does social media make their users spend time on their platforms?
To maximise the capture of their user’s attention, they take a highly data-driven approach to figure out what works and what does not. Since they have all the data, they have a bird’s eye view of which topic pushes the button of their users to capture their attention. The social media platforms capture their user’s attention by showing them what they like to see.
How do the social media platforms know what their users like to see?
The more you interact with a piece of content, the more they assume you like that content.
Why does social media promote rage?
But herein lies a problem. As Elon Musk tweeted,
The 𝕏 algorithm assumes that if you interact with content, you want to see more of that content.
One of the strongest signals is if you forward 𝕏 posts to friends, it assumes you like that content a lot, because it takes effort to forward.
Unfortunately, if the actual reason you forwarded the content to friends was because you were outraged by it, we are currently not smart enough to realize that.
Social media platforms cannot tell the difference between whether you like a piece of content or are outraged by it. All they know is that there is something about that content that will provoke a huge number of people into spending time on it. Social media is agnostic about whether the provocation is caused by rage or like. However, they will amplify such content to manipulate their users into wasting time on their platforms.
Due to a quirk in human nature, rage content is far more provocative than ‘like’ content. That is why social media is often accused of spreading rage. That is also why some social media influencers resort to creating rage content because it works (in terms of going viral).
How does artificial intelligence (AI) come into play?
Since social media has lots of data to inform them which of the past content is more likely to attract the attention of users (that is, make them spend time on it), they can utilise AI to predict which future content is more likely to be attention-hogger.
Accidentally went viral
Since you do not have the data that the social media platforms have, you are at a significant disadvantage. Initially, you simply do not know which topic will be an effective attention-hogger. So, you can start by guessing. In my case, I discovered it by accident.
This post on LinkedIn was my first time going viral. I did not expect it to go viral. It made more than 75,000 impressions, reaching more than 47,000 people. I discovered that for whatever reason, the Flipper Zero gadget was a controversial topic. Some people were attacking me (with ‘righteous’ indignation) for using that gadget and others were defending me. I had accidentally stirred up a hornet’s nest with that post and went viral as a result.
So, in the absence of data, you need to make a guess.
Discovering a pattern
Next, you need to gather your data.
In my case, I create content regularly on a wide variety of topics, ranging from politics, finance, investment, AI, technology, cybersecurity, cybersafety, the dysfunctional jobs market, and so on. Over time, I was able to gather data on which topic that works and which ones do not. For example, I discovered that topics about cybersecurity software updates will not gain any traction at all. Maybe it is a ‘boring’ topic to most people.
Check out the pattern on other social media platforms
When gathering your data, do not confine yourself to only one platform.
For example, when looking at the analytics data for my iSecurityGuru website, I noticed that this article (“What are the controversies with the Signal messaging app?”) received a lot of engagement. This tells me there is significant interest in the controversies of the Signal messaging app. That article (“Which is the most secure messaging app? Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, ProtonMail, iMessage, etc?”) also receives a lot of engagement. This also tells me that people are interested in knowing which messaging apps are the most secure and private.
Using Google’s NotebookLM tool, I turned my article (about the controversies of the Signal messaging app) into a podcast episode on YouTube. Predictably, YouTube rewarded me with hundreds of views. This is even though my YouTube channel was a new channel with only several subscribers and I did nothing to promote that podcast episode.
How the game is played
So, from this example, you can see how it works:
- Google has the data and knows which topic is of interest to people, and therefore, useful for monopolising the attention of users.
- Google shared the data with me through Google Analytics. From that data, I discovered that there is significant interest in the controversies of the Signal message app.
- I create content on that topic on another of Google’s platforms (YouTube).
- Google rewards me by promoting that content for me.
Topics related to recent events are more effective
From my experience, topics related to recent events on the news and social media are more effective at monopolising the attention of people. This is due to a quirk in human nature.
Lie in wait for an opportunity on another social media platform (LinkedIn)
Now that I know that people are interested in the privacy of messaging apps, I have a better idea of which topic is more likely to go viral, I lie in wait like a crocodile for the right opportunity.
One day, Mark Zuckerberg said on the Joe Rogan show that the CIA can read our WhatsApp messages (actually, what Zuckerberg said was misconstrued by the media and social media). That spread on the news and social media.
That is the right time for me to strike!
I know that people are interested in the privacy of messaging apps. Then Mark Zuckerberg, who is someone many people love to hate, talked about the lack of privacy on WhatsApp because of the CIA. That is a recent event. So I quickly wrote this article on my website: “Did Zuckerberg REALLY say CIA can read your WhatsApp messages?“. Then I posted it on LinkedIn. Predictably, that LinkedIn post went viral. It received more than 29,000 impressions, reaching more than 19,000 people.
Cross-post to YouTube
Knowing that LinkedIn was promoting my post because it knew this was a topic of interest to people, I wondered whether I would produce the same results on YouTube. Again, I turned that article into a podcast and posted it on YouTube.
The important point to remember is this: I did nothing to promote that YouTube podcast episode. Absolutely nothing.
Predictably, YouTube promoted my episode for me. I received 19,500 impressions, of which I received 1,500 views and gained 16 subscribers,
Unexpectedly, the other LinkedIn post went viral
Shortly after I posted the above-mentioned content on LinkedIn and YouTube, I posted this content on LinkedIn about Mark Zuckerberg saying that AI can replace mid-level software engineers.
That one went ballistic. It was 10 times more viral than the previous content. I gained a few hundred followers because of that post, most of which are software engineers. Naturally, they hated what Mark Zuckerberg said because if he were right, then they would lose their job.
From this data point, I can then tell that topics with the following ingredients will monopolise the attention of users:
- A public figure that people love to hate.
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Jobs or professions that AI will replace
- Something that happened recently
A few LinkedIn-specific tips
For the LinkedIn platform, there are a few tips to make it more likely for your posts to go viral:
- Posts with videos are more likely to do better. If not, images will do well too. Just do not post plain texts. Even if your text post does not have relevant images, use generative AI tools (e.g. Grok) to create images that illustrate the theme of your post. Take a look at this example.
- LinkedIn is less likely to amplify posts that share another post.
- Since social media platforms want to monopolise their users’ attention within their platform, posts that link to external websites are less likely to be amplified by them. They frown on posts that send people outside their platforms. If you need to mention a news article on another website, screenshot that article (headline, images and opening paragraph) and include it as an image in your post. Then tell your followers that you will post the link to that article in the comments below. If you include the link within your post, LinkedIn will automatically generate a snippet of the content of the link. Those snippets look ugly anyway. Therefore, a screenshot allows you full control of how it looks.
- Try posting early in the morning when people are more likely to scroll through LinkedIn over breakfast or commute. If not, try lunchtime or after dinner time.
- Political posts can be useful for going viral, but there is censorship and political bias in LinkedIn’s Trust & Safety team. One of my posts was amplified by LinkedIn (32,000+ impressions, reaching 19,500 people) and was initially removed for ‘hate’ speech. However, LinkedIn later apologised for the mistake and reinstated that post.
- Tag pages within the text. The reason I emphasised “within” is because it will make part of your text bold, which makes it more likely to catch the eye of casual scrollers, and therefore more likely to attract attention.
- For the same reasons mentioned above, add emojis to your text.
Looking at the big picture: how will going viral benefit you?
Now, you need to ask yourself this big-picture question.
Make no mistake: social media will promote posts that benefit their agenda, which is to monopolise their users’ attention. The content of your viral posts may not be exactly aligned with your agenda. My most successful viral posts did not exactly benefit my business directly. The hundreds of followers that I gained (software engineers) were not the target market of my business. It is extremely rare for your agenda and social media’s agenda to be aligned exactly together. The only way for them to promote your posts that align with your agenda is to pay them to do it (advertisements).
Nevertheless, the benefit can come indirectly later on with serendipity. For example, in my case, if I have a new startup idea in future and need software engineers, I now have at least a few hundred of them among my followers. As you gain more followers from your viral posts, one of them may connect you to someone who can help you in future. In my case, I made a new friend, who then helped me appear on TV as an expert! I also gained lucrative paid work through LinkedIn, as a result of the time I invested in that platform.
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