HOW TO GO VIRAL ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Since the dawn of The World Wide Web, the vague, abstract, seemingly random laws of virality have ruled citizens of the internet with unpredictable dominance. From email chains and forwardable messages that ominously threatened your well-being via hoax intimidation if you did not share the message with all your 10 friends within the next 24 hours, to ‘What does the Fox say?’, from ‘Charlie bit my finger’ to Charli D’amelio, our internet has churned out more viral media that we can possibly remember. 

The landscape of the internet has changed since the times of Gangnam Style, and with it, the boundaries that once defined virality have shifted.

There is so much media that exists now, that even videos with millions of views get lost in the ecosystem and forgotten about by Tuesday. The moment is over, and the algorithm will move on. Therefore, the challenge for creators and brands isn’t necessarily just achieving virality, but it’s being prepared for it. Today’s media landscape and its audiences demand more from their creators than simple entertainment. Brands, influencers, product, services, and companies act as tokens of status signifiers- their images serving as landmarks of societal culture, commodities to be used when cultivating an identify from consumption. For example, wearing a pair of yoga pants from Lululemon, a multinational athletic apparel brands, symbolises simply more than comfortable leggings but you are buying into an ecosystem. A lifestyle branded as aesthetic, healthy, clean, motivated. Exercise, but elevated, luxury and practical. Maybe you’re purchasing based on their sustainability effort or their commitment to a ‘movement of mindfulness’. It signals ‘Pilates princess’ and protein shakes, brunch with iced coffee, and sleek effortless fitness, more effectively than $10 tights from Target ever could. 

Nowadays, consumers and viewers choose to place their support in things that will serve them in cultural, social or political ways. Aligning themselves with a creator or brand demonstrates to their followers/peers what they stand for, believe in, what they consider of high interest or value. 

There have been many one-hit wonders of our time. Regular people turned Z-list celebrities turned regular people again. But what happened to Salt Bae? What is Moo Deng or the Hawk Tuah girl doing now? These examples of extreme internet virality have fizzled into the woodwork, becoming history, only a memory of the success it once had. 

The timeline/lifespan of a viral video can be quite predictable. It usually goes something like this: 

• Person/place/thing catches the attention of many for a certain catchphrase/action from the video.
• The video gains traction, many shares, like comments, reposts on various platforms.
• It may become a meme, take on a life of its own, is repeated, replayed over and over, the source material is beaten to death, run over, destroyed, made unrecognisable, copyright and trademarked, merchandise, online store, big corporation like Pepsi capitalises on the meme, all life is sucked out of it until the internet is bored.
• Cycle repeats. 

There is a scramble, a flurry of energy, when creators realise they are sitting on something great. They hurry to monetise this moment of fame into something longer than five seconds. The thing is, for something to be so widely viral and popular, the content must be vague, short and flexible enough to appeal to everyone. therefore, viral moments are pretty meaningless. They don’t hold enough cultural weight to remain relevant beyond being just a funny inside joke. 

How to overcome this?

Brittany Tomlinson is an American internet personality with over 2.5 million subscribers on Youtube, 7.5million on TikTok.

Tomlinson, also know as, the Kombucha Girl in 2019. After going viral on Twitter and subsequently Reddit, TikTok and Instagram, for a funny video of her trying kombucha for the first time Tomlinson lost her job as an insurance agent and was flown out to LA by a kombucha company. There, she fulfilled endless brand deals, sponsorship, press and eventually a SuperBowl commercial. Her longevity up until now can be credited to her branding, personality, and content.

The Brittany Broski Brand:

While also being a great comedian, Brittany Tomlison has successfully branded herself in a unique and different way. Going by ‘Brittany Broski’, her fans, named Broski Nation’, developed an interest in her relatable, laidback style of communicating in combination with the discussion topics such as Beethoven, Medieval history, and art analysis. Her range and ability to diversify her content has allowed herself to exist beyond the confines of the Kombucha girl box, demonstrating substance and value to viewers with her ability to transition from short-form content to offering longer documentary length YouTube videos.

Additionally, her Medieval themed web series ‘Royal Court’ have given her the opportunity to demonstrate her talent for interviewing. Her collaborations with celebrities Charli XCX and Cole Sprouse are down-to-earth, engaging, and natural. Moving from the internet space into Hollywood can be difficult, but as Emma Chamberlain and Liza Koshy have proved in the past, YouTube is a great bridging point for connecting these two planes where everyone can be an influencer to a world of exclusivity. Hence, Broski has interviewed actors such as Timothee Chalamet and artists like Hozier branching her out into the security of mainstream media. consequently, what Broski has cultivated the most successfully is a community. An audience that resonates with what she has to say, as she tiptoes between the lines of light-hearted viral meme culture and online permanence.

Her personal podcast ‘The Broski Report’ sheds a humanist lens on her comedic persona, allowing viewers to relate to her and her intimate anecdotes around religion, family, politics, and relationships. Gone are the days of passive consumption. If you dislike the video on your phone, you don’t pick up the television remote and switch the channel, you block, report, mute, unfollow, remove, uninstall, delete, unsubscribe, or even just swipe onto the next interesting thing down your infinite feed. Brittany Broski has found her audience and given them a reason to stay.

In essence, effectively connecting with real people online means being fully really yourself. Well-rounded three dimensional, and especially in the age of AI-generated content, branding that feels raw, genuine, and human is almost poignantly rare.

So, I encourage you to look beyond the churning machine of numbers, calculative algorithms, and viral stardom. Because in this oversaturated climate, real people will look towards content that possesses the endurance to offer them more than a shallow fleeting moment. Yes, you want to go viral. But is your brand ready to go viral? Do you have the infrastructure, the identity and aspiration of Lululemon, the relatability and humanity of Broski? We all want to be a part of something, so be connected to something. Will you withstand the mechanical jaws of the internet and form actual connections with people (who also want to be connected to you too), or will you fade into the graveyard of emptiness and obscurity next to planking and Raygun?