I’m often asked how you can get a post to go viral on LinkedIn. It doesn’t happen often but it can. I recently got 1 million views and 12,000 likes on one post.

Here’s the thing, going viral on LinkedIn isn’t about trying to go viral.

In my experience the best way to go viral on LinkedIn is to be yourself, be helpful to others and be active on the platform. You also need to be available to answer all comments in the first few hours after you publish a post.

It’s about creating content that really resonates with your network.

It’s about listing at the right time of day.

It’s about authenticity and luck.

It’s about sharing your personal stories. Your challenges. Your background.

It’s about hooking in the reader in the critical first three lines of your post before it says “see more.”

It’s about using hashtags strategically.

It’s about being confident in your content.

It’s about using white space in posts and short paragraphs that make it easy to grab your reader’s attention when they’re scrolling.

It’s responding to all comments – especially within the critical first 30 to 60 minutes after posting.

It’s about not adding links in your post which hurts your ability to go viral because LinkedIn doesn’t want you to take people off its platform.

And most of all it’s about being human.

Getting Personal = Going Viral

Velocity + Engagement = Going Viral

Your content must be interesting and helpful but going viral really has to do with how fast and how much the people who do see your post engage with it via likes, comments, shares, etc.