#19: Taking a Look in the Mirror: Insights Gained from Analyzing Our Own Viral Content

Hello and welcome to a new season of The Social Dot newsletter. I’m Andreea, your local social media expert, and together we shall connect the dots of the social media world. We’ll be deconstructing viral trends & campaigns, and getting strategic insights to help your brand thrive on social.

While it’s interesting to watch other brands venture out into the social media jungle and produce campaigns that go wildly viral, sometimes it can be more fun to have a peek in our own backyard, see what virality looks like for Socialinsider and what it takes to reach it.?

Well, actually, allow me to correct myself. Virality is not a fixed milestone, therefore we can’t really say we reach it. It works on a spectrum. It comes and goes.

Getting a big influx of likes, comments or impressions can make you feel like you’re on the top of the world, like you’ve “made it” on social media.

Remember, behind each brand account there is a real person, or a team of people for whom any social media gain (whether it’s engagement, new followers, impressions etc.) is a source of validation.

?? What happened?

Having built an advanced social media analytics and reporting tool that helps hundreds of clients every month, we think about virality quite often. We’re constantly brainstorming new ways to detect and predict virality for our customers.

When it comes to our own social media strategy, virality is not a top concern, but rather a nice to have gain. We love growing our brand organically, and we understand that this type of growth happens slowly and steadily.?

Still, we’re happy when we get a taste of virality, partly due to the benefits it brings, but mostly because it’s fascinating to try and find out why it happens and what exactly we can replicate to boost our chances of going viral again in the future.

Anyway, last week we experienced a short trip to virality-land on LinkedIn (a platform that is not known for fostering virality, by the way). This trip came as a result of a post promoting our latest brand analysis on Monzo.

As you can see in the dashboard screenshots below, our engagement and impressions skyrocketed, reaching new records that we have not seen before.?

This viral post also proudly occupies the first position in our Top 3 posts:

?? My takeaways

As soon as we saw our numbers going up, we started wondering why this had happened. What made this particular post go viral and others more or less flop??

This is not the first post of its kind. We’ve shared posts promoting our studies, blog articles and brand analyses before, and while most of them have performed admirably, none have reached the same highs as this one.

I don’t think there’s one definitive factor that led to the virality of this post.?

However, in my opinion, the particular brand that we mentioned (and analyzed) played a huge role in this situation. Despite being a local UK brand, Monzo Bank has a huge community on LinkedIn (not the highest compared to Instagram or TikTok, but still quite large) and they’re very active on this platform.?

They commented on our post within minutes of it going live, and their comment alone earned over 120 reactions.?

With the way the LinkedIn algorithm works, this post almost immediately earned more visibility, making it more likely for other people to discover and react to it.?

Not to beat our own drum, but I believe the post copy also contributed to its success, given that it is rather short and to the point, while still highlighting the key takeaways from the article.

The visual assets, arranged in a carousel format (a very popular post format on LinkedIn), also help the post stand out and attract attention.?

We have definitely learned some valuable lessons from this virality experience, and we’ll continue to monitor our performance (as we always have) to get even more insights and improve our strategy.

Basically, practicing what we preach. ??

?? Food for thought

Your turn now.

Have you had a post go viral lately? What made it rise so fast? Can you pinpoint a main factor that led to its virality??Share your viral stories with me. ??

Anyway, this is me signing off. I’ll see you next week, in the next issue of The Social Dot, a newsletter powered by Socialinsider, and written by me, Andreea, your local social media expert.

If you have any viral trends and campaigns you’d want me to deconstruct next, don’t hesitate to send them my way.