going viral is a terrible goal

Vanity spikes vs sustainable growth

Everyone wants to go viral. Nobody wants to talk about what happens after.

I've watched brands hit tens of millions of views and gain nothing from it because it went viral, but landed on the wrong audience, with no conversion path. It just becomes a spike that fades in 48 hours and leaves you exactly where you started — except now you're chasing that high again.

Virality is a lottery ticket, not a business strategy.

The posts that go viral are rarely the posts that convert. Sure, they're entertaining, shareable, or algorithm-friendly — but they are also often completely disconnected from what you actually sell. You end up with followers who showed up for the meme, or followed for the aesthetic, and then promptly bounce the moment you mention your product. The content comes off calculated, and worst of all, you just put a bad taste in a potential customer’s mouth. Users can see right through content strategy rooted purely in virality - they don’t need a degree in marketing. It’s just a vibe.

Here's what nobody tells you about viral content: it attracts everyone, which also means it attracts no one specific.

But specificity is what sells. The tighter your audience, the easier the path to conversion. Viral content does the absolute opposite — it dilutes your audience with people who will never buy, and it really chaps those who just want to scroll without uncovering a covert advertisement in their feed.

This is why audience engagement is so critical to driving sales.

Ask any strategist out there, and they’ll tell you it’s better to have 1,000 followers who are exactly your target customer than it is to have 100,000 followers who followed for one funny video and haven't engaged since.

The math is simple: if 1% of your audience converts, 1,000 right-fit followers gets you 10 customers. 100,000 random followers gets you the same 10 customers — maybe even fewer, because the signal is buried in noise.

Chasing virality also warps your content strategy. You start optimizing for shareability instead of value. You chase trends instead of building authority. You become a content factory instead of a trusted voice.

The brands that win long-term are the ones that grow steadily. They build audiences that actually care. They create content that might not break the internet, but builds trust with their audience, and consistently brings in the right people.

Sustainable growth is boring. It doesn't make for good screenshots. But it builds businesses that last.

Stop asking "how do I go viral?" Start asking "how do I attract more of my exact customer?" Those are very different questions with very different answers.

Virality is a side effect, not a strategy. Build for depth, not breadth.