The death of virality...what to focus on instead if you want to use content to build your dream business

Today’s Tip: Virality at all cost is no longer the optimal strategy. Instead focus all your effort on this…

When I started making content, I had one goal…

Go viral.

All I wanted was that sweet sweet feeling of having millions of people pay attention to something I made.

Then, one day it happened.

3.2M views in 48 hours.

The notifications were insane…every time I refreshed, another 500 new followers.

It was crazy!

Eventually, I learned how to hack social media algorithms to go viral whenever I wanted.

And I thought I was going to be set.

But then, a weird thing happened…

I wasn’t making any money.

See, like most entrepreneurs, I thought that “going viral” (tons of views and likes) would equate to dollars.

But I was wrong...it doesn’t.

Virality-at-all-costs is a massive trap.

And if you’re running a business that relies on free demand from content, this type of virality is the worst thing for you.

Because it makes you believe you’re on the right path while it burns your time, energy, and resources.

Instead, what you’re really after is “on-target shares.”

After obsessively studying the social media game, I’ve realized that on-target shares are the most direct predictor of leads and revenue.

So what are on-target shares and why do you want them?

There are two key differences between virality-at-all-costs and on-target shares:

• Precision: Virality = anyone /// On-target = your ideal viewer avatar only

• Activation: Virality = views or likes /// Shares = shares

Let’s breakdown both…

Precision is important because of a concept called audience matching.

Essentially, the more consistently you serve the exact same audience, the more social media algorithms understand how to target that same audience profile again and can mechanistically expose your content to more of them.

When the algo gets good at this precision targeting, it helps you unlock stronger reach on narrowly scoped content.

And this is really the content dream for entrepreneurs.

You have a set of beliefs, frameworks, and expertise around a topic…you want to share those specific answers for your specific audience.

When you make these narrow videos, you can’t seem to get good traction.

So, you think…”Okay, I’ll just go broad and get this thing going and then go narrow”

But when you try this, and go back to narrow, the narrow still doesn’t work.

Why not?

It’s because your audience match is misaligned.

Let’s go through an example to explain what I mean.

Let’s say you are a marketing agency owner and you sell retainer packages to help golf course owners with marketing.

Pretty niche.

So ultimately, your goal is to be able to make a fairly nerdy and niche marketing video related to a golf course use case and it get automatically blasted out to all the golf course owners on YouTube.

If you were able to get this piece in front of 10,000 golf course owners for free, you’d print money.

So you make a few of these deep golf marketing videos, super narrow in scope, but don’t see a lot of traction initially.

You start getting frustrated.

So then, you think, “I should go broad.”

“If we can just get a ton of eyes on here, it’ll jumpstart the algo and help me find the golf course owners.”

So you make a broad video breaking down Tiger Woods and his mental warefare frameworks that his dad taught him as a young player.

It has nothing to do with golf course owners or marketing…it’s just golf adjacent because it’s Tiger Woods.

All of a sudden the Tiger video pops off, gets 500K views and you add 5K new subscribers overnight.

So you think you’re set, right?

Well actually, what happened is that you now have an audience matching problem.

Because 4,800 of those 5,000 new followers are actually 17 year old golf fans that only subbed because they’re obsessed with Tiger Woods.

Now, when you go to post your next deep marketing video about golf course paid ads, the video flops again.

And it flops because now the algorithm has a misaligned audience match…it doesn’t know who to target.

It knows that those 17 year olds won’t like golf marketing content, but that is all you have in your orbit.

This is the problem with virality at all costs…it prevents the algorithms from doing the work for you because they don’t know who to push your stuff to.

Instead, you want “on-target” virality.

This means, wrapping more broadly applicable concepts (if necessary to jumpstart the channel) but specifically packaged and messaged for your ideal viewer avatar…in this case, the golf course owners.

Essentially, you should not make even a single video that is not for the golf course owner or it risks the audience match.

And the reason “on-target” is so critical is because once you have the algorithm heated up, it gets really good at going out and finding those golf course owners for you.

Then, you can post a super niche marketing golf video that gets 10,000 of the right views and drives a ton of leads for your agency.

This audience match problem is the #1 issue I see with most content channels.

The Content </> Audience </> Offer

Now quickly, why “shares” instead of “likes/views?”

To me, shares are the best proxy for depth and value transfer.

If someone watched your video and liked it so much they were willing to share it with a friend (ideally another person in your ideal viewer avatar profile), this is the best signal that you are on the right track.

Also mechanistically, shares create new user sessions (bringing external views onto the platform), which social platforms love and reward heavily.

So essentially, if you’re a business owner, what you want to do is:

1. Understand your ideal viewer avatar profile (this is your target)

2. Only make content for them (on-target)

3. Mix in broad/narrow (both on-target)…broad is wrapped is a slightly broader frame, narrow is super deep and nerdy

4. Optimize for shares (so tactical and valuable that people share it with others as a form of social currency)

This might not result in the largest number of views/followers/subscribers, but it will result in 10-100x more leads and revenue (which is what you’re really after).

If you can check your ego on the vanity metrics, you’ll cash the checks on the real ones.

PS - Figuring out this content strategy for short-form (who is on-target and how do we come up with ideas to reach them) is what I spend all day helping entrepreneurs with. If you need help with this, comment “target” and I’ll add you to my waitlist for SFA