If you had to guess what caused this traffic spike in December, what would you say it was?

 Product Hunt launch?

 $4,997 Forbes feature?

 Influencer shoutout?

 Google just indexed a bunch of our pages?

 Santa’s present?

Wrong. It’s none of the above.

It’s a single LinkedIn post.

And LinkedIn is a goldmine in B2B.

Don’t worry, I won’t be talking about vanity metrics. Here are some real stats that this wave caused in just 3 days:

 +1,300 website visits

 75 free trial signups

 7 new paying customers

 Immediate $1,650 MRR boost

Comments, likes & views are there too, but the key here is ensuring that you’re enabling these vanity metrics to fuel some real growth in the backend.

In this article, I’ll break down how we make these viral hits happen, and then we’ll go over our entire organic social strategy.

The Anatomy of a Viral Post

The offer

Your marketing lives and dies with your offer.

We had a few posts explode on LinkedIn like this one.

They all had one thing in common. Resources.

Almost every time we offered a resource, the post went viral.

Here are some of the resources we used:

 Writing guidelines

 SEO ROI calculator

 60 Facebook groups where we find writers

These all solve some of the biggest problems in the SEO industry. Difficulties in instructing the writers, troubles in finding the writers, and estimating the returns on an SEO project (basically making the client invest).

If you remember my email about lead generation, the same principle applies here. Simply focus on solving a burning problem of your audience.

The copy

This won’t be a copywriting masterclass, but you really don’t need one.

All you need are a few fundamentals, some structure, and an example.

This is one of our posts that went viral. Here’s its breakdown.

Email list growth hacking

The first time we went viral, it was mostly because we got lucky. But…

I wanted to build a system that allows us to do it again whenever we feel like it.

Here’s what that system looks like:

 Post on LinkedIn

 Ask people to comment

 Send an email to your list linking to that post

 Ask your email subscribers to support it on LinkedIn by commenting

Bonus tip #1: I hate asking people for favors like these. So, I came up with a system that makes it more ethical.

People that signed up to my email list should get the best stuff anyways, right?

So just asking them to comment (like any civilian) doesn’t make sense. Well, not unless you return the favor and give them some bonus resources immediately after that. So, figure out what you can offer them as a bonus.

(and don’t be lazy, that 2021 Industry Report never helped anyone)

Bonus tip #2: LinkedIn doesn’t like when you ask people to leave their platform. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to happen. Here’s a workaround:

 Publish the post without a link

 Write a comment and put your link there

 Copy the comment link

 Edit the post and paste the comment link there

LinkedIn will shorten that link, don’t worry (looks ugly until you click ‘save’).

When people click on that post link, it’s gonna take them to that comment with your link. If you don’t do this, people won’t be able to find your comment link when all other comments start appearing.

Bonus tip #3: Add external links directly to your posts once it gets enough traction.

As you saw in my example above, I have added a direct link (not a comment link, but my website link) into the post. I did it once it reached +100 comments and around 10,000 views.

At that point, I knew that it’s gonna do well no matter how much the algorithm hates my external links. People have spoken!

My Entire Organic Social Strategy

I can attribute 100% of our SaaS and agency growth to organic social.

Companies like Drift, Gong and Refine Labs also built their entire businesses on social media platforms, so you should take this stuff seriously.

Organic social checklist

Daily activities:

 Spend 30 minutes on social media

 Send 50 connection requests

 Delete 20 bad connections (if any)

 Like 20 posts

 Comment on 10 posts

Weekly activities:

 5 post drafts

 3 published posts

 Pick 10 influencers in your niche and regularly engage with their content

General guidelines

 Create content for all funnel stages (top, middle & bottom)

 Don’t post/comment if it doesn’t sound like something you’d say

 50% of your comments should go in-depth and demonstrate your expertise

 To understand your audience, you need to hang out where they hang out

 Connect & engage with influencers in your niche

 Connect with people that engage with those influencers

This probably looks simple. And it is a simple strategy.

Execution + consistency is what’s difficult. So get your reps in and start creating awareness.

This case study is just a piece of my marketing strategy which is covered fully in my newsletter, SaaS Marketing Grown Ups.

Head there and sign up for the most actionable growth playbook on the web.

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