Why Going Viral Hurt My Business

I know this isn't what you're usually told, but it's true.

Going viral actually hurt my business, and I'm not the only one who has had this problem. Let me explain to you what happened.

What Happened

About a year ago I posted a video on my Wayward Life TikTok account. The Wayward Life is my sailing brand that is all about being on the water on a sailboat. The goal on this account was to attract people who were interested in us rebuilding and then sailing our boat. In the process of me building this channel I shared this short video of a ladder covered in barnacles in the marina we were staying in. I thought it was funny, but also that it was interesting and related enough to our niche to be a good addition to the account. For some reason this video struck a cord with a lot of people and within hours it had over a million views. Nine months later it has 14.9 million views and still counting.

Now you're probably thinking, "That's fantastic! That's exactly what you want to have happen, isn't it?" And I also thought so. I was stoked to see that I was finally getting some traction, and figured it would transfer over to more followers, more video views on all my other vides and hopefully also more channel views and clicks on our affiliate links, etc. What it ended up doing instead was putting us in a niche we didn't want to be in.

Why This Didn't Benefit Me

It turns out that for whatever reason, the people who were interested in this video had no interest in sailing or even really cool ocean stuff like I had hoped. They just were grossed out by barnacles and only really wanted to see things along those lines... and because that one video did so well, TikTok decided that it only cared about showing our content to that audience. So, any video that I post to do with barnacles ends up getting tons of views, while content about us sailing or going to beautiful places gets next to nothing. Almost none of the audience from the ladder video spills over into the rest of our content, and as long as the ladder video and the ones that have come after it are on our channel, it won't. This is because the TikTok algorithm, as well as YouTube, likes to niche down your channel to a certain audience that they know are going to enjoy your most popular content, and then they don't show the rest to very many people. This is a strategy to keep people in their app for as long as possible. It makes sense from their point of view, but is frustrating as a content creator.

I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty annoying, especially when you feel like all your content is in alignment with the same audience. But it did teach me some things, like the fact that going viral is probably not where most of us with small businesses want to be focusing our online efforts.

What to do instead

If you have a global business, or one that is in a large city centre with a high population, then trying to go viral might still be a viable option. But, if you're here reading this, then you're probably in a smaller community with a localized business. If this is you, then you need to focus on really getting to know your local audience, building community and appealing to the people in your local town or small city, because these are the people who are going to actually support your business. Focus on creating content that you think will be interesting to your local niche. Don't worry about how much attention it seems to be getting in the moment. Treat it like a portfolio for your prospective clients to refer to when they find you online.

If this is you and you would like to know more about how you can use social media to connect to your audience and grow your small business, I would love to chat!

You can also follow me over on @Seidr.Socials for free tips and tricks about social media for small business!

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