How to Run a Viral Launch on LinkedIn
I talk to founders all the time who have never actually run a launch on LinkedIn. They've posted about stuff, obviously. The "excited to announce" post that goes up Wednesday afternoon and gets a couple hundred impressions from people they went to college with, everybody's done that 1. But an actual launch where you kind of knew what was going to happen before you hit post, almost nobody is doing that on LinkedIn.
Which is honestly kind of crazy when you think about who's sitting on the platform. Your entire buyer list is on there with their title, their company, their headcount, all listed on a public profile, and founders are still taking their biggest announcement of the quarter over to X to get 40 likes from other founders who will never buy anything.
We ran a launch for Leadpoet, an AI outbound tool, across both founders' accounts. Around 1 million views on the launch video, 150+ calls booked, six figures added in pipeline, and they doubled their client base in under 30 days.
People assume there was some trick to it. There wasn't. It was just a list of things we did in order, and honestly most of them are boring and a couple are genuinely annoying to sit through, which is probably why they still work.
Here's everything you need before you go live:
The thing you're launching
If nobody cares about what you built, none of this helps you. I've watched a launch get executed perfectly for a feature that like 3 customers asked for and it did fine on engagement and produced nothing, because the mechanics were never the problem there.
The more common issue I see though is founders sitting on everything, waiting until they have something big enough to "deserve" a launch, and then they launch once a year.
You can launch a feature, a funding round, a case study, a new hire, a report you put together, a lead magnet, a partnership, a pricing change, a rebrand, stuff like that. I talk to founders who have 4 or 5 of these sitting in their Slack right now that they've quietly decided aren't a big enough deal to post about, and I think that assumption costs them more than anything else on this list.
Quick test before you commit: say what this is and why anyone should care in 1 sentence, out loud, without using the words platform, solution, seamless, or leverage. If that's hard, you're not ready, and the comment section will let you know about it.
The doc
Write 1 page before anything else gets built. What it is, what problem it solves in the words your customers actually use, who it's for specifically, what it costs, and the 10 questions people are going to ask you about it.
Everything else pulls from this page. The video script, the post copy, the brief you send creators, your DMs, the follow up emails. Skip it and you end up with a video saying 1 thing, a post saying something slightly different, and a creator posting a 3rd version of it, and none of it adds up to anything.
It's also just a positioning test. If the page is hard to write, marketing is not your problem. Positioning is the first thing we build in every 90-day engine we run, because when you're not clear on who you're targeting and what you want them to do next, you'll get impressions and some followers and basically nothing you can put in a pipeline report.
The video
Put video on the launch post. A text post asks people to imagine what you built, and a 40-second screen recording just shows them, plus it holds people on the post longer, which LinkedIn definitely notices.
Upload it natively. If you drop a YouTube or Loom link in there, LinkedIn buries it, so don't.
Script comes off your doc. And decide what the video is supposed to do before you record it, because when there's no real decision behind it you end up with a nice looking video that does nothing.
We've done polished stuff, animated stuff, and plain screen recordings, and honestly production level matters way less than founders think it does. If you solve a problem people are actually annoyed about, a clean screen recording with decent audio is completely fine. When people start complimenting your video quality in the comments instead of asking about the product, that's actually a bad sign, because now they're talking about the ad.
First few seconds either show it working or name the problem. No logo animation, no "hey everyone, so excited to finally share this." Under 2 minutes, ideally closer to 1.
And if you're launching AI, don't lead with the AI. A couple years ago that was enough on its own. Now everybody's shipping agents, nobody outside your industry cares how it works under the hood, so lead with what the person actually gets.
The post and the CTA
This is where people copy the X playbook over to LinkedIn and get punished for it.
I will never put an external link in the body of a LinkedIn post. The algorithm penalizes you for it, your reach gets cut, and you're taking that hit to save somebody 1 single click. It's just not worth it.
What I do on every launch instead is build the post around a CTA that forces a comment. Comment a word, comment your industry, comment "demo," whatever fits what you're launching. Then you reply to their comment with the link or send it over in DMs.
The reason this beats a link is that it's kind of a semi-autonomous flywheel. LinkedIn weights comments heavier than almost anything else, so everyone asking for your link is also pushing the post out to more people, and more people means more comments, which means more impressions, et cetera. It literally funds itself.
Is it more friction for them than a link? Obviously. I'd argue that's the point. Somebody who typed a word into your comment section raised their hand and gave you a name you can DM tomorrow. A click gives you an anonymous visitor who bounced and you will literally never know who they were.
For a product or feature launch you can drop the direct link in the comments yourself so nobody's confused about where to go. Just keep it out of the post body.
Run it from the founder or CEO account. Personal profiles beat company pages consistently and it's not close. If you've got 2 founders, run it across both accounts. That's what we did with Leadpoet and it more or less doubled the surface area on day 1.
On hooks, I think people are massively overthinking this. A good hook mainly comes down to what you're actually talking about. When the thing underneath is specific and interesting, the first line kind of writes itself. What I'd actually spend time on is making sure there's a real position in the post somewhere. If there's nothing anybody could disagree with, nobody's commenting either, and comments are the entire engine here.
Day and time
Monday through Friday, always. Weekends are just weaker, people are out doing stuff. Sunday especially, just don't.
Earlier in the day is what works for us. People check LinkedIn before work starts or they're taking a quick break at their desk. Later in the day they're just gone.
You can't control the news cycle, but at least look at the calendar before you lock the date.
The people you line up first
The first 1 to 2 hours decides the whole thing. Engagement comes in fast, the algorithm keeps pushing it. It's quiet in that window, the post contracts, and you're not getting it back at 3pm by commenting on your own post.
For Leadpoet we got in front of a few creators ahead of time and tapped fully into their networks for quote posts, reposts, and early comments in that first window.
For picking creators, look for people inside your ICP whose content is valuable plus personal, and who get actual engagement on it. Follower count tells you almost nothing, look at how many comments they're pulling per post. Those accounts convert way better on paid promos because their audience actually trusts them.
Anyone doing a paid promotion needs #paidpromotion at the end of their post. Don't skip this, it's not worth risking anybody's account over a technicality.
Outside of paid creators this is your team, your investors, your happy clients, your friends who post regularly. Ask them a week out, get an actual yes, and then message them individually the morning of with the link. People aren't unwilling to help you, they're just busy and they forget, and that reminder on the day is doing most of the work.
Give creators access early so their post is specific instead of vague. And send them 2 or 3 posts you actually liked, because if you just send talking points you'll get something that reads like a press release and everybody can tell.
Launch day
If the prep is done this is mostly just you sitting in your own comment section for a few hours.
Post it. Message everyone who said yes. Then respond to every single comment with an actual response, not just "thanks!" Every reply is another engagement event on your post and it keeps the reach climbing. This is the part almost everybody skips because it's tedious, but it's actually really important.
Then DM everyone who commented, repost the creators, screenshot the good comments because you'll use them later.
Optimize for comments over everything else. Reposts help and I'll take them, they're just not in the same tier.
What happens after they comment
Decide before launch day what a commenter actually turns into, because "they'll check out our site" is not a plan.
Ours goes comment, DM with the link, opt-in page, short email sequence built around the 3 objections we hear most on sales calls, then a booked call. It takes an afternoon to set up and that afternoon is kind of the difference between 500 comments and 500 leads.
A launch that does 1 million views and produces no pipeline is just an expensive way to feel good for 2 days.
The week after
The post stops moving after 48 hours or so, so your follow up window is small. Go through everyone who engaged, connect with the ones who match your ICP, DM the people who commented but never opted in.
Then pull content out of it. The results, the numbers, what surprised you, what you'd do differently, the comments people left. That's like 3 weeks of posts right there and it keeps the launch alive way past the point where the original post died.
Then just do it again next month with the next thing. The founders doing well on LinkedIn right now are launching constantly, a feature, a case study, a report, a hire, whatever they've got, and every launch leaves them with a bigger audience for the next 1 so the next launch starts from a better spot. It just compounds like crazy.
2 things for you
1 → Tech & AI companies looking to do a launch on LinkedIn or 𝕏 DM me for further details
2 → Creators if you're interested in taking part in these launches and getting paid, fill out this form below https://forms.gottcontent.com