"Viral post formulas" are wasting your time

What works for influencers is sabotaging your content strategy.

Author

Millie Marconi
April 17, 2025

Before we get into todays email, I wanted to give you all an update on development and how we’re tracking towards launching testfeed (to you!)

Here’s a quick demo showing how the comment feed is looking at this point. Our product is in internal testing, and we've been refining the simulated comments with newly added filtering functionality that's proving quite useful.

I've noticed I personally tend to gravitate toward reading the negative comments. We'll continue to refine this feature.

"Add three emojis."
"Start with a hook."
"Use odd-numbered lists."
"Always end with a question."

The internet is overflowing with "guaranteed formulas" for creating viral LinkedIn content. But despite all this advice, most people still struggle to create posts that consistently perform well.

Because here's what the Linkedin gurus won't tell you: there is no universal formula for successful content.

What works for an AI founder in San Francisco might bomb for a fintech founder in Chicago. What resonates with senior executives could fall flat with startup communities.

The truth is your audience is unique, and what they respond to is unique.

Most people follow advice from influencers with massive followings, without realizing the most important fact: those influencers are writing for a completely different audience than yours.

Your potential customers, investors, or partners have specific:

  • Language they respond to

  • Pain points they care about

  • Content formats they prefer

  • Objections they typically raise

  • Topics that catch their attention

When you follow generic formulas, you're essentially using someone else's map to navigate your own unique territory.

The problem with content formulas goes even deeper. Generic advice can be actively harmful to your specific goals:

  1. When everyone follows the same formulas, content becomes predictable and boring

  2. Mimicking someone else's voice undermines the genuine connection your audience is looking for

  3. Tactics that drive shallow engagement don’t create meaningful business relationships

  4. What works on LinkedIn today won’t work tomorrow as the platform and algorithm evolve

The people I speak with describe feeling caught in an impossible situation. They know generic advice isn't working, but they don't have a reliable alternative.

What's missing in most content creation approaches isn't better templates or more sophisticated tricks. It's audience-specific feedback before you publish.

Imagine if you could:

  • Test multiple versions of your content with people who match your exact target audience

  • See which messages resonate specifically with your ideal prospects or partners

  • Identify potential objections before they appear in your comments section

This approach completely flips the typical content creation model:

Traditional model: Create → Publish → Hope → Learn (maybe)

Testing model: Create → Test → Learn → Publish with confidence

For Ava, an early Testfeed user, this approach made all the difference:

"Everyone kept telling me I needed to post more, but honestly, I was paralyzed by fear of it. Testing my content with my specific audience gave me enough confidence in the possible reactions to finally start creating content regularly."

Maybe the most powerful part of audience-specific testing isn't even the individual post optimization, it's the accelerated learning curve.

With each test, you build intuition about:

  • Which topics consistently engage your particular audience

  • What content structures they respond to best

  • Which tone creates the strongest results

Over time, you end up with a customized playbook for your target audience that no generic formula could ever give you.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll share more about how we're making audience-specific testing accessible to people like you.

Until then, be skeptical of anyone promising a universal formula for content success. Your audience deserves better than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Best,
Millie
Founder, testfeed