The Viral Content Formula

I have 2 important things to share with you here:

1. Explain the usefulness and non-usefulness of follower counts

2. Give you the viral content formula

I’ll try to make this as short as possible without skipping any important information. Let’s get into it.

The Futility of Follower Counts

I am not teaching you how to do LinkedIn content so you can have a huge number of followers. Don’t make that wrong assumption.

I have already learned this bitter lesson by experience on another platform. I built a 6-figure audience and my reach is down there to almost zero. Your followers are never yours. They belong to the social media platform.

Just because you have 100k followers doesn’t mean your posts will reach 100k people or even 10k people. Or even 100 people.

Follower count is just proof that people resonated with your past content. It also means that people want to network with you. It has little or nothing to determine the future reach of your posts.

The new reach of your posts is based on the merits of that post.

I have had LinkedIn posts gain 200k impressions and my LinkedIn follower count is still below 5,000. In fact, my very first 200k impressions post was when my follower count was around 1,500.

What matters is your content, not your followers. Hence, I am teaching you how to get good at content. The era of follower count is gone. And this is not just a LinkedIn thing. All social media platforms have become interest-media.

The rise of TikTok gave them a run for their money. And unfortunately, they all blindly copied the TikTok. (And for most of them, it was suicide in the long run though). Gary Vee says he won’t be surprised if platforms gradually start removing the follower count from people’s profiles.

Just like the hashtags, the follower traction is dead.

Think of follower count as social proof. That is proof that your insight has helped someone. Or someone resonates with your message.

Therefore, in this newsletter, I am NOT teaching you how to grow your followers on LinkedIn. Instead, I am teaching you how your content can reach thousands and millions of people.

If you get lots of eyeballs, you will get opportunity. Every time I have gone viral on LinkedIn, I have always gotten an opportunity of some kind in the DMs. Of course, I pass on most of them but it is a good sign when such things keep coming.

So, our goal is REACH, NETWORK, and SALES OPPORTUNITIES

Let this be very clear to you. Don’t be caught chasing vanity metrics. Reach improves your network and brings you new opportunities.

Never ever forget this.

The 4 Horsemen of Viral Content

There are 4 elements that (almost) guarantees the virality of a piece of content. Every time my content has had these 4 things in a high measure, the piece of content has always gone viral.

So, what are they?

I have an acronym for them – RACE

R – Relevance

A – Authority

C – Contrast

E – Emotional trigger

I measure these 4 things in percentages. In most cases, when I have 2 of these 4 elements at over 90%, the piece of content goes viral.

But getting it right is no small feat.

When you have a good content idea flow into your mind, that is a good idea. It will probably not go viral. To make it a viral content, you have to edit it.

You edit the piece of content to increase the percentages of these 4 elements.

Now, let’s understand each of the 4 elements.

Relevance

How relevant is this piece of content to my primary audience? This is very important. The more irrelevant it is, it higher the chance that it will be ignored.

This is why you must have a pretty good idea of the kinds of people that engage with your content. You must know who you make your content for.

This brings us back to the concept of niche. Don’t try to be smart. Don’t try to be a genius at multiple things. Stick to your niche. Keep the same set of people coming back again and again. This is how you establish authority.

Another mistake people make here is that they assume that what is relevant to them is relevant to their audience. Far from it.

Your content should never be about what is relevant to you or what you think should be relevant. You have to be able to look from the lens of your ideal audience:

What do they want to hear?

What do they want to see?

What is instantly useful to them?

How can I be instantly helpful?

Content with a very high relevance score often show people how to get a result fast, a shortcut tip, or compress time to generate an outcome.

“Stop doing X, do Y” is a good example. But just because your content is in this format doesn’t mean that it scores high on relevance. It still has to be relevant to the audience.

Authority

When something is too good to be true, people dismiss it. Even when it is actually true. So, when you are sharing something that looks too good to be true, back it up with some authority.

This is where you tag people, you reference a prestigious organization, you merge your idea (or message) with a reputable figure to make it believable.

For example, if I say, “3 out of 5 people in America have bad credit scores”. People might not pay any attention to that. It may be fake (and we are in a world where all kinds of fake stats are going around).

But if I say, “According to a 2024 Harvard Study, 3 out of 5 adults in America have bad credit scores”.

Suddenly, that looks very much believable.

However, the strongest form of authority is your own personal experience. Here is a first-line example of a personal authority LinkedIn post:

“I was fired twice from Google. Here is why I would never work for big tech again”

That is a very strong authority post. This example is actually scores very high on 2 elements – authority and emotional trigger.

Contrast

In my opinion, this is arguably the most powerful element for a viral content. It doesn’t matter the platform. If you create a powerful contrast, you will go viral (sometimes even when the other elements are not so strong).

That said, contrast is not easy to achieve. In most cases, it comes after thinking and re-thinking on how you can best convey a message. You edit a piece of content multiple times before landing at a very good contrast.

In my workflows, I have a process of writing 10 headlines before deciding on which headline to use.

Contrast is when you compare two seemingly opposing ideas in a single thought or message. The best example I have for this was when I compared billionaires and economic professors in an article I wrote a few years ago.

Contrast is all about opposing ideas. A recent example of this I made on LinkedIn is – The era of remote jobs is over

And if you read the post, you will see that I opposed the idea of remote jobs with remote companies. That is a very good contrast.

To score high in contrast, always think – what can I compare the central thing in my post with?

An average LinkedIn post will say – that is a red ball.

A good contrast will say – Let me show you why this ball is not blue, green, or yellow.

A great contrast will say – I know you think this is a red ball. But what if I told you that this ball isn’t red at all

You know a great contrast because it adds intrigue and curiosity. YouTubers use contrast a lot.

Emotional Trigger

Rage bait is a thing on LinkedIn. Meaning that people intentionally post things that will trigger you to be angry or mad. And you will want to comment and engage with the post.

But rage isn’t the only emotion that exists. There are several emotions that you can tap into to make your content engagement worthy. Always remember that the more engagement you get, the more people you reach.

The first thing here is that you should never attempt to teach something complex on social media. Don’t ever attempt it on LinkedIn. People don’t have enough bandwidth in their brains for that.

Even the LinkedIn posts I engage on, I rarely read the whole thing. I just read the first line or just the picture quote. So, LinkedIn is not the place to teach anything in detail.

Just make your point in the first 2 lines. And it must be an emotional triggering point. In other words, say things that people feel on a personal level.

For example, if you say “I was fired”. That is emotionally triggering because everyone that has experienced such will instantly relate to that. This is all about finding that relatable or agreeable point that people can feel. Examples;

• Your lowest point in your professional career

• The highest point in your professional career

• A tragic accident

• A too-good to be true plot twist

• A recent development that made you very happy

And so much more. People love to congratulate or sympathize. But you have to be very strategic about it. You never want to be the subject of a pity party.

You want people to come to recognize you as an authority in a niche (so that you can attract high-paying opportunities). That is the goal and you must never forget.

Conclusion

Let’s test how much you have learned. Here is a screenshot of a LinkedIn post for you to score according to RACE.

All you have to do is comment your answer:

Your answer must be in this format (as an example):

R=57%, A=35%, C=63%, E=42%

Do that for the screenshot post shown. Don’t get too bothered about the exact percentage, I just want to see what you give high scores and low scores to.

If you also have a question about this, feel free to ask in the comments