Businesses — please stop trying to go viral

There’s such an allure to the idea of going viral, isn’t there? Instant fame, exponential increases in followers and traffic. Who wouldn’t want that?

I know in the past I’ve had clients ask me to ‘create something that goes viral’. Here’s why it’s not quite so simple. And why it’s not a good idea even if I was able to magic up the perfect storm on the fly…

Does it actually fit your purpose?

When you create content, you should always have a purpose in mind. And no, ‘going viral’ is not a business-led purpose.

Who is your piece of content aimed at? What do you want them to do with it? What is your ultimate goal for this particular piece of work? Whether it’s an article, a white paper, and infographic or a video, your content should always have a reason behind it.

That reason might be to entertain, to educate, to inform, to persuade… In fact, you should create content that fits each of these categories — they all meet different business goals at different times.

But the point is that your content should somehow support your business goals. When your primary purpose is to create something that will go viral, you have limited your scope considerably. Perhaps your goal is brand awareness — in which case, viral content may or may not work for you. Depending on the content, it may find itself separated from your brand as the internet takes it on a journey all its own, defeating even that limited purpose.

If your goal is sales — well, viral content is by its nature indiscriminate. How many people who see it are actually your customers? Those of us who pretty much live on the internet may be relatively up to date with what’s going viral right now, but there’s a much larger proportion of the population who don’t know, or care, what’s got twitter in a buzz this week. If they’re your customers, then they’ve missed your campaign entirely, and you’ve wasted your time and effort on something that won’t achieve anything.

Let’s say your aim is brand awareness and your target audience is made up of people who spend a lot of their time online. Surely then it would be worth going viral?

Firstly, you don’t get to decide.

Things that go viral can sometimes be obvious, but more often they’re random moments of unexpectedness. Some topics just happen to resonate with the population of the internet and take off in dramatic fashion. Other things that you might expect to go viral — perhaps something similar did a few months prior — just fizzle without a trace.

A while ago, it was all memes. Recently it’s been twitter threads. Next month it’ll be something else entirely.

A twitter thread of a woman switching seats on a plane so she could sit next to her boyfriend, then live tweeting the subsequent potential romance between her previous seatmate and the woman she swapped with — would you have expected that to go viral? Well, it did.

You don’t get to decide what goes viral.

Even more importantly, the citizens of the web — the people who share things and make them go viral — well, a lot of them don’t really like to be marketed to. You’ve heard that Millennials are killing various industries? Well it’s part of the same thing.

So when a business jumps in with an attempt to impress, to resonate and, mostly, to go viral, the most likely responses are suspicion and ridicule. That’s not to say it can’t work, some businesses do manage it. But it’s not easy. Do you want to risk going viral for all the wrong reasons?

Don’t forget the potential (likely) backlash.

That twitter thread I mentioned? What started out as a sweet story of a possible romance became a much less wholesome tale within the blink of an eye.

The woman who was the unwitting subject of the story asked to be kept out of things. Some people who’d got a little over-invested decided that they’d track her down and find out if she had fallen for the man involved. Her name and details were shared, she had to close down her social media accounts, and the whole thing turned rather nasty.

When you hand over the reins to the internet, you have no control over what happens next. You might win, or you might find yourself the unwitting cause of bullying and harassment. And I know you’re probably thinking that whatever your business comes up with won’t result in the same sort of situation — but how do you know? The internet contains all aspects of humanity, so you open yourself up to the good and the bad. That’s one of the great and terrible things about it. And most businesses aren’t in a position to navigate that effectively.

McDonalds tried to start a twitter campaign under the hashtag #McDStories — people were supposed to share their McDonalds moments. InsteadTwitter users flooded the hashtag with horror stories of their worst experiences with the fast food giant, leading McDonald’s to call off the campaign less than an hour after it started. Of course, that didn’t stop it, by that point it was no longer remotely in their control and it’s not like you can cancel a hashtag once you’ve started it.

Backlash can also kick in when people start to become sick of seeing whatever it is that went viral. How soon did you tire of the last meme of the week? When people turn on a piece of viral content, the usual outcome is parody. Now, sometimes that can be an amusing retelling of the original, adding interest and extending the reach of the content. And sometimes it can be at the expense of the original content, mocking and laughing at — rather than with — the creator.

Careful you don’t miss the mark.

There’s nothing worse than someone who tries too hard. And that’s how businesses look when they’re clearly trying to go viral.

Social media users are savvy — they quickly see through brands trying to cash in on something popular. And when that happens, you might well go viral for all the wrong reasons. In fact, cashing in on something that’s already popular is the easiest way for a business to find itself the butt of the joke.

Other companies have tried to make use of a trending hashtag in the attempt to go viral, and missed the mark. Clothing brand Kenneth Cole tweeted “millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online…” — the hashtage was trending due to the Arab Spring riots. Unsurprisingly, this attempt at humour bombed, and the brand’s PR took a hit.

The US Air Force experienced a similar situation. Trying to jump on the Yanny/Laurel conversation, they tweeted “The Taliban Forces in Farah city #Afghanistan would much rather have heard #Yanny or #Laurel than the deafening #BRRRT they got courtesy of our #A10.”

You might think you wouldn’t be so tone deaf as these examples, but they’re not the only way brands have missed the mark when trying to join in with a popular trend. Sometimes, instead of offence, they just come across like a clueless parent trying to be cool.

There’s an entire subreddit that mocks brands for just such a crime — r/fellowkids. And a few years back there was a twitter account dedicated to sharing brands trying to get in on the latest slang— @BrandsSayingBae. It hasn’t been active in a few years, but it has some great examples of embarrassing content.

There are companies who haven’t missed the mark — but generally it’s when they haven’t tried to go after something that’s already popular. There’s a difference between jumping on a bandwagon (and likely falling off) and using a news topic to create your own idea.

Virgin Trains managed to do that when the National Railcard for Millennials sold out almost as soon as it was launched. They shared that anyone showing up to buy a ticket with an avocado (their ‘Avodcard’) would get the discount. They jumped on the trending news and brought in a little tongue in cheek play on the idea that Millennials are obsessed with avocado. Because they started the joke, they came out on top. But for every success like this, there are plenty of failures.

Viral means everyone is talking about you, but you don’t control the narrative — are you ready for that? Does your business have skeletons in the closet that might come out to play if people take against your campaign? Are you prepared to rapidly become irrelevant if the content takes off without you?

Quality or Quantity?

The premise of viral content is quantity — it’s all about the number of shares, likes, links and views.

But digital marketing is about quality. It doesn’t matter if you have a thousand views if none of those people would ever be your customers. Five views from people who are actually interested in your content would be far more effective.

Trying to ‘go viral’, or prioritising vanity metrics like reach, hide the fact that it’s conversions that actually contribute to your business. Putting your content in front of 500 people from your target audience, people who are engaged and interested in your business, will always be more valuable than getting it in front of 50,000 people who would never buy from you.

Viral content is indiscriminate. Unless your target audience is ‘everyone’, it doesn’t serve your business. The counter argument to this is often, ‘but the wider the reach, the more likely that piece of content is to be seen by some people who are your targets’.

And there is an argument for that. But the key factor here is the idea that content that appeals to a huge audience won’t actually be of any use to your targets. If you’re creating throwaway content just to go viral, it might get a bit of attention but it won’t give your real audience anything of value. It won’t answer their questions, lend credibility to your message, or give them something to engage with on a level that translates to sales.

If brand awareness is your only goal, it might give you a little boost, but surely brand awareness is just the start — surely you want to turn that into something deeper. And spending your time creating content intended to go viral takes up time that could be spent on rich content that has value beyond a moment of zeitgeist. Content that could have SEO value, that provides something useful or interesting to your prospects. Content that converts.

Stop trying.

So what’s the answer? Stop trying to go viral. Don’t consider going viral to be the pinnacle of great, shareable content. Spend your efforts on creating content that’s designed specifically to appeal to your target audience. Sounds simple, but that content takes time. It may not be as exciting or dramatic as viral content, but it’s more valuable.