Viral posts are always the goal.
They’re great for bringing in traffic and establishing your influencer status online.
But, more importantly, they’re the most efficient way to post on LinkedIn or any other place.
That’s because they maximize their time on the platform.
In this guide, let’s take a look at where we can find viral posts, get inspiration to create them, and how to properly repurpose and curate existing ones.
The Importance of Virality
Virality makes content efficient.
It allows you to get your creations in front of as many eyeballs as possible.
And, it also lets you subtly promote yourself as a thought leader and as someone who produces content that is worthwhile.
But, that’s not all.
Virality is also a barometer of what your prospects’ needs are.
The more popular the post is, the more inclined they are towards a particular topic.
However, it’s also a mistake to get the wrong version of virality.
Viral posts don’t always have to bring in a million views and a hundred thousand engagements, sometimes they just have to bring enough people that create a temporary buzz for a particular topic.
Always take into account that some industries and market shares are smaller than others, so they won’t necessarily push the “common” definition of virality. A couple of thousand views for technical industries are more than enough.
You’re working with content of value here not cat videos. (Although, you could use cat videos.)
Why Do I Need to Look for Viral Posts?
There are three main reasons why you always need to be on the lookout for viral posts:
Curate and Repurpose
You don’t always have to create completely original content.
It’s a myth.
Sometimes you can curate a piece of content that you like and share it on your feed – with the proper attribution of course.
Other times, you can take an existing video that used to be viral, attribute the original video with its source and create a quick writeup about your own refections regarding the video.
For Inspiration
Consistently coming up with new ideas can get exhausting.
That’s why it helps to keep track of what’s already going viral so that you can draw inspiration to use in your next posts.
Sometimes you can even create variations of what’s already going viral which can drive original content.
To Keep Track of Your Audience’s Tastes
Keeping track of viral posts in your industry is a good way to make sure you stay updated on what your audience finds appealing.
This helps center your marketing goals and allows you to finetune your efforts.
Pay Attention to Your Feed
The first place you should go to if you’re looking for viral posts in your feed.
Now it doesn’t matter if it’s your LinkedIn feed, Facebook, or even Twitter.
You’ll often find that after a few minutes of scrolling, you’ll have run into a couple of viral posts already.
Why do social media platforms do this?
Simple.
They want you to spend more time scrolling on their feeds so that they can feed your more ads.
And, how do they keep you on the platform?
Viral posts that arouse your interest.
LinkedIn is an example of this, once the algorithm senses that a post has been getting a lot of engagements, they’ll make sure that they’ll show it to more people.
We wrote an article on how to leverage this. Check out how to go viral on LinkedIn!
Here’s how to hack your feed to make sure you’re getting viral posts:
- Make sure you follow popular hashtags that are related to your industry
- Follow industry influencers (more on this in the next section)
- Engage with posts that you like and share them
For Facebook, make sure you follow industry pages as well as industry leaders.
Industry pages usually do all the collation and curation for you.
Follow Other Industry Influencers
It pays to follow other influencers.
They usually post content that’s already tweaked for their audiences, and a lot of their posts usually go viral in their circles.
You want to take a look at what subjects they’re tackling to get a good sense of where the market is heading, you also want to analyze their top-performing posts.
You can either share these posts or draw inspiration from them for another time.
Make sure that you follow a number of influencers in your industry and compare their posts with each other.
This gives you a better sample to work with.
Use BuzzSumo
If you want to use apps, we recommend BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo has been around for years and it’s been an app for choice for top marketers for social research and flagging viral posts.
Plus, it’s got a pretty simple interface that can get you started on research almost immediately.
Once you’ve got an account, log in and head over to the section on the right called “Research Popular Content”.
I usually just do a simple web search, by clicking on “WEB”.
This will take you to BuzzSumo’s search engine.
Now you want to type in a keyword that you want to do research on.
(Pro tip: you can use Boolean search on their platform.)
This will now take you to their results page which lists down different results online and ranks them in terms of their Facebook engagements, Twitter and Pinterest shares as well as their number of links.
This makes it easy for anyone to jump in and check out trending articles regarding a particular keyword
Look for Trending Topics on Google Trends
For general topics, you can always go to Google Trends to check out the latest trends in search.
The caveat here is they might not always be applicable to your industry.
However, since it’s linked directly to Google’s servers and provides an overview of general search terms, it makes more an indispensable trend analysis tool.
Takeaways
Keeping track of viral content is critical.
You can think of it as research.
It helps you find posts to repurpose, trends to look out for, and it helps you understand your audience even better.
If you’re not having an especially creative week, you can always repurpose posts that have already gone viral.
Keeping track of viral content helps you create better viral content that you can use in your own campaigns whether it be on LinkedIn or any other platform for that matter.
Going viral should always be the goal.
You get to reach more people and be more efficient in your campaigns.
But more importantly, it means that your posts resonate with your audience.
