When a simple Linkedin post, goes viral! ??

Imagine the following situation:

You have a 17-year-old daughter who is applying to different universities from several countries, and she is required to present her CV as part of their admission process. She prepares it and shares it with you to know your opinion about it. When you see it, you are gladly surprised at how good it looks, and as a proud parent, you decide to write a simple post on LinkedIn, sharing this beautiful experience with your network.

So far, everything looks pretty normal. Anyone who has a son/daughter can do this, and in fact, I did it with mine ??

What I would have never imagined, is that my post (which has been written for my LinkedIn network) would become viral!

It started like this: only a few minutes after posting it, I received many notifications from people reacting to the post in different ways (likes, comments, and shares). After some hours, the number of likes was unusually bigger than the average of any of my previous posts, and the thing that caught my attention was the huge amount of comments.

All of them were very positive and congratulated Melina for her achievements, her CV, or both.

And some of them were giving her constructive tips, such as flagging out that there was a typo ??

But what I would have never imagined, is that a simple and ordinary post about my daughter's CV would become viral in only 3 days, surpassing 1 million post views from all over the world ??

And while writing this article, the post reached more than 1.7 million views ??

The fact that matters the most to me is that I still don't understand how this happened. That's why I asked Andy Foote, a LinkedIn expert and someone from whom I learn every day, his two cents on the success of this post. According to him ??

Andy's answer made me think about many things, but if I need to narrow them down to one, I'd say that there is a need and willingness to see good news, not from mega influencers or famous VIP, but from ordinary people like us.

I can imagine that many of those views came from hard-working professional parents from all over the world that felt identified with our story, in which Melina could have been their own kid.

If I would have not posted this on LinkedIn, this nice and inspiring story would have been limited to our family and some close friends. But posting it on LinkedIn, made it available to +1,7 million professionals in less than 10 days, and opening many new opportunities for Melina, who has already received many messages to help her with her academic path, entrepreneur ventures, and overall goals.

My lesson from this experience is:

Never underestimate the power of your network and the huge potential reach of social media platforms like LinkedIn.

And if you have some nice story to share, no matter if it is a simple one, just do it! ??