160,000 views - how did that happen?!

UPDATED - 8 Dec 2022 (the stats are still climbing 3 weeks on, so I thought I'd update the post!)

160,000 views....well, how did that happen?!

On Thursday 24th November, I received a marketing email from Laylo . With permission from the sender, I posted a screenshot of the email to my LinkedIn network at just after 4pm.

When I checked back in to LinkedIn at 7am the following morning, the post had 27,000 views. By the end of Friday it had reached over 60,000, and after the weekend it had doubled to 120,000.

By now (3 weeks on) it's had 160,000 views, 2,200 reactions and over 270 comments. The post has been reposted 103 times.

You can see the post here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/sibesley_emailmarketing-zuckerberg-activity-7001579441776656384-sqT0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

So why did this particular post go viral? I have just over 4,000 LinkedIn connections. The most views I've ever had on a post has been in the region of 2,000.

This post didn't tick all the boxes of received wisdom for social media by any means:

? I didn't post in the morning

? I didn't include a selfie

? I didn't write 1,200 - 1,600 characters

? This wasn't my only post of the day

So, what did I do?

? I tagged in 2 contacts who I thought would be interested and who post regularly themselves

? I kept hashtags to a minimum (just 2)

? I liked as many comments as I could, and replied where relevant

Most importantly, the content that I shared was something that genuinely stood out. It wasn't a flashy video or GIF, there wasn't even any photo included. It was just a screenshot of a plain text email.

BUT, the email written by Laura Riches was very powerful. The subject line attracted me to open it in the first place, and then the content was so good that not only did I read it through but I felt compelled to share it with my network.

The content was so good that it immediately attracted readers on LinkedIn to start commenting within minutes of me posting it. Once the comments and likes started flowing, the post built up some serious momentum which continued over the weekend and into the following week.

So what's my key learning from this? It's simply this:

If a piece of content is good enough in the first place to attract the attention of the target audience, it will then become sharable. And if it's shared to a network whose attention is captured, it will then go viral as the buzz spreads. Once the momentum builds up, the reach becomes stratospheric.

If something strikes you as being good enough to share, just get on and share it. Don't add too much to the post, let the content do its own talking. And encourage the momentum to build!