In 2024 I was interviewed for a piece in Runner’s World about traveling to run the Super Halfs. It was one of those moments where you think “yes, all my work is paying off”. I looked through my videos and wondered, which one caught their attention? It must be one of my viral ones.
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. It was a video that to this day only has 42 likes. And it reminded me of an important lesson on socials.
Your most important content pieces, the ones that drive conversions, may never go viral. Likes and views don’t automatically equal more race entries, or convert to sales. All they mean is that someone liked your video, and guess what, they probably forgot about it within ten minutes.
That’s not saying I don’t think viral videos have a place, they absolutely do help with top of funnel awareness, but they tend to require vague and overarching statements to connect with the most possible people.that don’t drive conversions. And the videos that can drive revenue, require hyper-targeted messaging that people may not even feel comfortable liking.
For a long time on LinkedIn, people have had these conversations. Talking about how most followers are silent, and people won’t like a post talking about how to apply for a new job or stand up to their boss on a feed that will then show their likes to co-workers. And over the last year Instagram has started following in those footsteps.
Instagram now has a separate tab where people can exclusively watch videos liked by their friends, and even when you aren’t in that tab it will show you which of your friends liked a video on your feed. The social part of social media no longer refers to posts about your friends life, but rather creating conversations offline around what people are liking.
And in the early days of this feature launch, people still liked any video that came up on their feed. True story: that’s how I learned about someone’s divorce. And then everyone realized that your likes were suddenly public info, and they became another way to curate your online presence.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be making those hyper-targeted videos, it just means that you shouldn’t measure the success of those videos on likes and views. Because if your video doesn’t align with the image your customers are trying to curate on socials, they won’t engage, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t watching.
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