The Secret To Viral Content On LinkedIn

If you’ve spent enough time on LinkedIn, you’ll know that there is much of the “same-same” on the platform.

I built a tool last week to collect the top 10 posts on the platform from influencers I follow.

Collectively, these posts have over 100 K engagements and 100 M+ views.

The secret to their success? They all follow the exact same formula.

Here was the top-performing post by Rohan Sheth - Post here

Hook:

The image on the post:

Every post that I scraped had the same thing:

1. A hook with no more than 20 words:

2. Images or slides with infographics and quotes

My own viral post had much the same thing:

Hook:

Image:

If you want to make viral content, repurpose popular quotes, post them on an AI-generated billboard or turn them into PowerPoint slides.

Rinse, repeat and tag other influencers.

It’s not world-changing, but it gets attention.

Telling Better Stories

Jeff Bezos is a very wealthy man—approximately $200 billion wealthy.

He's accumulated a great deal for himself, but people forget he's also accumulated a great deal for others.

If you take into account pension funds, ETFs, and other investments, almost half of America has increased their net worth due to Bezos' capitalistic pursuits. On top of that, Amazon employs around a million people and has provided massive benefits to American consumers - the whole country has profited from Bezos. And he takes great pride in that.

Amazon represents about as good of an outcome as you can hope for from capitalism. By his estimate, Bezos has created $2 trillion in wealth for others, yet he attracts hate.

And then there's Elon Musk and Tesla. He might be America's most hated man at the moment. The scenes of domestic terrorism over there are shocking. People upset at Elon for his social media comments have decided that burning Tesla cars, threatening his family, and abusing his staff is acceptable behavior.

In contrast, you can do what Tim Brown and Allbirds have done and be loved for it.

They've never made a profit, racked up more than $500 million in losses, and cost their shareholders—including Kiwisaver funds, pension funds, and retail investors—about $2.2 billion.

Even though Allbirds has been a large-scale wealth destroyer, Tim has walked away a wealthy man in his own right, celebrated as a success story.

And I think that's just it. What's happening here is storytelling.

I was listening to a podcast last week with Nick Bilton, a journalist and author who has covered Silicon Valley and tech for over 20 years. He was discussing Jack Dorsey (Twitter's founder) in his early days, along with a few other "successful" founders and the questionable things they did back in the day.

In short, Nick said almost all public perceptions about these capitalist figures are wrong. Jack has a saintly image but is actually a true asshole, while others the public hates are very "normal" and treat people well.

When questioned on why public perceptions of these figures are so off, he responded: "They told better stories."

I personally know business "success stories" that are rubbish behind closed doors and others doing remarkable things that no one knows about.

In conclusion... it's all just a story.