Stop Chasing Virality on Social Media
🚨Virality 🚨
Nowadays, it seems that every company wants to go viral on social media, but should this really be the focus?
In April, I attended Pretty Little Marketer’s IRL event, where I listened to an incredibly insightful panel discussion about hot topics in social media. 🔥 There was a great conversation about brands focusing too much on creating viral content on social media so let me delve in some more.
You can watch the evening unfold by checking out my LinkedIn post with the full video here
Firstly, I would like to point out that there are many benefits to going viral: increased brand awareness, selling out a product/service and reaching a new audience. It’s by no means a bad thing if you social media suddenly catches the eye of thousands, even millions of people.
But, it’s important to consider the following:
• Lily Thistlewood (Head of Performance Marketing at Adanola) emphasised the importance of planning for what happens AFTER your product/service goes viral. Do you actually have the resources to meet the spike in demand? 📈
For the majority of beauty and wellness businesses, you have a limited number of therapists and practitioners and a limited number of business hours. If demand exceeds your capacity as a result of viral content on social media, you need to have a plan in place for how to effectively deal with this. This might include: creating a waiting list, closing online bookings, ensuring someone is available to deal with enquiries etc.
• Kesheba Evans (Social Content Specialist and UGC creator) highlighted that sometimes you become so fixated on creating viral content to reach a new audience, that you neglect the loyal community you already have. They need just as much, if not more, attention and nurturing than the new audiences you’re trying to reach. 🤝
Community-building is at the heart of social media nowadays. For people to trust you, they need to feel valued and listened to, which you achieve by engaging with them and creating content that fosters the community you have.
• Hannah Tudor (Social Creative at McCann) pointed out that you can’t always predict virality. Often, the content that you want to go viral doesn’t, whereas a last-minute post does. It can be tiring and unproductive designing every piece of content to be viral-worthy so simply put, don’t. ❌
Key takeaways
Your content should be a mixture of viral-worthy and community-building; this is why having a strategy is so important.
You can’t predict virality. Sometimes, your oldest posts will suddenly go viral so don’t delete them.
There are other metrics to consider, especially deep and meaningful interactions as a result of a social media post.
Hey, I’m Eleanor!
I hope you found this blog useful. I would love to know your thoughts so feel free to send me a DM on Instagram or connect with me on LinkedIn! I am obsessed with everything Instagram, TikTok, beauty and wellness related. If you are a standard setter status quo breaker, then let’s work together to transform your socials.
