Does the success of your content marketing depend on your content going viral?
How does your content go viral?
Look for this question on Google and you will find many blog posts and articles.
But is it essential for the success of your content marketing?
Depends.
It is understandable that if traffic matters to your website/blog and you earn ad revenue then definitely your content going viral matters to you because when your content goes viral, it means more traffic.
A few years ago, I wrote a political blog post on Medium and it went viral (it was read by more than 300,000 people) and I gained more than 1000 Twitter followers as a result, though, in terms of getting more business, it didn’t help me because it wasn’t related to content writing or content marketing.
Content going viral also helps you if you want to spread a message or an idea within a span of a couple of days. You want one of your articles or blog posts to reach thousands of people. When I wrote the above-mentioned political blog post, I actually wanted it to be read by as many people as possible.
It also gets you brand recognition when your content goes viral. The more people read your blog post, the more people know about you.
Many clients come to me and say that they need an article or a blog post that will go viral.
I tell them that I cannot promise anything. I can put in all the ingredients that are needed for a particular piece of content to go viral, but ultimately, whether that particular piece of content goes viral or not depends on many unpredictable patterns.
Does the success or failure of your content marketing depend on viral content?
I don’t think so.
The purpose of content marketing is, aside from building an audience (a viral blog post does not guarantee that) over a long period of time, is to help people so that they begin to remember you with a positive impression.
Content marketing makes it easier for people to find you.
Suppose you have covered all your topics in your field. For example, I provide content writing and content marketing services so I’m constantly explaining different aspects of these two realms.
Although it is not up to me whether I get good search engine rankings or not for the blog posts and web pages that I continuously publish on my website, the possibility of increasing my rankings definitely improves.
It is like, if you do something and there is 1% chance of success, if you don’t do something, the chance is 0%. So, publishing high-quality content, no matter how meagre or how limited, is better than publishing no content.
So, instead of worrying about making your content go viral, focus on publishing quality-content on an ongoing basis. Aim to help your audience.
If you help your audience and if due to that, you get more leads and generate more sales, your content marketing is successful, whether one of your blog posts goes viral or not.