Lessons I Learned From Hitting 2.4+ Million Views

Here are your no-fluff tips for creating viral content and keeping your momentum. If you want a reference point, this is the video I’ll be talking about👇🏼

https://www.instagram.com/p/CJmtIp6BNZu/

Relatability

I’m going to give you my number one tip right off the bat (because honestly, I hate when people leave the best for last just to make you read a bunch of crap… Not that any of what I’m writing is but, you know what I mean.) RELATABILITY.

Honestly, I didn’t think anything of the video that went viral. It was a post-date night fun thing, I wasn’t even prepared for the video and we did it in a single take because I didn’t want to do it again. It wasn’t beautifully curated, it wasn’t planned and I was super bloated after lots of pizza and wine at our favorite spot.

But what this taught me was that people crave real-life. I have seen a huge shift in the past year from beautifully curated and branded feeds to real-life documentation: posting pictures from that day, telling stories that are relatable and real and hard and funny and things that hit people on a human level as opposed to a “trending” level.

One tip I’ll leave you with for the relatability piece, get out of the mindset that everything you post on social media has to be “pretty”. People don’t like or trust “pretty” anymore. *Just to make sure you’re tracking with me here, I am equating pretty = falsely curated.*

Don’t sit back and enjoy it

Everyone wants to think that when they have a post that goes viral, they automatically get verified, they get asked for sponsorships, they get to go on Ellen and the money just starts rolling in… No. Life doesn’t work that way and going viral is no different. No matter what people may tell you or what you think.

There’s going to be a lot of desire to sit and stare at your phone for the 3–4 days that your post is popping off. Do not, I repeat, do not just sit around and stare at your views go up or your likes and comments come strolling in. Just sitting by watching with no extra action to move forward.

Congratulations, your first viral video was relatable, you used the right hashtags, whatever it was that got you poppin’ off but, now what? If you don’t do anything with this momentum people are going to forget about you as soon as they found you.

An object in motion, stays in motion

So we all know about Newton’s laws of gravity. And we know that an object in motion stays in motion. Why would going viral on a video be any different than a boulder rolling down a hill? Picture your video as that boulder rolling down a hill. You’re getting more shares, you’re getting more comments, you’re getting more engagement and the video is rolling faster and faster down the hill, what’s going to stop it? It’s going to come into contact with something that either stops it or continues its momentum.

Passivity is going to be the very thing that “slows your roll.” By not posting, by not engaging your audience, by not sharing what you did to make the video or a funny story about how it happened, you’re letting that momentum, that attention, shift to someone else’s content. Subsequently, your momentum dies. And we all know that it is a LOT harder to create momentum than it is to keep up or speed up momentum.

So in contrast to passivity, here are a few things that you can do to keep your momentum:

Start posting more videos regularly.

-All my video views went up when my one video went viral (especially the 2 or 3 before and after it).

Make sure you’re getting on your stories so that all your new followers can start building the Like, Know, Trust factor with you.

-You want your face ingrained in their brains and you want the things that are important to you to become important to them.

Engage in the comments

A little known IG hack: 15 minutes before you post and 15 minutes after you post are optimal times to get you right with the algorithm. So engage in your comments on the viral post for a few minutes before you post a new video AND after you post to get your content more easily seen.

(BONUS TIP: You can even screenshot some of your favorite or most funny comments and green screen them on TikTok for a funny reaction / follow-up video)

LEVERAGE

So you have your viral video, you’ve been engaging your audience, you’ve been posting new content but, how do you leverage this best for your business or personal brand?

Whenever you have a video that starts popping off, you need to find a way to direct your new viewers and your new followers somewhere they can take action. The link in your bio in Instagram is extremely important here. You want a way to turn those followers (especially the new followers because depending on your video they are going to be some pretty warm leads and ideal clients) into paying customers.

Depending on what offerings you currently have in your business, find the one with the easiest access point and put that as your link. But, you may have to come up with a new offering or two. For me, I added Reels / TikTok tutorials, 90 minute intensives and VIP Days to my business offerings because of my success. Below are a few ideas for you to implement ASAP 👇🏼

• You need to find a way to capture email addresses so that you can talk direct-to-consumer when you have something to sell. Because we all know the IG algorithm isn’t necessarily business account friendly all the time and a small handful of your followers will even see your regular posts. Here are some ideas for your link in bio:

1. Create a freebie (checklist, ebook, programs you can’t live without, simple recipes…)
2. Set up a zoom trivia night (free)
3. Set up a Network + Cocktails event (free)
4. Create a mini course (paid)
5. Create a 90 minute intensive (paid)
6. Create a VIP day (paid)

SUMMARY

Success doesn’t just happen. It didn’t happen for the millionaires and billionaires out there and it didn’t happen for the crazy influencers you see with a bajillion likes. I promise you, there is a method to the madness! Following the steps above will help you on your way to creating viral content. If you have viral content popping off right now this will help to keep your momentum going. And if you’re in the market for a Reels intensive or a VIP day, I know a girl.