Is Going Viral Worth It?

One of the newest phenomenons on social media is “going viral,” and it has been for awhile now. Also known as Viral Marketing, this type of promotion relies on an audience to organically generate and push the message of a product or service.

Ever since TikTok started taking over the trend cycle and growing into one of the largest platforms in the world, it seems that anyone and everyone now has a chance to go viral and give their name or brand a platform to succeed on. While in the spotlight, you and/or your brand can gain a wider reach, name recognition and exponential growth. At the same time, there’s a chance that negative reactions could tarnish your brand. With trend cycles being so short, is it worth it to go viral?

Let’s look into the benefits:

• Having a Wider Reach allows your brand to get in front of more unique people and raise more awareness and recognition, which in many ways can help your brand seem more credible. If someone sees a post or reel show up on their social media, they gain a bit of information about your brand. In today’s day and age, this is key to building trust.
• This also leads to Name Recognition. Having someone recognize your name or brand, is always an ego boost – it feels good! It’s also another key step to building credibility. When going viral, the amount of people who know your name grows exponentially which helps build recognition of your brand to the common person.
• Going viral is a Low-Cost way to market your brand. When going viral, you follow the latest trends, add a unique spin, and use all the right hashtags. There is no spending money to boost a post to get more website clicks or views.

What about the cons?

• It’s Hard to Measure if going viral is benefitting your brand. Due to the high number of views, it can be difficult to see how many of those viewers take action from the post. In turn, this can make it more difficult to find the audience that your post resonated with the most and replicate it in order to keep them engaged.
• Although going viral is fun, Bad Word of Mouth can come along with it. You can’t control what people say about your brand, but going viral makes it even harder to protect your name. Take IHop for example. When they used “IHob” to promote their new burgers (b for burger), many people were upset and spread negative things about their brand simply because they didn’t like the content.
• It doesn’t take long for viral content to fall into a hole of Low Virality. Low Virality is generally a healthcare term that refers to a lack of energy and dull feeling. Because the trend cycle is so fast, it doesn’t take long for people to get bored of your content and not get excited about your brand anymore.

There are many more pros and cons to going viral, so these are just a few to get your brain thinking. Overall, I believe it’s safe to conclude that what’s most important with your brand’s content isn’t going viral, its making something that reflects your brand and message. If you are lucky enough to go viral and have 60 seconds of fame, use it to your advantage and proceed with caution.

Molly Wulff, Marketing Intern

Molly is recent high school graduate who is excited to head off to college in New York next month to study digital marketing. She loves to read, spend time with her family, and is always down to watch a musical, or perform in one.