In the world of social media, going viral seems like the ultimate achievement—millions of people suddenly discovering your brand sounds like a dream, right?
But is it really the best focus for your content strategy?
In this blog, I’ll break down the ups and downs of chasing virality, share some real-life experiences, and offer tips on what your content strategy should actually be aiming for.
Let’s cut through the hype and see what truly counts when it comes to building a strong, engaged online community.
The Pros
Going viral is a no-brainer, right? Isn’t that the goal of social media?
Going viral can seem like the perfect way to grow your brand’s reach, with millions of eyes viewing your product or service! It’s true that a viral post can cause a huge spike in engagement and maybe even a spike in purchases, but should it be a focus of your content strategy?
How To Go Viral
First, how do you even make viral content?
Getting eyes on your post is like trying to craft a magic potion—there are so many ingredients, each constantly changing. There is no magic time to post that guarantees virality, no magic sequence of hashtags that will push you out to millions, and no guarantee that your content will resonate with your audience enough to compel them to share it.
Going viral, even if you have cracked the magic potion of social media posts, is hard. Your content has to compete with every other piece of content posted that day (or even that week). You have to compete with millions to gain attention.
Not only will you have to crack the magic social media formula, but you also need to create content specifically designed to become viral. Viral content tends to be general, click-baity, and impersonal.
The Cons
If you do manage to gain the attention of millions, you’ve made it, right? You’re viral!!!
Well, yes and no—you have the eyes of the world on your content, and hopefully, a few are engaging meaningfully and converting, but that’s not a guarantee.
The type of content that goes viral is usually not the type that will lead to direct conversions or a larger, more meaningful following for your brand account. The engagement tends to be surface level: an increase in likes and impressions.
Virality can remove you from your already built community as they get drowned out by the masses. It’s harder to communicate with them when you are trying to create content to keep the attention of your new audience.
The Personal Bit
How do I know that a viral video is not a guarantee that you will gain thousands of new followers and help you build a community? I can finally admit that I have personally gone viral on TikTok. A video I posted went viral, hitting almost 4 million views.
You’d expect a video that was seen by 4 million people would have a huge impact on the follower count of that account. Well, you’d be wrong— that account still has just under 1,000 followers.
So, virality does not mean you will increase the size of your community, but that’s not the only impact that viral video had on that account. The video itself had a less-than-positive reaction, with several of the comments being quite cruel. These comments did not just limit themselves to the viral video but spread throughout every video posted, past and present.
Going viral attracts attention, but it may not be the attention you’d want.
Do This Instead
So what should be in your content strategy if not going viral?
You should aim to fill your feed with quality content that is of value to your community.
What does that look like? It’s different for everyone, and the best way to find what will work for you is to reach out to us directly at [email protected].
The Conclusion
Having a post go viral is not a problem—it’s exciting and can lead to a spike in engagement and, in lucky cases, a spike in conversions!
The problem is when you focus your content plan on trying to go viral, you make your content less valuable to your community and more generic and click-baity.
Your content strategy should focus on content that is valuable to your community.
Written by Emma Kate Rowlette