When going viral matters, and when it doesn’t
Key takeaways
Going viral can be incredibly valuable when getting your business in front of more people is the goal.
If you’re trying to reach a specific customer or location, who sees your content matters too.
Different content can do different jobs, so don’t measure every post in the same way.
There’s no denying it. When a piece of content takes off, it’s exciting. We love watching the views and reach climb just as much as anyone else.
But we also get asked why one piece of content gets a few thousand views when another business gets tens or hundreds of thousands. And the first thing we look at isn’t how to recreate that content, but what it’s actually doing for the business.
Because sometimes going viral really does matter. Other times, a much smaller number of views might have done exactly what the business needed them to do.
When going viral matters
Take Murray Kruger from Kruger Construction. He has millions of followers, with people all over the world watching his content.
Someone in Australia is probably never going to hire his construction business in Canada. But they might follow him to see the tools he uses, the products he recommends or the brands he works with. That makes an international audience incredibly valuable.
The more people watching, the more value there is for the brands partnering with him. Their products are being seen by people who are interested in construction and tools and could actually go on to buy them. For an account like Murray’s, reach is a big part of the value.
Now take a tradie in Queensland who wants to win more work locally. Tens or hundreds of thousands of views would still be exciting, but you’d also want to know who was watching. Are they in Queensland? Are they potential customers? Are they following the account, visiting the profile or making an inquiry?
The view count is useful. It just doesn’t tell you everything on its own.
We’ve seen this with our own clients
One of the first viral TikToks we created for a client reached around 1.3 million views. It was a single clip paired with a trending audio.
There was no big production behind it. It was simple, it took off, it helped grow our client’s TikTok and it gave the account momentum.
For that same client, we’ve also created videos that have taken hours to edit and reached a much smaller audience. But many of those videos have directly generated enquiries from the businesses they actually want to work with.
Two very different results, both valuable to the business.
So, what should you actually look at?
Before you decide whether a piece of content worked, go back to what you wanted it to do. What were you trying to achieve? Who did you want to reach? What did you want them to take away from it or do next? And what will tell you whether that happened?
Then look at the numbers that make sense for that goal.
| If you want to... | Look at things like... |
|---|---|
| Reach new people | Views, reach, shares, non-follower reach |
| Grow your audience | Reach, non-follower reach, new followers, profile visits |
| Understand who you’re reaching | Audience location, demographics, who is engaging with your content |
| Educate | Views, reach, watch time, saves, shares, comments |
| Showcase your work | Views, reach, profile visits, follows, website activity, enquiries |
| Recruit | Views, reach, shares, profile visits, applications, DMs, candidate enquiries |
| Generate enquiries | Views, reach, profile visits, website activity, calls, DMs, forms, qualified leads |
The tricky part is that social platforms don’t always make it easy to work out exactly who is seeing an individual piece of content.
Instagram, for example, gives you some information about your audience, including location and demographics. But if you want to know whether a particular Reel is reaching builders, architects, potential customers or another specific group, it’s much harder to tell.
You can look at who is liking and commenting, click through to their profiles and get a feel for who is engaging. But Instagram doesn’t neatly categorise those accounts for you, so there’s still a fair amount you have to piece together yourself.
It’s also worth looking at what’s happening around the content. Are the right types of people starting to follow the account? Are you getting more profile visits, website traffic, DMs or enquiries? Looking at those things together gives you much more context than the view count alone.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other
We want more people seeing our clients’ content. We want their accounts to grow and we want their content to have the best possible chance of taking off.
But different content can be there to do different things. One piece might be created to reach new people. Another might showcase a project or capability. Another could answer a question potential customers regularly ask or help with recruitment.
And sometimes one piece of content will do several of those things at once. A Reel can take off. So can a TikTok, carousel or even a single image. You don’t always know which piece will be the one that travels further.
So when something takes off, enjoy it. We certainly do. But when something reaches a much smaller audience, don’t automatically assume it hasn’t worked.
Go back to what you wanted the content to do, then measure it against the job you gave it.
