LinkedIn is full of narcissist and I have the data to prove this.
It all started when I wanted to be viral on LinkedIn. Instead of just guessing what could work, I chose a data -controlled approach that scraps off posts and analyzes what drives the commitment. What I discovered was surprising (and depressing): The most successful contributions are overwhelming, with people supposedly “inspiring” about themselves.
Instead of joining the self -congruence parade, I decided to call it out. I created the viral postal generator, a tool that automatically creates eye roll posts and makes the formula painfully recognizable for everyone. In a wonderful turn of the irony, this tool itself became mocked virus content itself.
In this post I will tell how this happened and what I learned about the product market attack, sales and modern virality.
The birth of the virus post generator
About two and a half years ago I decided to become Viral on LinkedIn. That was my goal: to write a contribution that would take off. Of course, I wondered what makes a LinkedIn contribution viral primarily.
So I did what every curious marketer would do. I scratched over 200,000 posts and filtered them based on engagement metrics to identify different patterns among the most successful. I specifically checked whether keywords prompted to become viral. After all of this data were analyzed, it was quite obvious what happened.
These viral contributions all followed the same formula. The LinkedIn user told a personal story with many dramatic heights and depths, the vague advice on “hanging” or “believe in yourself”.
This insight led me to create them Viral Post GeneratorA parody tool that CRINGENY LinkedIn contributions created based on minimal entries. The concept was simple:
- Tell the generator what you did today.
- Add every “inspiring” advice.
- Choose a level of terror (low to high).
- Get a perfectly designed viral contribution that imitates the exact pattern of successful LinkedIn content.
The technical approach was uncomplicated, especially according to today’s standards. This was before Chatgpt was rolled to the public. With the most viral articles of all time as inspiration, I created about 50-100 templates to serve as the basis.
For the interactive element, an AWS library provided natural language processing to analyze user input, adjust it with the correct template and even adapt the text easily to the sentence structure. The entire project came together on the NO code platform Adalo and proves that deep technical skills are not necessary to create something that really takes advantage of people.
How a parodie tool actually became viral
After I had set up a tool that parodyed the viral content, my next challenge was to get people to use it. The first start was completely flat. After shaping the viral post generator via X, LinkedIn and Reddit, I only heard crickets. Nobody seemed interested.
This initial failure taught me a crucial lesson: having a good product is not over. The distribution strategy makes the difference.
I have defeated the tactics and began to mark social media profiles that regularly criticized Linkedin’s culture of self-promotion. By positioning the tool as “inspired by them” (although he has never interacted with these accounts before), these larger accounts began to share my product, which gave me immediate access to their established audience.
On Reddit, my contributions initially stood from deletion for advertising injuries. By excavating the conversation to involve the community, to tell you that I have created the tool for you and invited you to share your best creations, these restrictions were transformed into opportunities for commitment.
People who have the feeling of triggering an idea are much more supported. By giving people recognition, I gave them a reason to share what I had built. It was one of the most effective ways that I reached the audience that I would never have accessed as a newcomer.
When the acquisition knocks
When the viral post -generator started to start, I received a message from the founder of TaplioA platform that helps users expand their LinkedIn presence. He saw the potential of the tool as a brand consciousness game and wanted to acquire it.
At first I wasn’t sure at first. It was incredibly satisfactory to build something that had my name on it. But when traffic slowed down and the reality of preserving the dynamics began, the offer looked more appealing. I was tired. Keeping everyday life meant to promote it all the time – posting, answering and finding new ways to keep people interested.
The technical pressure was even more intense behind the scenes. Sleepless nights became a norm when I was constantly worried about the crash of the location, while thousands of visitors actively used them. As a solo creator without support team, the stress of being “internet famous” quickly lost its charm.
After weighed these factors, I quoted one that I considered a high acquisition price. The founder of Taplio immediately rejected and did not even offer a counter offer. Instead, we agreed to a 24-hour test: I would include an advertisement for Taplio in my generator to measure the value of brand awareness before I set a fair price.
The viral pressure at the last minute
When the 24-hour window started, I noticed that our numbers fall. I needed a last shot to do this work. I thought, “Where have I not tried to post?” I remembered that it called a subreddit R/Internet Where people share cool new tools that they can find online.
I posted there and it blew up immediately. Someone saw my post on Reddit and shared it on X. This post was crazy viral. It hit 22 million people and almost 180,000 likes within a few hours. It was completely unexpected.
The chain reaction increased the tool as the official Reddit accounts. Instagram sites with millions of followers have accepted it, and thousands of users began to post over them on social platforms. On a single day, the generator reached 1.4 million users who created and shared their parody posts.
Then came the technical nightmare. Too many simultaneous visitors not only crashed my tool, but also the entire hosting platform. An employee of Adalo later confirmed that his system declined to my generator, especially due to the traffic promotion. After several tense hours, everything came back online and the flood of the users continued unabated.
When our 24-hour test was completed, the founder of Taplio did not even try to negotiate. He simply agreed with my original price – a clear indication that I could have wanted more. But at that point I was ready to close the chapter. What had started as a weekend project project had turned into a success story of the acquisition in just seven breathless days.
The default of word of mouth
In addition to the acquisition, this experience revealed a little profoundly about how the content in today’s digital landscape is spreading. Our conventional understanding of virality, a person who tells two people who tell two more, has become out of date.
What I call “Word-of-Lack” and “Word-of-Whatsapp”. True virality now occurs in private messaging platforms and closed communities, not in public social media feeds.
Modern word of mouth has fragmented in what I call “Word-of-Lack” and “Word-of-Whatsapp”. True virality now occurs in private messaging platforms and closed communities, not in public social media feeds. This insight changed my approach to the design of common experiences.
When I created the generator, I didn’t take care of these social parts of buttons that nobody clicks on anyway. Instead, I only wrote: “Do a screenshot and share it.” Simply that. I did it so that users could not copy the text directly. They had to make screenshots.
This was one of the best decisions I made. When people made screenshots, they also grabbed my yellow background and watermark. They could share them wherever they wanted, in their groups chats, slack channels or DMS. My branding went for the journey. This simple approach worked much better than sharing widgets that it could ever have.
Post-launch analytics confirmed that private channels drove the majority of the new users. By designing these intimate common contexts and not for public platforms, the tool achieved an exponentially greater range than conventional social media strategies.
The Amazon approach to product development
Amazon has a brilliant frame for the development of new products and functions. Your teams start with the press release and literally type in what you imagine, what you imagine, how the heading for Techcrunch or Business Insider can imagine before writing a single code line.
This “backward” approach forces the creators to concentrate on what a product Newsworthy does. Instead of trying to find out which functions are developing and how they are to be built up, the Amazon teams begin from the end: the heading that the product announces. Only after you have clearly introduced this announcement that do you work backwards to develop it.
I used this exact approach for the Virus Post generator. Before the development, I imagined how technical publications could cover a tool that Linkedin’s self -employment culture parodied. This mental exercise has clarified what to build and why people would be interested in enough to share them.
The reporting that finally came Business InsiderPresent The guardianAnd Buzzfeed followed the patterns, which were remarkably similar to me, what I had imagined – not by chance, but because I deliberately created something that provokes a specific conversation.
If you start with the heading you want to earn, create a north star that leads to any development decision to a product that is worthy of this cover.
Tap joint experiences
Despite all the technical aspects behind the success of my generator, the true magic came from typing to somewhat deeply human. I connected to a daily frustration that experienced LinkedIn professionals but rarely discussed openly.
What I created was not just a parody tool. It was permission to laugh at something that we all found ridiculous and continued to take part. I will never forget to observe people’s reactions when they used it: “Yes, someone finally said it!” This moment of recognition has established a connection that was far more effective than any technical function.
This emotional element explains why my project spread so quickly. People who feel understood not only use their product. You are committed to this. I learned something great from all of this: Great Marketing is not about solving problems or adding functions. It’s about feeling people seen.
In a world in which everyone is fighting for attention, the best strategy is sometimes not the loudest or state -of -the -art. It is the one who has thought about what everyone has thought of all the time.