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Going Viral Isn’t The Goal: Beating The Game Of Online Writing
When people first start writing online, they think “going viral” is the goal.
- “My entire life will change if I can get 1,000,000 views.”
- “Going viral means I am a successful writer.”
- “Once my writing catches fire, I won’t need to write as much. I can relax.”
In reality, when it comes to beating the game of online writing, the winning strategy is the complete opposite.
Over the past seven years (since I started writing daily on Quora back in 2014), I have had more than 300 articles “go viral.” How I define “viral” is a piece that accumulates more than 250,000 views in a compressed time frame — usually 48 hours or so. Of those ~300 viral hits, 50 crossed 500,000 views in 24–48 hours, with another 10 or so accumulating anywhere from 500k to 1M+ views.
And every time, the result was the same:
For a few days, I saw all my stats go up by a factor of ten — followers, reach, engagement, shares, etc. And then at the end of the virality cycle, all my stats would return back to average. If I went viral on a Friday, come Monday morning, I was right back to being “just another writer” on the internet.
