We all love it when one of our pieces of content goes viral. After all, it gives our content the much-needed exposure and fame. It improves brand awareness and increases our website traffic and leads. However, one of the misconceptions that people and brands have is that once they go viral on Instagram, TikTok or other platforms, it will automatically translate into long-term success.

This often causes brands to focus a significant amount of their efforts on achieving viral success. But the truth of the matter is that going viral doesn't necessarily translate into long-term success. While it can feel good to get short-term fame, it can be challenging to turn this short-term fame into long-term success.

Successful brands don't just focus on going viral; they focus on building sustainable strategies that enable their followers to keep coming back. This article examines the drawbacks of focusing solely on virality and highlights the importance of developing a long-term plan.

Why Brands Shouldn't Focus on Going Viral

While there is nothing wrong with going viral, there are several reasons why going viral should not be your primary social media strategy. 

Viral Content is Short-lived

Viral content usually has a fleeting nature. It looks like your dream has come true when you see a sudden increase in your popularity. However, viral content often doesn't last for long. This is especially true on platforms like TikTok that have fast-evolving trends. What appears popular today becomes obsolete in the short-term.

The unpredictable nature of viral content on TikTok and other platforms can be a challenge for individuals and brands to maintain the momentum gained during the virality period. With a short attention span, people are constantly moving on to the next big thing, and the often abrupt changes can cause a decline in the sales and engagement level. This usually leaves businesses stuck where they originally were or even in a worse state.

That means viral content often has an ephemeral nature and usually lacks the strategic and more sustainable approach of building a brand. Instead of relying solely on viral moments, brands should focus more on creating a loyal customer base. Despite the benefits of going viral, it's often transient, which means businesses can be caught in the web of unpredictability.

Therefore, brands need to focus on long-term strategies such as encouraging their visitors to sign up for their email list. This can offer them an opportunity to nurture these visitors and make them keep coming back.

No Targeted Audience for Viral Posts

The reason why viral content is alluring to creators is because of its ability to reach millions in a short span. However, the fact that the content is reaching a broad and diverse audience means you may also reach an audience that has no interest in your products or services. That means you get an extensive reach to boost your ego and presence, but it doesn't necessarily translate into a successful business.

It can be challenging to translate the people you reach through viral posts into paying customers, as the majority have no prior interest in your product offering. That means it would be more beneficial for a brand to focus on reaching a small and highly targeted audience that is genuinely interested in their product offering. Such a client base is likely to be more loyal and to bring repeat business than a large transient crowd.

When you focus on reaching an audience that has an interest in your niche, rather than going viral, you can increase your conversion rate. These customers are also likely to turn into strong brand advocates, leading to the long-term success of your brand. Having quality engagement with a target audience enables you to generate quality clicks, rather than those from a viral post.

Pressure to Replicate Viral Success

The fact that one of your posts went viral will leave your audience wanting more of such posts. You will also feel the pressure to replicate the success. This may result in the production of low-quality churned content. If you are working on a team, you might feel the pressure and stress—in the same way, you became famous. 

You might also be struggling to maintain the same momentum, as the attention span of your audience may run out, causing them to rush to the next big thing.

Operational Challenges of Going Viral

In the best-case scenario, going viral can provide you with an influx of traffic, inquiries, or orders that may leave your recruiters overwhelmed. For small businesses, this can present various challenges, such as a lack of inventory, limited staff, or inadequate infrastructure to handle the surge in orders.

For instance, if you are a small coffee shop, and your content goes viral, you might have people lining up at the door. You may have huge orders online that can prove challenging for your brand to deliver. While this may appear like a good problem, you can be left with delayed orders, frustrated customers, and stressed employees. According to a Shopify report, when a business scales too quickly after going viral, it is 45% more likely to face instability in the next six months.

Impact of Viral Posts on a Brand Image

Not always do brands go viral for good reasons. In fact, a brand may have good intentions with a post, but after it goes viral, the post may be misinterpreted and spiral out of control, causing the brand to be associated with controversial topics. Thus, you can have your viral content attracting negative kinds of voices, including trolls, social media crises, and more. This can result in a negative brand image, which can take a long time to repair. 

Once your brand goes viral for the wrong reasons, it can result in negative consequences, such as:

• Lack of trust by customers.
• Lost market credibility.
• Negative brand image.

To minimize the potential risks of business image damage, businesses need to understand the possible risks associated with going viral and exercise caution when attempting to achieve viral success. Brands should instead focus on a consistent content strategy that builds a positive brand image. They should be cautious when jumping into social media trends, as these can be volatile. 

By doing so, brands can safeguard their reputations and ensure that their brand is aligned with their messaging and values. This can, therefore, reduce any negative brand association. 

A good example of a brand that faced backlash was a viral post for trivializing the efforts of the social justice movement. The ad featuring Kendall Jenner negatively impacted the brand’s reputation, and the company spent a significant amount on public relations. A  Nielsen study noted that a negative brand perception caused by a failed viral campaign can reduce the level of customer loyalty by 70%

Unrealistic Expectations of Viral Posts

When your post goes viral, it's easy to feel like things have aligned in your favor. You foresee people inquiring about your brand and converting. In simple terms, many brands assume that going viral equates to success, which often leads to unrealistic expectations as they start to view going viral as their ticket to success. 

Businesses can also feel like they can easily go viral. However, there is considerable unpredictability in viral content. The success of this content depends on various factors, including trends and timing. If your brand is solely focusing on going viral, it can easily get disillusioned and may often fail.

Fluctuating Sales of Viral Posts

We have already noted that businesses have a misconception that viral content can cause increased sales for your business. After all, it often leads to a higher level of brand awareness, resulting in more traffic to your site or social media pages. However, not always will higher visibility result in higher sales. 

At times, your viral content may reach an audience that is not interested in your product, resulting in a mismatch between the viral content and customers who are interested in the product. This level of mismatch results in a situation where a brand can see an increase in website traffic without a corresponding increase in sales. This can leave brand owners discouraged when they see the sudden spike in traffic not translating into actual sales.

Therefore, while it can be helpful to focus on making your content go viral, avoid assuming that this will increase sales. You will face the challenge of converting the attention you get from the viral posts into buyers. You need to have a plan in place for incorporating viral campaigns in your sales funnel. 

For instance, you can create follow-up content that aims to engage your new audience about you or your company's offering. Consider offering incentives and special promotions that will convert the viral content into sales. Otherwise, if you don't work toward transforming your viral audience into sales, you will have a lot of transient interest that will not result in steady and sustainable growth. 

Misalignment with a Core Message

When a business focuses too much on going viral, it can easily stray away from its core message as it tries to align with the trends. While this may help capture their audience’s attention in the short-term, it might also harm their authenticity.

When your brand focuses a lot on going viral, you might put a lot of effort into less important aspects of your business. You can easily get pulled into the allure of instant fame, which can, in turn, affect the need for consistent and meaningful customer engagement. It can also prevent documents from being deleted, enhance viewing quality, or implement a sound long-term growth strategy. These are the fundamentals that drive a business's success. When they are neglected, the company can struggle to build a strong and lasting brand that outlives fleeting fame.

For instance, when a bank starts to post memes, this may make their posts go viral. However, they may also be seen as unprofessional by their target audience. Therefore, to build loyalty and trust, you must remain true to your audience.

What to Focus on Instead of Going Viral

We have already seen the challenges of having viral campaigns that don't result in more sales. However, there are several things you can focus on instead of going viral. These include:

Creating High-Quality Content

As we noted earlier, viral content can provide a temporary boost in engagement. Due to its fleeting nature, the new followers may not stick around to become long-term brand followers. This is especially true if the content that wasn't viral was the result of a short-lived trend that eventually passed. 

That is why you need to focus on long-lasting and memorable content that will remain in the minds of the viewers or readers after they have clicked away. While viral content will help you generate attention, quality content will help you gain brand loyalty. If you want people to stay, focus on creating:

• Educational and insightful content that solves people’s problems. This could include visual sheets and infographics, as these can boost the attention span of readers by 82%.
• Storytelling helps you connect with your target audience.
• Content that offers real value to users rather than just entertaining them.
• UGC content. 79% of viewers suggest that it affects their buying decision.
• Long-form article publishing on LinkedIn.

If your brand focuses on offering deep and valuable content, it's likely to outperform one that's chasing virality. This is because people prefer consistency over hype. Therefore, you need to focus on creating content that will make people return. 

Balance Between Quantity and Quality

If you get a massive audience from your viral posts, you need to consider how to turn them into quality followers. One way to do that is by focusing on genuine engagement rather than numbers. To engage deeply with your audience, ensure that you create valuable content, respond to comments, and start conversations. This can help you turn followers into your brand advocates.

Instead of focusing on short-term content that goes viral, you should balance it with quality long-term content. Doing that will make it possible for your brand to gain people's respect, trust, and long-term followers. 

Leverage Paid Ads

You can also boost your social media results without relying on viral social media content by investing in paid ads. While organic reach may be sufficient for bigger brands with a well-established online presence, some brands may prefer to combine the organic content with paid advertising strategies. This can enable them to stand out from the competition and reach their social media goal.

Have Outstanding Customer Service

You should never underestimate the power of outstanding customer service. If your post goes viral, it will have no impact if you don't pay attention to your followers' and customers’ needs. Therefore, ensure that you provide high-quality support to achieve success with your social media campaigns.

You can leverage CRM tools such as Sprout Social to monitor your social media content and ensure that you don't miss out on any incoming messages or comments. This can also help you to organize your conversations in one place. Ensure that you respond promptly to customer service representatives and train them on how to handle various inquiries. 

Provide a Personalized User Experience

Personalization is another excellent way of ensuring that your customers remain at the heart of your social media strategy. Studies indicate that 84% of customers are willing to purchase from brands that offer them excellent customer service. Ensure that you are tailoring your interactions to the needs of your audience. This will help you nurture loyalty and ensure long-term relationships.

As a way of personalizing the user experience, ensure that you are using the customer’s names in responding to their messages and comments. Rather than responding with copied-and-pasted templates, make sure you are typing out your answers. Go through the customer’s previous messaging history before responding, especially when you are responding to an ongoing conversation. 

This will provide you with an overview of where another team member left off in the conversation. Doing so will ensure that they don't have to repeat information they have already shared. According to various studies, 75% of consumers report that they become frustrated when a brand fails to provide them with a personalized experience.

Focus on Micro-Engagement

Micro-engagement refers to connecting with smaller and more targeted audiences, rather than focusing on mass appeal. It focuses on quality rather than quantity, resulting in a highly engaged following that is likely to become loyal customers. For instance, if you are a handmade jewelry brand, you can focus on reaching a local audience rather than trying to appeal to a broad audience. By doing that, you can focus on people who genuinely care about your products or services.

Dealing With the Viral Hangover: What to Focus on After Going Viral

Now that you've gone viral and gained a bunch of new followers, they're wondering if you'll ever create interesting posts again. This condition is known as the viral hangover and comes with various symptoms such as:

• A sudden reduction in engagement leaves a creator wondering if the results were even real.
• An identity crisis. Here, you wonder what your brands should focus on, with a long-term goal to replicate the viral moment.
• The pressure to recreate another viral moment. This can lead to desperate attempts to move outside your content strategy.

The good news is that there are steps you can take to recover from a viral hangover. These include:

• Embracing your new audience. After going viral, you are likely to attract a new audience. It's time to decide who among them aligns with your values. Instead of focusing on pleasing everyone, focus on the people who are genuinely interested in your brand. Otherwise, you risk losing your identity and creating bland content.
• Audit your viral success. You need to determine what caused your content to go viral in the first place. Is it the relatability of the content, the humor used, or sheer luck? When you understand the different elements that contributed to your viral success, you can then incorporate them into your traditional content strategy, but now without the pressure of trying to go viral. Remember that you are not analyzing the viral campaign to replicate it, but to learn from it. You want to understand the elements of the campaign that resonated successfully and incorporate them in your content strategy.
• Focus more on brand identity. It's easy to lose your brand identity after going viral and attempting to replicate the same level of success. That's why you need to focus more on who you are. You should now make it clearer and louder. Take advantage of the increased visibility to showcase what your brand offers.
• Have a content roadmap. Instead of wasting a lot of time trying to recreate the viral moment, you can create a content strategy that showcases your brand in various ways. Rather than doing the same things over and over again, show the different aspects of the brand.
• Focus on authentic engagement. Consider viral moments as a way to catch the attention of a new audience and initiate a conversation with them. Now, consider a way to keep the conversation going for a more meaningful connection. You can do that by responding to comments and creating content that encourages interactions for more than a single viral post.

Final Thoughts

You should remember that going viral is like a sprint. On the other hand, building a successful brand is akin to a marathon that requires consistency and a long-term perspective. If you want to be successful with your viral moment, you need to avoid recreating those magic moments. Instead, you need to focus on leveraging that visibility to showcase your brand’s value. 

Cultivate genuine connections with your audience and create content that will keep them coming back, whether they do or not. After all, your goal isn't to be a one-hit wonder but to reproduce those great moments year after year. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can easily do that.