viral is bad for business.

every brand secretly wants to go viral, and most that do are disappointed by what follows: a spike of irrelevant followers, no sales, and pressure to chase the next hit. virality is a vanity high. for most businesses, it's the wrong goal entirely.

— 01viral reach is the wrong people

content goes viral by appealing broadly — which means most of the audience it reaches has no connection to your actual business. a million views from people who'll never buy is a number, not a result. the reach is real; the relevance isn't.

a hundred thousand views from outside your market makes the account worse, because subsequent posts are shown to people with no interest in what you sell.

the platform learns from who responded. an audience assembled by an unrelated viral post is an audience the algorithm will keep serving you.

and it rarely converts. reach without intent is a number, and the enquiry count usually does not move at all.

— 02chasing it distorts your content

optimising for virality pulls you toward broad, sensational, lowest-common-denominator content — and away from the specific value that serves your real audience. you start making content for strangers instead of customers.

one spike sends a business chasing it for a quarter, which usually means abandoning the formats that were producing enquiries.

and it moves the standard. content is judged against the outlier rather than against what actually works, so consistent performers start looking like failures.

the honest reading is that a spike is a data point about what an audience responds to, not a target to reproduce.

— 03relevance beats reach

the right 1,000 viewers — people who could actually become customers — are worth more than the wrong million. aim for resonance with your audience, not reach for its own sake. if virality happens as a by-product of great, relevant content, fine. as a goal, it's a trap.

a small, relevant audience that returns is worth more than a large indifferent one, because returning viewers convert several times better.

so judge content on hold rate, saves and returning viewers rather than on peak reach. those measure whether the right people are watching.

and build formats people come back for. recognition compounds; a spike does not leave anything behind.

— 04what to do if something does go viral

check the profile can convert the traffic, make five more of the same thing, and then return to the plan.

and look at where the viewers were. if they were not in your market, treat the spike as entertainment rather than as a result.

related on the dispatch: write a hook that stops the scroll, how to go viral on instagram.