Think immigration content can’t go viral when you’re resharing on LinkedIn? Think again!
A few weeks ago, I reshared a friend’s post (and added my own takeaways) that went unexpectedly viral. Two weeks after I shared the post, my shared post now has over 75,000 views! Seeing this post take off got me thinking: why did this kind of post go viral? So I tried to figure it out and replicate it. My theory? That sharing others’ posts creates virality…
To test this theory, I decided that I’d share someone else’s post every few days and see what happened. I’ve shared 6 posts from friends and connections over a variety of topics so far and here’s the update on whether this works for going viral:
What should I be resharing on LinkedIn?
Let’s start with the post that kicked off this whole experiment! The first post that I shared was from Jon Katz now has 75,659 views. Score one for resharing (and adding your own comments) posts to go viral.
Onto the test of the second post!
I tried the second shared post a few days later from the success of the first post. It was TK Kader’s thoughts on SaaS (software as a service.) While this post did pretty well – it gained 8,508 views over a few days – it didn’t replicate the same level of success as the first pos. That said, the amount of views was a couple thousand views over the average numbers on my LinkedIn content so I was happy with the amount of views on this post.
The third post that I shared was about Konrad Waliszewski’s live stream with celebrity chef Andrew Zimmerman from Bizarre Foods. Unfortunately, this did not achieve the same success as the first or the second post. Over two weeks after posting, this post had only 908 views total. I would consider this a flop for the experiment.
Coming off of the flop of the third post, let’s move onto the fourth post. This fourth shared post was Ron Matten’s summary of Trump’s latest immigration executive order. We were back in business! This post reshare started off slow the day that I posted it but by the next morning it had blown up. It got over 10,333 views. Another success for the viral post share list.
What goes up must come back down. The fifth post that I shared was from fellow immigration tech founder Jeremy Peskin’s announcement about Docketwise APIs. While his initial post thrived, mine crashed: a few weeks later, it only got 220 views.
And my last post was no different. The last post that I shared was from Husain Bazzi about a podcast I did with him. Like Peskin’s post that I shared, this shared post only got 245 views total and I would consider it another flop.
Should I be resharing on LinkedIn? Here are 3 things to consider…
After I tried these six different kinds of posts, it seemed like they had wildly different results. For context on these posts, my usual LinkedIn content averages between 2,000 and 5,000 views so I would consider the posts that did better than 5,000 “successful.”
My takeaway from this experiment was that resharing posts with your own comments seems to either do incredibly well and go viral or fails entirely. Half of my posts got far more views than my normal content but the other half did way worse than my normal content. So, here are my three major takeaways:
1. First, if you’re going to share someone else’s post, add your own thoughts or commentary to it. A lot of people simply share without adding anything of their own, and those posts, since they don’t “add” to the conversation on LinkedIn, don’t tend to do very well engagement- and reach-wise.
2. Second, share what you think your followers / audience will like. At the end of the day, engagement will happen if the post is interesting or otherwise valuable to your followers. So think about them first and foremost when sharing anything on LinkedIn.
3. Third, don’t get too stuck on metrics. Sometimes there just is no rhyme or reason to the success or failure of a LinkedIn post from a metrics perspective. A “good” post can end up with 130 views and a “bad” one ca get many thousands. Ultimately, just create good, thoughtful content that brings value to your audience, and be consistent about it. Everything else will follow.
Ultimately, my takeaway is this (and it’s not groundbreaking, unfortunately): I would recommend trying a similar experiment yourself to see what happens!
If you want to start resharing on LinkedIn check out my post on how to create great content for LinkedIn so you can start experimenting and (resharing on LinkedIn!)
Does anyone have thoughts about this kind of experiment or content sharing? Let the GMI Rocket community know below!
