The Unexpected: Sometimes your Blog Post Goes Viral, by Travis Waits
How To Optimize Your LinkedIn Post So It Goes Viral, by Travis Waits.
Here’s what I did, I think, helped my LinkedIn blog post get picked up by LinkedIn Pulse and go viral! I totally wasn’t trying to make this happen originally, but in under two days I’ve received:
That’s a TON of traffic for me! I’m a solo advisor that consults professionals around issues of leadership. To be funny I was going to title my next post “How an Unproductive post created a Vulnerability eCourse by Travis Waits”
Before this post took off, I was I’m in the middle of developing an online eCourse on my website on the topic of Authenticity. So given the dialogue from the blog this week, I thought what better way then to generate some productive collaboration with my peers and live out this very important topic together !?!
I have been totally amazed, humbled, and impressed! [Gratitude] Honestly the response has blown me away and really helped re-fuel some productive thinking from all the positive dialogue I’ve gotten to have as a result of this post going “LinkedIn viral” as my friend put it! Ironic how a post about being unproductive could generate so much buzz!
Here are some of the things I did to optimize my LinkedIn post. I’m not an expert on SEO at all. If I can’t figure something out on my WordPress website by googling it, I call a friend, so here you go:
- Aim at 300 words or less
- Make sure your title is also in you first paragraph
- Use “h1” and “h2” tags … those make the words big and BOLD, and google likes them đŸ™‚
- Put some images in your post, and title them to match your topic
- Be Yourself! (more on this one down below…)
- Have the courage to risk sharing your thoughts with others, hit the ‘send’/’post’ button!!
So my hunch is that my post started to go viral because I mis-spelled my title, I used “you” instead of “your.” That was quickly pointed out, mocked, and laughed at. I didn’t really care about those comments, that stuff doesn’t bother me at all. Hey we all make simple mistakes, and the mature were able to see past my spelling error and catch my message: we all get stuck sometimes, no matter how successful were are.
Here’s what I was stuck on, and YES, I’m totally going to leverage this:
I’ve been working to develop some online courses that people like myself would benefit from. I’m offering a BETA version for FREE of the “Vulnerability” section of my online course and I want your feedback, critique, suggestions, dialogue, etc. At the moment, it’s just me bootstrapping the production of this course on my website (my WordPress skills are very rough)… so if you could focus your comments on the CONTENT, I know the nuts & bolts of the structure and flow of the course need some work (and if you’re an online LMS expert let me know…)
Because I’m still working out the kinks, I can only allow a small group to participate. So if you want in, click the button, or the image below and sign up:
Once your in, you should receive an email confirmation and the part one of the Vulnerability course video. If you don’t please let me know!
Any questions, be blessed and have a rockstar day!
-Travis