All My ‘Viral Posts’ Have These Four Elements
8 million views, 3 platforms, 5 posts.
Everybody wants that one viral hit.
To be honest, that’s not my aim.
Maybe it’s because I used to write on Quora back in university and had millions of views under some answers that meant nothing.
Here, let me show you my five ‘viral’ pieces I wrote.
They all have one element that makes them a winner. But I’ll also help you with a few tricks to get closer to creating a winning piece.
LinkedIn Post : 1.12 Million Views
Sometimes, all it takes is 12 words to blow up.
Nothing complicated, right?
But if you read the comments, you’d see that people could ‘relate’ to the misery of working in the corporate sector.
Most comments are from folks in my country where we get paid low, overwork, and have a culture of staying in the office until late.
They were happy to see somebody else walk out of the rabbit hole.
LinkedIn Post: 4.8 Million Views
This post is about my ACL reconstruction surgery in both knees after which I could finally stand after 6 weeks of being in bed. An experience that completely took a toll on me.
To be honest, I’m still physically 6 months away from healing entirely. Mentally, I’m finally trying to get out of the space my surgery put me on.
I was apprehensive about putting up this picture because it’s common for women to be called clickbait. But I did it anyway and received lots of supportive messages.
It also doubled my following from 7500 to 15000+ followers in a week.
The post is too long so you can read it here.
Twitter: 82,090 Views
This is something I least expected to blow up.
It also took me aback, because I spend hours creating kick-ass content every week. And now a random statement did well?
If this isn’t the epitome that people like raw and relatable human stories, I don’t know what is.
Article: 57k Views
Four Traits of Irresistibly Attractive Men is something I didn’t take too long to write. It’s a story of how men use pickup artist techniques to appeal to women.
I basically wrote about my friend and his life (with his consent) and hyperlinked a few studies for credibility.
It’s earned me four figures and brings me decent income every month because of the Pareto Principle coming to play — 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the causes.
LinkedIn Post: 50k Views
Another post where I was hesitant to put up my picture.
This post hardly took me any effort to write and wasn’t pre-planned because I wrote this in the moment I was feeling this way.
This is a post about how I got caught up when I became self-employed and neglected my mental health by not taking enough breaks.
It’s hard, you know when your income depends on your monthly output. A decrease in writing means a decrease in numbers. It’s a tough and taxing place to be in.
It was after this incident that I chose to diversify my income streams so I no longer depend on 1 or 2 sources.
Common Elements in All of Them
I’d love to put up more ‘viral’ pieces, but the message will be the same as they all have the same virality components. It’s opened my eyes about what works with people and I will try to incorporate some of these elements in my future pieces.
I hope you do too.
1. You > Guru
People want to know you, listen to you, not a perfect pundit. Bring in your stories from life, talk about your friends, talk about your work, your habits and the motivation behind them.
People worry about not being unique. Too bad, because whatever you want to write about, millions of stories already exist around that unless you’re researching from the scratch.
But here’s what nobody can steal from you — your life experiences. Use them.
2. Show Up, Often
Here’s what happens when you show up on a platform consistently:
- You get better at the skill
- You’re visible more often
- The algorithm supports you
So it’s a win-win for you and for your work to get eyes. My writing game completely changed when I became consistent.
It paid me better and helped me build an audience.
Pro tip: If you want to be present across platforms, consider repurposing your content.
3. Format for Mobile
If there's one thing that most people overlook is this.
Content consumers are scrolling during breaks, at work, during commutes, etc. A well-spaced piece versus a cluttered huge paragraph makes a significant difference to the readers’ experience.
Optimise it accordingly.
4. Scared? Good
For my LinkedIn posts especially, I was scared of publishing each one of them because they made me vulnerable. I was afraid of what will people say and about getting backlashed.
So far, being vulnerable and raw (even when it’s super scary) has helped me gain results.
If you’re scared, it means you’re out of your comfort zone — which is the right place to be in.
Lastly
Instead of chasing virality, have fun creating and create consistently so virality comes to you.
Take inspiration from others, but add a component of you in your work because that’s what truly makes it stand apart. Your experiences and lessons are unique and can help others, use it.
Be consistent and format well — you’ll start seeing results soon.
You got this!
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