HOT Take: Content Virality (alone) Might Be Overrated

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This morning at 6am I decided to drag myself out of my bed to attend a viral content academy’s free webinar session, so that I l can glean more into the thought process of what it takes to build successful content for social media.

I went there with not much expectations (maybe some expectations), given that it is a free webinar (which means they are trying to sell us a final product), and just as per usual, the webinar proved to just be the usual rehash of key information that we can easily glean online.

The webinar shared many successful case studies on how they helped different individuals unlock high viewership & engagement for their content, a.k.a achieving virality, and most importantly the usual formula to unlock virality: Clean Hook; Great Content Quality; Differentiate Ourselves From Other Similar Content Creators in the niche.

I was hoping to at least hear a discourse to discourage achieving blind virality, but rather to build purposeful content instead. But the whole conversation was geared towards how important it is for the content to break beyond 10,000 views (it is important nonetheless), and one of the examples was how a creator achieved virality by sharing his embarassing failures on failing to become part of his school’s varsity basketball team.

Taking an introspective approach into this topic, I realised I have also been blindly looking at creating content that will reach a lot of people (a.k.a virality), but at the heart of the matter, I do not know why it is important to achieve this level of reach. Yes, achieving good viewership is important for brand ads, or even the various businesses that I represent, but do I even need to achieve virality to stay relevant?

The answer is no, even if I do not achieve a content breakthrough, i will still be working in the same number of roles & still happy to manage the various creators that are under my care to book suitable brand deals. After mulling over it for awhile, I think distinctively the only reason why virality is important, would be the level of impact the said content can bring.

For example in my food content that I help create over at @worldbestfoodies, the virality does help to support the various F&Bs in Singapore & across the world, and it helps to keep their businesses afloat in some ways. Similar for the travel, career & personal content that I create over at @learnwithstann & @stanleyokay page(s), the additional reach will help to add more value to the people that consume the content. It is not just a mindless entertaining brain-rot, but rather a value-based impact that will come from these content.

Pursuing content virality mindlessly for the sake of it, is truly an overrated measure. What is more important is for us not to lose sight on the reason why we create content, which can be as simply as for the sake of documenting one’s life as a personal diary. With that value and purpose in mind, the content becomes meaningful, purposeful & most importantly help to drive the reasons on why the eventual virality becomes a good to have aspect. This is my personal take on this matter.