Why Going Viral Doesn’t Equal More Sales

Episode 64: Why Going Viral Doesn’t Equal More Sales

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Social Media Consultant & emotional intelligence nerd - shares with you...

• the pitfalls of the time she went viral and all the opportunities she missed out on
• why you don’t need to go viral to make more money in your business
• the secret sauce you MUST pay attention to if you gain followers and you want to make more sales as a result

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

Referenced in this episode:

The Holly Hibbard Show, ep. 60: “How to Handle a Social Media Backlash”

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A GIFT FOR YOU //

• 30 Done-For-You Social Media Content Ideas - your go-to resource for ending your posting struggles and instead creating consistent, authentic content that connects with your audience and attracts clients fast!
• Download it instantly - CLICK HERE 

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WORK WITH HOLLY IN NOVEMBER, 2024 //

• Ready to launch your social media brand quickly and finish your 2024 with elevated impact? Hire Holly as your social media strategist and coach! Book a quick call with me here: https://tidycal.com/thehollyhibbard/quick

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Transcript

Welcome to the Holly Hibbard Show.
I'm Holly, a relationship coach and emotional intelligence nerd turned social media consultant.
This podcast podcast is for coaches, consultants, and service providers ready to simplify their social media strategy, create impactful content, and grow their audience without the overwhelm.
If you want to attract dream clients and free up more time for the things that you love, you are in the right place.
Let's make social media work for you starting now.
Hey, everyone.
Welcome back to The Holly Hibbard Show.
I am your host, Holly Hibbard.
Today, I'm going to be chatting with you about why going viral doesn't equal more sales.
I even consider, why even put the word why before this?
Why not make this more affirmative and say to you all, going viral doesn't equal more sales?
In fact, going viral can be a detriment to your sales process.
So I wanna lay out where my story, where my experiences lie in this arena, my experience with going viral, the pros, the cons, and ultimately how it impacted sales or not.
And so, if you have ever had this thought in your mind of, if I could just make a piece of content and have it go wild and get all these followers and everything would just be that much better.
So I'm going to lay out for you that story like I said, but I'm also going to share with you in this episode what I would do different and actually what I am doing differently and how I would utilize if a video were to go viral again, how I would utilize that in the future to ensure that my sales can improve as a result.
So I in case you're not sure what it even means to go viral, going viral depending on the definition that you look up, it simply means that a piece of content, typically a, short form video piece of content or a photo piece of content was seen by 100 of 1,000, if not millions of people.
And depending on which definition you look at, meaning who posted it, who's talking about it, who's recording about it, A lot of different folks have different numbers attached to what it means to go viral.
Some people will say that you have to have over a 1000000 views.
Some people won't post or won't, say that your post went viral at all unless it had engagement, comments, likes, shares of a certain amount.
So for the sake of my episode today, we're just gonna talk about viral content in views.
And how does a content a piece of content go viral to begin with?
Do we aim to do that in the first place?
And there are a lot of people who do make content and have strategies to have that piece of content go viral.
And the reason they want to do that is because it gets their name out there, it has the potential to boost their followers, grow their audience, and for them, that could lead to sales, that could lead to brand deals.
There's a lot of incentive for popularity on social media and having a very large following.
So going viral is not all a bad thing, but if you are a coach, a consultant, an educator, a service provider, and you purely want your social media content and the level of viewership to take your business to the next level, let's talk about the pros and cons of going viral and how you can really maximize, the process if it should ever happen to you.
So out the gate, when I went I I I really just say that I went viral one time.
Okay?
And I'm gonna tell you the story about this.
So back in 2020, TikTok was it had just become TikTok in 2019, I think, and switched over from the an app called Musically.
And TikTok, at the time, had a very strong reputation even more than it does now.
Well, this is just an app for young kids to record choreographed dances and things like that, but there's no real conversation here.
There's no real substance to the content.
And TikTok put out an initiative with a PR agency to go find content creators, specifically people who were coaches and educators, people who were, content creators or teachers of STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
And there was one other field that I can't think of right now.
Well, anyhow, I caught wind of, this initiative and applied to be one of the content creators in the realm of educating, and I made a piece of content.
I'm sorry.
Let me backtrack.
I was approved to the program.
And as a an agreement with this program is I believe the agreement was they would compensate me an amount of money, a lump sum, one time, if I created 45 pieces of content in 60 days.
I think it was 45 TikToks, specifically, in 60 days.
And I had no idea.
I wasn't even consuming stuff on TikTok yet, let alone had any idea of what, how to record something or to edit in the TikTok platform.
So I had to figure all this out.
So anyhow, I participate in this program and as a result of doing it, yes, I got the compensation and that was great.
And I really got my feet wet with, TikTok and learning what to do and what not to do.
And in terms of making content, short form videos for that platform, like, what did people really like and what is very unique about TikTok as a platform.
But what happened is when that program was over, I kept going.
I had built a decent following.
I think my following was a went I don't know.
I wanna say before my one video went viral, I think I was somewhere around, I don't know, 8 1000, 10000 people, maybe less than that.
Like, it really did well because I think the initiative helped to push my followers or followers a little bit.
But I made a piece of content one time, and it was I was doing specifically relationship coaching at the time.
And the video was something around the topic of I have to think for a second.
Gosh, I've watched it so many times.
You'd think I would know it.
I would know it backwards.
But the piece of content was, why do I have to repeat myself for him all the time?
And I was specifically talking about relationships where men and women are in a relationship and women feel like they have to repeat themselves over and over to their male partner.
And what is interesting is there's so many things I could say about that piece of content right now, but I will not.
But I think, you know, especially because I record it when I'm single and now I'm married and I'm also now diagnosed ADHD and there's so many things.
But anyway, another time.
So what happened is that video definitely went viral.
And I knew it because one morning, I opened the app.
It didn't happen the day after.
It happened that I posted it.
It happened, I don't know, a week or 2 or something a little bit little bit later.
And I opened the app and my notifications, it was, like, triple digits.
Like, I saw the icon for new follower, and it was, like, 500 something.
And I'm like, wait, what?
And it was, like, like, the little heart icon for here's how many people liked the video was in the 1,000.
And then, here's the kicker, the comments.
And then the comment button was also just in the 100 every time I open the app.
And I'm like, oh my goodness.
So this post going viral took up so much of my time, my attention, my energy because here I was like, oh my gosh, my content is getting out there, and this is my moment.
This is a moment that I can now use to grow my following and engage with people.
And, yeah, I had to go read the comments.
And I did another episode on how to handle social media backlash.
So I'll link that in the show notes below in case you never listened to that episode where I talk more about the comments and how I handled that situation.
But in the comments, I really took the time to read and or reply or like every single comment.
And we're talking, like, 5 or 6000 comments because this video kept going for, like, a good a good 2 weeks before it slowed down again.
And so, in the moment, in the very beginning, it was very exciting.
But then the comments that came with it, refer back to the episode about backlash because something going viral, you know, has its has this moment where it's like, ugh, you get the ick.
It doesn't feel good.
Some of the comments are pretty rude.
But you also have a lot of people who ask great questions and bring up great examples and that lends opportunity to make more content.
And I did all of those things.
Well, when the dust settled, meaning the virality of that one video slowed down, first thing I noticed was just because the one video went viral, yes, I gained a lot of followers.
Yes, I had a lot of comments, but it didn't automatically lead to my future content that came after that also going viral, also getting that many views, also gaining that many followers.
Like, it's truly feels like to this day.
And I think that video I'm talking about went viral in 2021.
Okay?
So we're looking at 3 years now.
Like, it's not it never happened again.
I do I still don't even know what got it going in the first place.
But it was really a one and done wave.
It didn't lend itself to it happening again and again and again.
So in that moment, my followers, when the dust settled, landed somewhere around 21,000 people on TikTok.
And to this day, as I record this at the end of 2024, I'm at 22,000 followers.
I have not grown much at all since.
It's been very slow grow.
I definitely have not had a video since that had that many comments and, and shares and nastiness even.
But the one thing I do wanna highlight here is that video had just shy of a 1000000 views.
That is mind boggling to me.
It landed somewhere in, like, the mid 900,000, I think, last time I looked.
I haven't looked in a while.
So those were the the the moment like, the pros and cons of the moment.
Very exciting.
Very a lot of those moments are like, oh my gosh.
I'm growing.
This is gonna be so great.
And now people are gonna listen to all of my videos, and I need to start promoting my coaching or promoting my upcoming course because now all these eyes are gonna be on it.
No and no and no and no and no.
Not not the story at all, fully, at least.
So in the moment, I was more concerned with what will my next piece of content be.
I was thinking about I was so excited for these new followers.
And my my goal in the moment was how do I keep the viewership high and how do I make content so these people keep engaging here and, hopefully, they'll want to work with me.
I say it that way, hopefully, they want to, because I was not intentional about converting those views and comments and persons to sales.
I was not, not in the moment.
That is a huge mistake that I made way back when, because that was such a moment where I had thousands of comments of people saying, this woman knows what she's talking about.
This is spot on.
Oh, my goodness.
They're tagging their their significant other or their spouse in the comments.
There were so many thousands of missed opportunities where if I had known then what I know now about marketing and namely the importance of an email list, I or in a lead magnet, which I'll talk about in a second, I absolutely could have grown my email list massive.
And that could have been a key to more sales, but I did not do that.
I just stayed on the I wanna be viral train.
I want to have more views goal, and that does not equal and did not equal more sales.
So, today, what is different now than from then is when I am posting content, no, I'm not always seeing my videos with, you know, 100 of thousands of views.
That is very rare right now, and it will it will happen again in the future.
It just takes time for these things to build up.
When you're consistent, your views do pile up.
But what's actually valued by the algorithm, especially when it comes to short form video content like YouTube shorts, like TikToks, like reels on Facebook or Instagram.
What's valued by the algorithm are people commenting and more importantly, people sharing your video and bookmarking it.
So now my thought when I'm making content is, what can I tell them in this piece of content that they're going to want to bookmark my content?
Great if they comment.
Wonderful if they comment.
Okay?
And I'll get to that step here in a second and loop back to the the email list, etcetera.
But if they bookmark it, the algorithm is very favorable to that.
And so that tends to be my new focus when I'm creating a piece of content.
Make sure the person knows from the very beginning of the video what I'm going to talk about.
So I've become a big fan of putting a quick title, a timed three second title, at the top of my short form video, at the top of my TikTok, for example.
And it goes away after 3 seconds.
But that way, when people are doom scrolling, the minute my video lands on their for you page and they've never seen me before, they read the title and they can choose in the moment to stay or go.
If they like the title, they're gonna stay and keep watching.
And the longer they stay and watch, the better the algorithm, likes my content.
And, of course, if I'm giving them value or something they can use, then hopefully they are commenting or they're gonna share it or they're gonna bookmark it.
And so these are things I've learned that I've I've made more important than how can I make this video go viral?
And some of the tricks and tips and not even tips.
Some of the tricks that people try to use to get a video to go viral, they'll literally put viral, and it's so dumb.
Don't do that.
When you do that, it shows that you don't know what you're doing.
Or if you're on TikTok and you put hashtag f y p, which stands for for you page, you're such a novice.
Don't do that.
It's okay to be a novice.
We just try not to show it.
Okay?
So, yeah, those things are just so viral.
Hashtag Virals.
Like, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Just don't do it.
Other thing that people will do to try to get a video to go viral is they'll see these videos, and Instagram Reels and Facebook Reels does this a lot too.
You've got content creators who are like, hey.
Here's a trending sound.
If you want your video to get 100 of thousands of views, use this trending sound right now.
And while it's not totally, like, a a lost cause at times, there is definitely an easier way than randomly believing a creator on social, who made this video telling you that this is a trending sound.
Like, don't don't follow that one, because their video could be, like, 3 weeks old, and now you're using a trending sound that isn't trending anymore.
Or they're wrong and they weren't following the trend at all.
So just be we wanna have strategy about building, our content.
But the aim of, I'm gonna go viral, it doesn't work.
And these tips and tricks and things like that, the one I keep seeing lately is if you really wanna grow your following on TikTok, or I guess, Instagram too on reels, but let's just stick with TikTok because it's all over TikTok right now.
Everyone because all these, newer creators on TikTok, they wanna qualify to be able to sell product on TikTok shop, and you have to to earn commission.
And they have to have a following base somewhere between 15,000 or more, So people are doing anything to get those followers, so that they can then apply to be a TikTok shop seller and earn commissions.
So there's all these videos floating around, and one of them is like, hey, let's have a follow train.
Like, I will follow your account if you follow mine.
But the latest one is go to the bottom of my video on TikTok.
And, first, you wanna go from the bottom up.
So the bottom of the bottom corner of the screen, you're gonna bookmark it.
Up above that, you're gonna share it.
Up above that, you're gonna leave a comment and then you're gonna like it and you're gonna do it backwards in that order.
If you're looking at the screen on TikTok, you'll know what I'm talking about.
If you watch TikTok or if you use Instagram Reels or you watch Facebook Reels, you'll know what I'm talking about.
But everyone keeps saying, if you do this to people's comments or people's content pieces, it's gonna push them in the algorithm.
So let's all help each other out and do that.
Do I know if that's true or not?
No.
I have no idea.
I have no idea where it came from.
I don't know if it's true, but the purpose of their strategy, again, is to grow their audience.
Now, if you are a person who wants to qualify to sell product on TikTok shop, yes, your aim is to have that many followers like I just mentioned because that's going to allow you to apply to be a TikTok shop seller.
Okay?
So that makes sense that you wanna grow that audience.
But for a coach, a consultant, an educator, a service provider, me, right, it doesn't benefit our pocketbook to grow only our followers and go viral on social media alone.
We've got to take it off the platform to a place where it can benefit us monetarily, where it can generate sales.
So, so far here I've broken down for you the pros and cons of going viral, why people wanna go viral, some of the tricks that people have used to try to gain more followers.
I've laid out for you the mistakes that I made when I went viral because I did not capture my audience.
They followed me, but that's not capturing your audience.
And you've got to capture your audiences, not just their attention, but namely their emails.
Say it with me.
Their emails.
When you go viral or have a video that does really well, if you do not do that, then as my oh my gosh.
I love Amy Porterfield so much.
As Amy Porterfield says, you are then having your business built on rented land because followers is great.
And listen, I have a lot of followers.
I have a lot of followers across social media platforms.
I'm somewhere between 35,040 followers if you add them all up, which is crazy and it's amazing.
And but my story about TikTok is a big reason why I have that.
But and here's the but.
My email list is so much smaller than that, like, embarrassingly small, like, not even at 1,000 people.
And that makes my heart hurt so bad because social media, if you follow everything that's happened with TikTok in the last couple years because the Chinese company, ByteDance, owns them or owned them, it was a massive, news story.
And if that platform vanishes, I have 22,000 people that I'm not talking to or in front of anymore because I didn't get them off of TikTok and into my email list.
You own your email list.
You do not own your followers.
So that's another reason why going viral doesn't equal more sales.
Because if it did, you'd have all these people with all these followers making really good money.
And unless they know how to secure a brand deal and they have an agent and they make continually viral content, which I do not know how they do it, it just doesn't monetize the same way that selling to your audience through your email list can.
So today, how do I make it different?
First of all, I believe and I know that you do not have to have a viral piece of content in order to make a good living doing what you do.
You do need to have an email list.
That is super important.
I speak from experience.
I am still learning every single day how to make my email list grow and how to nurture my email list and get to know what my people on my email list want, because that is where people likely make the purchase from you.
They're gonna see that you have, a Black Friday special for one of the services that you offer, or they're gonna see that you are promoting right now, at the end of 2024, that you are taking on your client list for Q1 of 2025 and who wants to apply.
These are the people who opted into your email because they like something that you put out in the world.
They like a course you taught.
They like the service you gave.
They like that your perspective on things.
They like your podcast.
They like your videos, whatever.
But they gave you their email address because they wanna stay in touch with you in some way, shape, or form, and you own that list.
All social media could crash and burn.
You have your list and nobody can take it from you, and that can help you sleep better at night knowing that, you will always have your audience no matter what.
So email list is super important.
So like I said, you don't have to go viral to have your email list grow, but you do need to engage with your audience in some way.
So how can we then take a piece of content?
Let's say it doesn't go big viral or even mini viral.
But let's say you have a piece of content that you put out there, and normally you're seeing, like, 50 to 75 views, and all of a sudden you see something that gets 400 or 500 views.
That's really exciting or more.
Right?
But if you're just getting started, it's very exciting when something you put out there has 100 of views or a 1000 views.
How do you use the moment?
How do you seize the moment?
What you want to do is, first of all, get in the comments.
And any single person that is in the comment that liked had something to say about your content, they enjoyed it, engage with them, ask them questions, but also let them know about your lead magnet or a free gift that you are offering them in exchange for their email.
So, currently, for example, and you'll see this in the show notes if you haven't noticed yet, I created 30 done for you social media content ideas.
And this is a chart that I created that, it has a prompt that when you're like, I don't know what to say in my social media content.
All you have to do is pick a prompt and talk to the camera or write something about it.
Boom.
There's your piece of content that addresses the whole situation of, I don't know what to say.
And then next to it, I even gave you examples in this chart of what it could look like.
And I also give you, here's the fun part, a title.
And not just any title, but an SEO search engine optimized style title that you can customize and plug and play and get your piece of content out there in a timely fashion.
And there's 30 of these done for you.
And all you have to do is click the link, put your name, type your email, and it gets emailed to you instantly from me.
That link is in the show notes, by the way, in case you've missed it, like I said.
But I'm sharing this with you because now my social media content is teaching people snippets about how how do you come up with an SEO optimized title.
Or I'm teaching a snippet on how do you choose which social media platform you should be making content on in the first place.
Or I'm choosing 1 about how to get in the right mindset to put your your voice or your video or your post out there in the 1st place.
And people are commenting on my videos.
And it's not a ton of people commenting all the time.
It might be like 6 or 7 people, but I go to every single one of those people and I write them a reply message.
Thanks for the comment or I ask them a question and reply.
And then after that, I put PS, I made this 30 done for you social media content ideas chart.
I think you'd really love it.
Do you want me to message it to you?
And that's it.
And I've had a couple people absolutely write me back and say, yeah.
Send it to me.
Or they DM me and ask for it, and I send them the link.
That generates people on my list.
Of course, that's organic.
It's not automated if I'm doing this through, my Facebook profile or through my TikTok account.
Instagram, there is a way on Instagram to, automate this where people can just comment the number 30, and it'll immediately pop into their DMs.
That's another story for another day.
It's a little more of an advanced technique, although it very simple to learn, if you're a little techie.
But but, anyhow, my point is, you've got to take the people that are in your comments and you've got to convert them to an email list subscriber.
Now if you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, Holly, I don't know how to start an email list, or, Holly, I don't have anything free to give the people.
I need to give you I need to make an episode about email list and lead magnets, but there's so many ways to do this that are very, very simple, that are super easy to put together.
And probably because of the nature of the work that you're in, you probably already have something that you can give away for free to people to get them on your email list.
But I don't wanna go too far off subject in this episode.
I really just wanted to hammer home for you today that if your aim has ever been to go viral with a piece of content or if you've ever had the thought that going viral would somehow make you more money, I just wanted to spell that myth.
It is very, very rare.
And people who go viral and make more money and have more sales as a result of it, it is purely because they have found ways to get the followers, get the commenters on their email list, and that is where they are then making their pitches, making their sales.
Okay?
Unless they're a content creator who is going to, let's say, Halara and saying, hey, I have 10,000 followers.
Will you sponsor me?
And and I don't even know how that stuff works.
Okay?
I don't.
I don't.
Because I don't think that's the audience I'm talking to right now.
But some some folks do that.
But if you're just you know, if you are, like I said, a consultant, a coach, a service provider, and you want to do more of the same for your ideal client, right, email list.
Virality is not the thing.
And if something does go viral, be ready.
Get in the comments, talk to your audience, offer them something free, get their email address.
And I laugh when I say this mostly out of discomfort and regret and lots of embarrassment.
I've been doing this for 11 years, and I made a massive mistake by not focusing on email addresses from the jump.
And maybe my going viral experience would have led to way more sales.
I'm sure it would have.
But I'm not the 1st person ever in this world to make that mistake in business.
A lot of us start businesses and do things backwards.
We start with a website.
We start with logo.
We start with a instead of the opposite, which is start with your product and go sell it and then worry about other things later.
Again, another episode for another day.
So I hope this ease some of the pressure that you might have been putting on yourself about I have to go viral Because you don't.
Okay?
Leave me a comment.
If there's anything that you want me to go more in-depth on and I haven't yet here in this episode, leave me a comment.
Remember, that free guide for you, the 30 done for you social media content ideas are linked below in the show notes.
Definitely go and grab it.
I promise you, you're going to love it.
It's going to I'm even using it myself.
It's so great.
It's so easy.
And you can use it for a month and then reuse it for a second month because every month, you're gonna have something a little bit of a different spin on your responses to these questions.
And it's an easy way to get your content out there.
Alright?
So thank you so much for listening.
I love you.
I mean it.
And I'll talk to you next time.
Thank you for listening.
I'm giving you a virtual high five for prioritizing your personal growth.
If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment and leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcast.
Share the show with friends and family or snap a screenshot of this episode and tag me on Instagram at the hollyhibbard.
You are not alone on this journey, my friend.
I'm always here cheering you on.
So until next time, stay curious, stay encouraged, and keep empowering yourself.
You are doing better than you know.