Viral

I’ve worked in influencer marketing and social media management in different capacities over the last 10 years and initially there was so much conversation about “going viral.” It felt like everyone was discussing what it meant to have viral content, how to get content to go viral, what to do with viral content in terms of monetization and leveraging the success in other areas, etc. It got to a point where many of us stopped using the term “going viral” because it was so overused.

Really, the desire to “go viral” was and is about having attention on a thing we’ve created. Everyone’s reasons for wanting that can be different, but it’s the basic need for what we do to be seen and recognized.

But there is often a very big downside to the attention.

This week I had a TikTok “go viral,” meaning, it had more than a million views within 24 hours. At the moment it’s at 1.7M views and 150k likes and 66k shares. This all comes with thousands of comments, and of course not all are kind. I’ve learned that people not operating out of a place of emotional intelligence often get angry, rude, or just mean when they are confused or misunderstanding, instead of seeking to understand. Or even just thinking, “I don’t get this. It’s not for me. I’ll just move on.”

At the same time this is happening I’ve gained thousands of new followers on Instagram (I’ll talk more about that in another post another time) and hundreds on Twitter with all the likes, comments, shares and retweets that come along with it. It’s been very overwhelming.

So this is a great time for me to practice that self care I’ve talked about before. Removing myself from the constant buzz of notifications, focusing on people in my life and good parasocial connections who do understand me to some level, and focusing on my life and work and what is good for me… it’s all extremely important when the noise begins to overwhelm.

It’s just me and my silenced phone right now, and I like it. 😁

❤️❤️❤️