4 steps to go viral with ease

In today's LinkedIn Success Vault, I'm going to share with you a 4 step framework from my recent LinkedIn post that had over 2,4608,302 impressions, 11,481 reactions, and 2477 shares.

You'll walk away with new frameworks for your writing process, for capturing attention & keeping attention, and for maximizing leads / LinkedIn followers from your posts.

I’m going to break down:

• My exact post template
• Construction of the post hook
• My “attention-keeping” cadence philosophy in action
• The clear CTA I used to lock in 39 leads & 2,000+ new followers

All right, let’s dive in.

The post template

The post I write has the following structure:

1. The opening hook
2. The curiosity gap or intrigue factor?
3. The negative observations of my trip
4. The positive observations in contrast
5. A key takeaway or prediction to move forward
6. What’s the next action I want my reader to take?

And for this post, here is my thinking for each part:

1. The opening hook

• This first sentence starts with a bold statement. When people read it they will wonder why am I glad that I don’t live in the UK.
• This point also goes against conventional thinking as many Indians would love to live there.
• Lastly, it uses the tactic of "Newsjacking" a term coined by David Meerman Scott - the practice of taking advantage of current events or news stories in such a way as to promote or advertise one's product or brand.

2. The curiosity gap

• “Here’s what I discovered” makes people curious. It’s a cliffhanger. It makes them want to click on the “see more” part of expanding the post text.?
• When people click on “see more” it signals to the LinkedIn algorithm that people are interested in the post and it will show it to more of the network.

My “attention-keeping” cadence philosophy in action

This is the meat of the post. This is where the reader gets engaged and new insights. It’s broken into 3 parts: negative, positive and one takeaway. Starting with the negative creates tension.

3. The negative observations

• As an economist, I discovered some key points that are going to hinder growth in the UK while talking to friends, family, and business people. I also made some observations about what was going on at the ground level.
• The use of the ? emoji helps highlight the list and add colour.
• Also notice that the list gets shorter in sentence structure as it progresses. This makes it easy to scan.?
• Not everyone will agree with my observations or points of view. That’s OK. It will get comments and debate going between you and your audience.?
• More comments and multiple comments in a thread will signal to the LinkedIn algorithm that this is a post people care about. A group of people jumped into a heated debate about their comments on my post. Again this increased the post's reach.

4. Contrast the positive?

In this next part, I highlight some key positives that I see in India.?

• I have used a ?emoji to bring a contrasting colour.
• The formatting of this list is from short to long as you go down it. It makes it easy to scan.
• A number of key statistics are thrown in to support the points. Data with storytelling works.

5. A key takeaway or insight

• Leave your readers with a key takeaway.?
• Quoting famous billionaire, Anil Agarwal, helps me expand a viewpoint about success and gives social proof of what business leaders are also saying.
• Again not everyone will be in favour of the notion of ‘Jugaad’ and it may polarize people to comment. I personally think it’s a good thing.
• Also, there is a prediction of what I expect to happen in the future.

6. What’s the next action I want my reader to take?

• I ask a question at the end: “Who’s with me?” to get people’s thoughts. My focus is on getting people to engage with their comments.
• I also pinned a comment with the following text:

And that's it! Here were the final stats on this post:

• 2,4608,302 impressions
• 2,000+ new followers
• 15,000+ profile views
• 9,112 reactions
• 840 comments
• 247 shares

All in all, pretty good! Hope this was helpful to give you some insight into the way you can “engineer” my posts.

Phew! There's a lot here. Use this framework when writing your next LinkedIn post to 10x your chances of going viral.

That's it for this week! If this was helpful, hit reply and let me know. And if you have any follow-up questions, hit reply and I'll help you out.

Stay ??Supercharged!,

–Neeraj Shah

P.S... Quick heads up… I’m opening up a handful of slots this month for my 1:1 LinkedIn Personal Branding Accelerator. It’s your chance to work with me 1:1 over 4 weeks to really supercharge your LinkedIn content to get inbound leads and build a magnetic personal brand.?

So if you want a chance to hop aboard, click here to book a no-obligation call with me.

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