HOW TO GO VIRAL ON LINKEDIN IN JAPAN 2019

MY FIRST VIRAL POST

If you are interested in marketing, maybe you have heard of the term “viral post”. A viral post is a post, which will be shared exponential on social media. I have been building a Twitter account for the last 8 months and a YouTube account as well. I used to check my growth there daily. I was happy to see my 30% growth rate and the number of stable regular subscribers. I was not using LinkedIn actively. LinkedIn is for me a place to network on a professional level and I wasn’t sure how it would affect my career, if I start marketing on this platform. I have been studying Japanese since I was 14 years old and this year, I finally passed the JLPT N1. Without thinking much, I was posting proudly a copy of my JLPT N1 certificate on LinkedIn, well aware that my name, photo and birth date was shared. That was, until I realized that my post got viral on LinkedIn. Before I realized, my post hit 168300 views, 2500 likes, 400 comments and 4500 profile clicks. the first day. The next day, it hit 4155461 views and 667 comments, an impossible number of comments for one person to reply. Most people were saying congratulations to my certification, some people asked me about my language learning strategies and some people told me they are worried about my personal information. After hitting 4155461 views, I decided to put my post down. I hope this screenshot will capture my small marketing success.

HOW TO GO VIRAL ON LINKEDIN IN JAPAN

After my post got viral, I did some research on how to get viral on LinkedIn. A personal story has a high possibility of getting viral. In my case, I wrote that I had studied Japanese for a long time (consistency) and that it led to me passing the Japanese exam (success). Most Japanese companies require a high Japanese ability on a professional level. That is why, a lot of foreigners in Japan are working towards passing this exam. LinkedIn has the feature to congratulate people to success. Most people use LinkedIn to post about their promotions. That feature was working for me, because people could easily reply. I got more than 600 comments. Most of them are people, who congratulate me. Japanese commenting in Japanese. Expats commenting in English.

But I was very happy that I got a lot of comments of people asking me advice in how to learn Japanese. A lot of my old friends wrote me. I was very nice to being able to talk to old friends again. That engagement (comments and likes), I got in the first day help me to go viral. Therefore, my Japanese learning story helped me going viral on LinkedIn.

Thank you!