Start with a story

People like to hear about your journey. Bring emotion into it. Make me feel something.

Grab my attention in the first sentence

A LinkedIn post will collapse after 140 characters, ~32 words or 4-5 line breaks (see my screenshot above), so make sure you have a strong hook to pull people into the story you are telling. That will encourage them to click ‘…see more’ and read the rest of the post.

Put line breaks after every sentence or two

This spacing will provide a fluid scannable experience to the reader. It draws the reader down through the story ending up on your CTA (call to action). Similar to this:

End with a call to action

It can be a link for further reading, a website, or a question to be answered in the comments.

You can also make the first comment your own and put the link there to encourage more comments like Manny did below. The LinkedIn algorithm loves comments, so the more the merrier. If you get around 10 comments in the first hour and you post in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday you should be well on track for a week of engagement.

Add hashtags

4-5 is a good amount. Make them relevant without being spammy. You can search hashtags on LinkedIn to see how much following they have. For example, #startups on LinkedIn has over 21 million followers.

My entire viral LinkedIn post with 28k views

More viral examples to reference

• Tristan shares an impact tech story // 28,653 views, 356 engagements, 32 comments

• Hitting 400 members for The Ops Community // 5,066 views, 77 engagements, 23 comments

• Marquis quitting his IBM dream job // 265 engagements, 27 comments

• Kyle launching his startup on ProductHunt // 17,609 views, 217 engagements, 35 comments

• Mason’s simple format for The Ops Show // 81 engagements, 8 comments (breaks the line break rule)

• Manny’s product announcement // 1,932 engagements, 243 comments