Going viral is hard. But it’s even harder to go viral twice. And it's proof that when it comes to content marketing, it's better to be smart than lucky.

Going Viral: Does Lightning Strike Twice?

Short answer: no. But there's more to this lesson.

Blog

by Dave Robson

Latest from the Blog

Kuration Gives Opera York A Full Digital Overhaul

♬ 🎼 🎵 🎶

How to Make Your Blog Better: Strategic Edition

So, you’ve fixed your blog’s writing issues but there maybe deeper problems at play? Here are a few tips. Identify an Audience Not knowing who your audience is would be a bit like not knowing who your customers are. The blog you write for Zoomer and Millennial families looking for a good deal on wireless is […]

How to Make Your Blog Better: Practical Edition

Need a few practical tips to improving your blog? Look no further.

Remember When FIFA Made a Movie Celebrating Themselves?

We’ve tried to forget.

Some Thoughts on Bill C-11

Spoiler: the thoughts are mainly negative.

In late 2016, Furkids Animal Rescue and Shelters Cat Shelter, an outfit based in Atlanta, Georgia, shot a three-minute video and caught proverbial lightning in a bottle.

The very goofy video racked up five million hits on YouTube and it’s easy to see why. It’s fun. It has a cheesy Sarah McLachlan spoof. And it almost looks like they didn’t expect to go viral. It honestly looks like they threw this together in an afternoon and figured if a couple more cats got adopted, that would be the best outcome.

But this video went viral. Someone posted it to Reddit and views went through the roof. It got featured on news stories all over North America, Europe, and the Middle East. They picked up a huge amount of donations, gifts, volunteer applications, and most importantly, adoptions. They ended up doing a massive Q&A on Facebook. Their senior leadership was effusive in her thanks.

So you can see why, this year, Furkids tried again.

We can sit here and try to pinpoint why it isn’t as good as their first. The kids don’t know who Richard Simmons is? Too much of a tone shift?

But there’s a larger point to be made.  Going viral is hard. But it’s even harder to go viral twice.

If you scour YouTube, you’ll come across many examples of this. There was that cute little girl who explained Star Wars and went viral. Then her parents shot a video of her explaining the Holocaust and it just wasn’t so funny. Or consider L.A. based fashion retailer Wren Studio. Their 2014 short firm “First Kiss” showing complete strangers kissing for the first time became an Internet phenom, got the firm’s founder network airtime and launched a thousand parodies. At last count, it has logged almost 130 million views. We searched for a follow-up and found this. It has 149 views. As for the business? Wren’s website is now occupied by a squatter.

These stories remind of those lottery winners who blow the whole wad on a 12-month bender. Marketers who get a massive spike in views think they’ve made it. But without a strategy, they lack the ability to repeat success. They just got lucky.

Depressingly, even in 2018 we hear a lot of talk about “going viral”. And this is our answer: no one should count on a huge spike in views. More often than not, it’s not good for business anyway. More enlightened marketers know that content marketing success is a long game, and measured in regular small victories that ultimately build the bottom line.