One of the most painful things to hear in social media is a brand saying ‘we want to go viral’. Even worse, seeing an agency or freelancer claiming they make brands go viral, or promoting themselves as a ‘viral content creator’.

Of course, when you see other brands have massive, seemingly overnight success, going viral seems like a great thing to aim for. However, there are a number of major flaws with this either being set as a goal internally, or offered as a benchmark of success externally.

There’s the obvious snag that virality is largely out of your control. You can follow all of the hacks you want, design all of your content for maximum virality and still not see the results that you associate with ‘going viral’. So many viral moments happen either entirely organically (therefore near impossible for a brand to reproduce), or are the result of reactions to unforeseen events, such as Stanley’s reaction to the woman who lost her car in a fire, with her Stanley cup surviving.

Beyond the fact that aiming for ‘going viral’ would be giving yourself an unquantifiable goal which you have limited control over, you have to think about who you’re producing content for in the first place.

People don’t want viral content, they want quality.

This applies for your content, as well as the overall product, service or experience that you’re offering. If you go viral for one thing, but the rest of your offering is poor, then people will be interested in that one thing, but not care about anything else you’re offering because they can see that it isn’t for them.

In terms of experience, if the thing that went viral isn’t of a high standard, you’ll see a lot of one-time customers, before business returns to normal. People will want the viral experience, try it, and if it doesn’t meet their expectations, they won’t return.

Whereas for content, this might take the shape of an influx of followers who then leave over time because your subsequent content isn’t as good as the viral content that made them follow you in the first place. Alternatively, they may watch/read the content, but your social media presence isn’t worth them following you in the long run.

If you can’t back up the content or product which receives viral hype, you’ll see a sudden increase in business before it dies down to the same level, and in some cases your reputation may suffer.

One visualisation of how quickly interest comes and goes is Binley Mega Chippy, who went viral on TikTok in 2022. The peak in interest only lasted weeks before people moved on as there wasn’t a reason to stay interested. While a boost for the business, it shows the difficulties for businesses to convert virality into long term business benefits.

Can your business handle going viral?

The final thing to consider before getting tempted into aiming for virality, is that you need to be honest with yourself and think ‘will going viral help or harm my business’.

Does your business have the structure and systems in place to handle a sudden influx in visitors and customers? This applies both online and with in person businesses. If you and your staff are going to be completely overwhelmed by demand, you will naturally end up decreasing the quality of your product or service in one way or another in order to meet the demand you’re facing.

Again, this will lead to a lot of customers who come to you because the virality has made them interested, but a substandard experience will mean it is their only time buying from you.

If you can’t handle the sudden increase in demand that comes from going viral, and turn it into a sustainable new level of production, then you shouldn’t be aiming to go viral in the first place.

Viral content can be great for a short term boost in interest, but if you don’t have the quality of service, product or experience to back it up, all it will bring you is a lot of one-time customers.

Going viral can be great, but it shouldn’t be what you’re aiming for. Viral content doesn’t build a brand, consistent quality does.

Quality is the priority.