I’m going to say something that might sting a little.
That viral post you’re dreaming about? The one with thousands of likes, floods of comments, and a share count that makes your head spin? It probably won’t change your life. It might not even pay your electricity bill.
I know, because I’ve been there.
Not so long ago, I published a post on Instagram. I’d converted one of my articles into a flipbook format — text and images spread across ten slides, the kind of thing that stops the scroll. The headline asked: "Is there any intelligent life left on planet Earth?" Provocative, yes. Deliberately so. A question like that hooks curiosity before the reader even knows what they’re in for.
And it worked. By the numbers, it really worked.
The post pulled in 1,248 likes, 90 comments, and 88 saves. It reached over 9,000 accounts and clocked nearly 19,000 views. More than half of those came from people who didn’t follow me at all — strangers, drawn in by that headline, stopping their endless scroll long enough to look.
I should have been thrilled. I wasn’t.
Because here’s the number that actually matters: 45. That’s how many people clicked the link to find out more. Forty-five, out of nearly nineteen thousand views. And the revenue from all that reach, all those likes, all those strangers pausing their evening to engage with my work?
Zero. Nothing. Not a penny.
Now, I want to be fair to myself — and to you, if you’ve ever poured energy into a post that “did well” but left you wondering what you’d actually achieved. Going viral feels meaningful. The notifications rush in. People engage. You feel, briefly, like the world is paying attention.
But social media isn’t the world. It’s a river that never stops moving.
The moment your post appears, it starts sinking. Within hours, sometimes minutes, the algorithm has already decided what comes next. Another video. Another headline. Another burst of dopamine wrapped in a thumbnail. The reader who double-tapped your post forty seconds ago has already forgotten it. They’re not thinking about you. They’re on to the next thing, and the next, and the next.
This isn’t a criticism of those readers. It’s just the nature of the environment we’ve all agreed to play in.
What I’ve had to sit with — really sit with, honestly and uncomfortably — is the gap between visibility and value. They are not the same thing. A post can be seen by thousands and mean nothing to any of them. A single email, written to the right person at the right moment, can change everything.
Reach without relationship is noise.
The numbers I listed above tell a story, but not the one the algorithm wants you to believe. 257 new followers sounds encouraging until you ask what those followers did next. Most of them: nothing. Following someone on Instagram costs no effort and requires no commitment. It’s the digital equivalent of picking up a leaflet and putting it in your bag. Most leaflets end up in the bin.
I’m not saying social media is worthless. I’m saying it’s worth far less than we’re told, and far less than it feels in the moment a post takes off.
What actually builds something real? What actually creates a business, a readership, a community that shows up and does something?
Relationships do. Trust does. Showing up consistently, in the right places, for the right people — that does.
The followers who matter aren’t the ones who double-tapped at midnight because your headline made them curious. They’re the ones who sought you out, signed up to your list, came back the following week, and eventually bought something because they believed you had something genuine to offer.
You can’t manufacture that with a clever headline. You can only earn it, slowly, by being worth returning to.
So I’m not chasing virality any more. I’d rather have 100 people who genuinely care what I think than 10,000 who scrolled past me on a Tuesday evening and moved on. The first group changes things. The second group is just a statistic.
Here’s what I’d ask you to consider: where are you putting your energy? Are you building something that lasts, or are you optimising for a number that disappears the moment someone more interesting appears in the feed?
The answer to that question is worth more than any viral post I’ve ever made.