The Socialize Forecast - 3/11/25 Downside of Viral
Welcome to the socialized forecast, Tuesday, March 11. We're gonna start off with a topic that I have to say is probably not a common topic. I don't hear about it a lot, but I'm going to dive in because I'm gonna tell you firsthand that I'm somewhat suffering from it and I just want to shed some light on it. And that is the downside of going viral. Not a lot of people talking about that.
Helen:Everybody wants to go viral. Everybody wants to have the videos with all the views. And I feel that it's my duty and my place right now to tell you what the bad side of that is. And I think it's important. I think we all need to know because one day you're gonna go viral and you're gonna say, oh my god.
Helen:She did mention that. And I want you to be prepared for it because even though there is a rush and an excitement and like, oh my god. And you're watching the numbers and it's like watching a a slot machine like go up and up and up and it feels so exciting. So that is the good part and that is the fun part. And you get lots of people coming in and in my case, they were like, thank you.
Helen:Thank you. This is the most amazing video and oh my god. I needed this. And so you get so much dopamine from the love. But no one really talks about the other part of it which is I'm about to I'm about to break it down.
Helen:Alright? So this is this is what today is. I don't even know if I'm gonna get to the trends. You're gonna have to go to the newsletter for the trends because this is gonna this is gonna take me some time to explain and I feel it's important. The first thing that is a bummer about going viral is that you suddenly lose track and you are not able to keep up with comments.
Helen:Now, mind you, I still am not able to keep up with comments on a normal day because I have a lot of videos moving with a lot of content. I have a lot of followers. So I already am a little inundated with comments and I do my best at night. I sit for like an hour and I power through. I usually do it where I look at the activity feed and I can see what people are commenting on.
Helen:So sometimes it's much older videos where I'm getting comments. And sometimes those comments are really enlightening. They're also funny. And they're also indicative of somebody who might need more help and might be interested in my services. So I wanna make sure that I can respond to the comments even when they are on older videos.
Helen:A lot of times mine are on an older tutorial where I'm teaching something basic or I get somebody to comment something like, oh, I wish you could I wish I could hire you to help me. And I have to be able to respond to that and say, actually, you can hire me to help you. So I don't like to miss those messages. I don't like to miss those comments. So I use click on the activity and that's how I look at my comments first.
Helen:And then when I feel that I'm too buried in that, I will go to my most recent videos and then I will go through the comments on the most recent videos so that I can keep up with at least be able to respond to a bunch of them, like some of them, read them, enjoy them. All the things that are great about having a having any viral video or any views whatsoever is being able to enjoy your comments. So what happens when you go viral is the feed gets incredibly clogged. So when you're in that section where you tap activity and then you are scrolling to see comments, it is in it's endless. And it's endless comments, but you are not able to get through them all because they're coming in so fast.
Helen:Like, I get through the 10 and then there's, like, 20 more. It's just that's how crazy this virality was. Like, to have almost 5,000,000 views on this video is just like flooding my feed. Crazy. And I know maybe this sounds like, oh, really?
Helen:I should have such problems. But I need to explain it because it's it's important. When the feed is clogged like that, I can't even tell when people are commenting on an older video. And now when you start picking up followers from a viral video, it's typical that people will be fed your other videos and they're probably commenting on those videos. But now, because the feed is clogged, the activity is all about this viral video, you can't even get to any other comments on any other videos.
Helen:I'd have to go through hundreds of comments to find one that was posted on another video. So I lose such track of the comments and it's like a little bit damaging to my communication abilities. I like to be able to go and see what other videos people are commenting on. And I can't possibly know that when the activity feed is all about this viral video, like flood, flood, flood of and I love it. People are so grateful.
Helen:They're like, thank you. Thank you. This is the best video I've seen all day. And it feels so good to read those comments. But you cannot keep track now of any other videos that are getting comments that might be important comments.
Helen:And let's think about a business owner. They have a crazy viral video. Okay. I'm gonna use Nicola. I'm gonna use you you as an example.
Helen:But she has this video of her, wash line, her clothing line outside where she's finally it's the the sun's out and she could finally use her outdoor clothing line to dry her clothes. This is what went viral for her. But she's a potter. She's a she does pottery. So having all these new followers flood in and all these comments on this video about a clothing line outdoors in The UK is not gonna help her business.
Helen:So now these comments that are flying in on this viral crazy video, she's missing comments that might be helpful on her other videos that where she's actually selling products. That's a really good example. So, Nicola, I hope you don't mind that I had to use you for that. But I'm telling you it's nobody nobody talks about the downside of going viral and when it's especially the wrong video. And it's great when you're a business and the right video goes viral because woohoo, you know, people are clicking on your links, they're buying your products.
Helen:And that's not always what's happening. So that that's number one. It clogs up the feed. The comments come in so fast, you can't keep track of them. The other thing is this I've noticed and I hadn't noticed this before ever.
Helen:But I was I said, well, let me at least try and look at all the comments on the viral video as much as I can. There's thousands. I I'm trying to see how many thousands. I mean, to have a video that viral is is I haven't had one in a long time that's that crazy viral. But let me just see how many comments, for example, Just for a reference point.
Helen:I think it's important. Let's see. So I have 10,000 11,000 comments. 10,900 comments. Now if I even wanted to read them all, which, you know, would take me hours, I'd go through and see.
Helen:It get I get to the bottom and it says pull up to load more, like, you know, how you can refresh. Nothing loads. It gets to a point where the comments don't even load. So now there might be some really clever, fun, interesting, funny, entertaining comments in that 10,000 and I'm not seeing them. I'm barely seeing maybe 2,000 of those comments because the feed the, video won't refresh and show me new comments.
Helen:Okay? So that's that might be my most number one most annoying thing if I'm gonna pick one. But that that's pretty annoying because I wanna read the comments now. I'm like, oh, this video is so viral. Let's go.
Helen:I'm gonna read and see what the comments are. And I can't. I can't. They won't load. I don't know if that's an app problem.
Helen:I don't know what that is. But that's the learning. Now the next thing I have so much to say about this. It's sad. The next thing is previous to this 4,900,000 viewed video, previous to that, I had a viral video that was going pretty good and it was at a half a million views and now it's at 700,000 views.
Helen:So I'm gonna look at the stats because this is the other thing I wanna talk about. The stats on what happens when you have a viral video. So let's compare 700,000 viewed video with a lot of value. It was a full lesson, how to do a split screen. It was really clear.
Helen:It was so good for beginners and all of the things. And on that video, I got 11,258 as of right now, more followers. So 11,000 followers came out of a video that had 700,000 views. Remember that stat? Now I'm gonna tell you 5,000,000 views, 4,900,000 views.
Helen:How many followers do you think I would get from that? Probably more. Right? Because 700,000 versus 5,000,000. On the May video, I got 9,000 followers.
Helen:Mic drop. That's ridiculous when you think about it because the video didn't have as much value to the audience that were seeing it. It was a quick like a quick tip. It was like boom boom boom. It was a quick tip.
Helen:It wasn't an in-depth valuable lesson. So there's some learning right there That when you're sharing something with an audience that sees incredible value in it, even if it's not the most viral video, it could be way more successful for people committing to you in your community. To people joining with you for the ride and saying, oh, I'm gonna stick with this person. Instead of 5,000,000 people viewing a video and only 9,000 of them committing because it wasn't elaborate enough. It was a quick iPhone tip.
Helen:It wasn't enough. And it was short by the way so I didn't make any money on it. That's another drawback. I didn't think that was I didn't make that video long enough. I I didn't let it go to a minute.
Helen:Maybe it wouldn't have gone viral if it was a minute long anyway. It was a quick, like, forty second, thirty second video, quick demo of how to do something on the iPhone. I guess I should have mentioned that in the beginning. The video that has 5,000,000 views is about how to fix the email in your, on your iPhone with the update. How to fix it.
Helen:So Nicola, once once again, gets credit for part one because she told me, oh, tap the three dots. And as soon as that happened and I fixed it on my husband's phone, he's like, can't you get rid of these icons too? And then I did some real digging to find out how to get rid of those icons. And then I made the tutorial like, here's how to change the get rid of the folders. Here's how to get rid of the icons.
Helen:So the two of them get full credit for me having a viral video right now. But it was so quick and it was so short and not a lot of welcoming into what I do. It wasn't me showing my skills. It was just me showing you a quick tip on the iPhone. That wasn't a lot of value to people.
Helen:I did get followers and they were like, thank you, immediate follow for helping me with this. But think about the percentage. 9,000 versus 5,000,000 versus on the other video, 700,000. And I got 11,000 followers from that because it was way more valuable. It was way more involved.
Helen:It kept people people it gave time for people to get invested in me and what I was sharing. So take this learning. Let's like let's really take this learning. I'm gonna write all this stuff down because it just it proves to me that it's not the number of people that see your content. It's who's seeing it and how you've gotten them to stay invested in what you're doing.
Helen:So huge, huge learning. I also was looking at some of the stats on the short viral 5,000,000 video. 38,000 arrows forwarded. It's 38,000 people forwarded it, that means. Right?
Helen:The arrow. But on the 700,001, only 6,000 people forwarded it. But 26,000 favorited it. So I don't know. Forwarding versus favoriting?
Helen:Maybe forwarding has the highest value of all? I know people like to to make fun of the, engage from the bottom up because whoever made that up is is like a pain in the neck that they created whatever that is. Engage from the bottom up. But what it what they're trying to say is that the most valuable thing you can do with a video is forward it or favorite it, and then next up, comment on it, next up, like. So the bottom up, even though it's like a bogus strategy, it's based in a sequence it's based in a hierarchy hierarchy of what is the most important in terms of getting something more views.
Helen:So I even though I hate the idea of it, like, oh, that somebody made that up, like engage from the bottom up. It's that's a clever little way of saying the most important thing is forwarding. The next important thing is favoriting. The next important thing is commenting. And the next important thing is liking.
Helen:So it is quote from the bottom up because that's the value that it has to the algorithm. I know this is a lot but I I just feel that it warrants a deep discussion because I just don't think people realize the the value of, somebody being invested in you more than just for that moment, for that fly by night funny I've seen lots of funny videos of like a funny dog thing and millions of views on something. And the person barely has like a thousand followers because that video isn't value valuable enough to the viewer for them to want to follow. There has to be a trigger, especially now when the algorithms are so smart that if you like a dog video, you're gonna see a lot more dog videos. So you don't even need to follow it.
Helen:It's gonna follow you. It's gonna find you. I promise you that. So that's why I think most people now are not following. And Julie sent me this really interesting video from Gary v.
Helen:And I do think some of the things he says are very, very valuable. And this one was pretty interesting because it talked about how followers are not the important thing anymore. Content views. Getting your content in front of people is way more important than how many people are following you. So I kind of wanna wrap it up with that idea because I want you to really sit with it and think about it for a minute because it made so much sense.
Helen:As soon as he said it, I was like, it makes so much sense. The algorithms are so smart. The algorithms know what to send you for content. It's not dependent on you following necessarily. So the value of a follow has to be so much higher now.
Helen:It has to be like the person just doesn't wanna lose you. You have to be offering something so incredibly special that the person is like, I need this person in my life. I gotta follow. Versus, oh, that was funny. That entertained me.
Helen:That made me laugh. I watched it. That's not gonna prompt to follow as much because that person watching knows you're gonna get they're they are gonna get delivered more content like that. They don't have to follow to get more of the same. You get me?
Helen:I hope you do. I just found this so it's like higher level enlightening in a way. And it was like it all came flooding in when I saw the stats and the comments and the lack of following. I couldn't even believe it. And on the one video that I said go here to that had the less views, and I said go here to join my email list.
Helen:I mean, I even got people on my email list from that versus this mad viral video. Nobody did nobody bother to click my links in the profile? No. Because they just got the hot tip that I delivered and they moved on. It's you you need to get people more invested in your content to prompt the follow or make the sale or get them connected and committed to you and loyal to you so that they become invested in what you have to offer in your personal brand, in what you're sharing online.
Helen:It's just so much bigger. It's so I'm gonna say guys. I am because it's so much bigger, guys. I sound like a YouTuber, but it is. And sometimes it's like poof when I think of these things and I'm just like, I gotta talk about this.
Helen:Like, I gotta explain this. And I'm not always the best with words. You might find that funny for me to say as a as a person who's podcasting and making content. But I do get tongue tied a lot. I don't feel like I I don't feel like I express myself as clearly as a lot of these people who are so eloquent on their, social media content and YouTube content in general.
Helen:But I know I have a lot in here that I need to get out. So that's why I'm here doing it. So if you ever think I'm not as concise or I'm not as, clear or I can't I'm not as able to communicate, I mean, just look at me. I mean, I'm doing it. And I'm not even feeling like I'm great at it.
Helen:I just enjoy it enough so it pushes me past my self doubt. Okay. That was fun. So go to the newsletter today for the trends. That's what I have to say about that.
Helen:And there's a tutorial in there. There's music suggestions. There's content ideas for the week, all of the things. We even have a little quick question in there about what you're enjoying the most in the newsletter, and I would love to know that. Because when I send out these newsletters, I'm like, do am I wasting my time pulling in, you know, content ideas original content ideas?
Helen:Does any everybody just want the trends? We just really would like to know. So if you wouldn't mind just hitting the little click, pick one and let us know. And if you're interested in learning about how to edit this week in the studio, I am doing a, well, first we're doing content reviews in our meeting tomorrow, which is gonna be fun. That's a content review day where I do quick, audits.
Helen:And the other thing we're doing is practicing making content right in the apps so that you don't have spend time editing. So if you have a really rough week and you're like, I'm not gonna have time to edit or make content, quick ways to edit in app is helpful. So I'm doing I did a quick lesson on that for everybody, a little challenge for the week. And next week, we're gonna get into quick cut How to do quick cutting videos to make your content more viewable and more people get to suck people in a little more. Suck them in.
Helen:You know? Let's get them. Alright. That's it for today. Have a good one and I'll see you on Friday.
Helen:Thanks for being here as always and if you wouldn't mind leaving a review, I would greatly appreciate it or just leave a comment on the YouTube and tell me that you're watching. Bye.
