How To Go Viral: Gary Vaynerchuck’s content coach taught us these 8 things

We've been dying to learn the hacks, the processes of content creators who are not just hitting one viral post, but are hitting viral posts consistently. And we have put a huge commitment and huge effort and a huge financial commitment also into learning this.

From what we have seen, the commonalities between all of these courses is 4 to 5 hashtags. They are placed at the end of the caption in a really nice, succinct way. So not in the first comment at the end of the caption.

I wish I could tell you that there was a hack. I wish I could tell you that there was a tactic, a strategy, one song, one hook, one caption, one type of thing that's going to help you go viral. But there's not.

Welcome to the Success School podcast. We're on episode 45 today. We're talking about what we learned from doing a viral content course. Steph, are we excited for today's topic?

We actually have done three viral content courses, courses in the past, like three or four months. And so, yeah, we're super excited to teach you guys what we've learned. We're super excited to teach you guys what we've uncovered. We're obviously trying really hard to learn this, so we're going to teach you everything that we have paid for to learn today, which we are so excited for. But before we dive in, we have a little podcast update. We want to say thank you to all of the new listeners that we have this week from the uk. It is absolutely insane. Like today. I actually just can't believe that.

All right, Mike.

That was my copper.

All right, Copper. Is it copper? Copper, I think.

Is it cobbler? Cobbler, Sorry, sorry guys.

We're it not good in the uk.

But we appreciate you.

All right, guys, personal update. So we've just been in Bali and we were surrounded by Steph would say, very good looking people. Everyone in Uluwatu is like a 10 out of 10, which is really weird. So you kind of end up having to like lift your standards. And we went to a, a local gym there and I'm gonna say everyone was a beast. And I'm used to being the biggest beast in any gym that I train in. And I was not the biggest beast in this gym, which was great because it pushed me to get better, which was epic. So we're in a gym, we're doing some classes and, and usually we're doing weightlifting. Actually. Usually I can outlift everyone by 40 or 50 kilos. And there was dudes doing the same weight as Me, which was great, but also it pushed me further. At the end of the session, Steph was like, I hadn't seen you push that hard in a very long time. I was doing that I never would normally do just so I could actually keep up with other people, which was epic. Which kind of reminds me of, like, business as well, and like a community, like, success school. The reason you surround yourself with people that are ahead of you is because it forces you to be better. Okay. And that's kind of like the whole point of this, like, personal update or this lesson of the week is like, you want to surround yourself with people who are better than you, and it forces you to become better. Steph, what did you see of me and Bali that that kind of stood out for you?

Yeah, I think that, you know, usually Tim kind of goes on cruise mode at the gym because he can, yeah. Outlift most people. But I saw him, you know, when he probably usually would have been like, I'm done. Like, just keep pushing and go that little bit harder and push that one more rep. Like, I saw one guy doing three handstand push ups, and Tim was like, I'm gonna do four, you know, and so it did force him to level up his game and. And be better. And I think that sometimes, like, having a bit of, you know, inspiration and competition, motivation, however you want to look at it, is healthy. I think it drives us to be better. I think it drives us to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. I think it makes us strive to want to achieve more. And I really saw that new. I thought it was really cool. Yeah. My personal update is that when we were in Bali, very similar, I reflected on kind of what I wanted to do with my time. We're moving into a new season of.

Business, and you want to do something with your time.

Believe it or not, I just want to lay by pool all day. And I sort of reflected on what my priorities are going into this next season. And I think that, you know, I speak a lot about ideal week. And if you're in our Facebook group, I've given our free Facebook group. I've given out, you know, our ideal week template quite a bit. And if you're on our email list, you'll receive a copy of that. This week. We love to give away little freebies to our subscribers. And so for me, the ideal week that I have just developed moving forward is really focused around my current priorities. And it's a bit of a reminder for you guys that at different stages in life and different stages in business, your priorities are going to shift. And it's really important that we update what we want our working week to look like through each season of our life. And, you know, this is really relevant, especially if you're a mother. You know, school holidays are going to be very different. Ideal week to, you know, when your children are at school. And for me, this season, the last six months, really for us, has been about growing success, school, and getting those systems and those processes into the right team in place. And now we're moving into a new season where, okay, we're not so focused on the growth, we're really focused on the maintenance. But also I get to now refocus on what do I want to do. And for me, it's more deep writing, it's more connection with our audience, a lot more focus on learning and upskilling, and definitely a huge focus on health. For me in this season, when I talk about health, I just mean about, you know, looking after my body in the best shape and get the best shape I can and look after myself and move and stretch and become really functional and. And feel really confident and all of those sorts of things where I'm putting my focus into this time. And that's very much reflected in my current ideal week.

I must say, it's super exciting to see you lit up about health. So what are you doing with your nutrition? Tell us. Give a shout out.

I'll give a shout out. So I. We have a beautiful client. We have a lot of beautiful clients in our program, but one of our clients is Angela, and I really love her ethos, and her business is called the Healthy Diary. And we. I've just signed up for 12 weeks of coaching with her, which I'm super excited about, just to learn how to eat a little bit more intuitively while also being able to maintain, you know, a really healthy and really sustainable weight for myself that feels great for my body without calorie counting or huge restrictions or diets or any of those things. So I'm really excited. And yeah, shout out to Ange. I'm super excited to be working with you.

I must say, it's very funny as a partner because I give Steph very similar advice with her nutrition and have done for our entire relationship together, but as soon as she hears it from someone else, Ange is a wizard. Yeah, we've been telling her the same for the past 10 years, and I get no credit.

Anybody that's listening to this will know your husbands can stay stuff as soon as. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I'm dumb. I don't know nothing. All right, Anyway, guys, If you're on YouTube, you'd notice we've got some red porn lights behind us now. So if you like those, let us know. Subscribe, anyone on YouTube. Hello. How are you? Steph, do you want to give us an intro to this topic?

So this is the topic of what we learned from doing a viral content course. Now, again, to be clear, we've actually done three viral content courses in the last three months. We've been dying to learn the hacks, the processes of content creators who are not just hitting one viral post, but hitting viral posts consistently, that they're growing huge audiences. Their audiences are growing month on month. And we're like, there's got to be a hack to this. There's got to be a system. That's got to be a process. And we have put a huge commitment and huge effort and a huge financial commitment also into learning this. Our thought process around this concept of going viral was that if they can do it consistently, there must be a process. And so we've been determined to learn it so that we can know it for ourselves, build our own audience, but also to teach to our clients. And so we are really excited to break down the lessons for you. And I think you're going to be a little bit surprised about some of our realizations about the algorithm, our biggest takeaways. And I really want you to stay until the end because we are going to be sharing all of the algorithm hacks. I think we have eight of them that we're going to be sharing with you to help you get viral content. So takeaway number one. Tim, kick us off.

All right, I'm going to kick us off. I am not the most viral person, but I have studied this at nauseum. But to tell you the truth, guys, no one really knows how it works. Okay, so we were actually on a call with someone who has, I think, 4 million followers between all platforms. And we asked him the other day is like, has the algorithm change? And he said, yeah, it changes all the time. And no one really knows what is that exactly is going on. So that was kind of fascinating for me to hear someone who has 4 million followers across social media platforms say that to us directly on a one to one call. Which made me kind of realize that, you know, maybe we're not doing too badly with social media and a lot of people we know, everyone's kind of trying their best. I think you kind of need to figure it out and find out what works for you and study what the other viral creators are doing. I think you also need to understand that the algorithm changes every so often without warning. So everyone is kind of just blindly muddling their way through this thing. So, you know, for you, my advice on this is if you're trying to go viral, find someone who does exactly what you do. So if you're in low ticket or high ticket or finance coaching or health and fitness or relationship coaching, find the best example in the world on social media, if you can, and see what is working for them and use that as a model. Obviously, these things are going to change. So if you're just copying someone, you know, and they're like three steps ahead of you, then you're always going to be behind the eight ball. But you just want to look to them for inspiration.

Yeah. And I think, like, so this, the same thread came through from all the different people that we've spoken to and all the different courses, and it was like, find someone who's doing really well in their niche and basically replicate their content. And that was pretty much the predominant piece of advice that's come through from all platforms. Like one of the guys that we're working with that we paid to work with recently, he's been working with Gary V. And helped him create all his viral content. And so, you know, we're talking about people who really, really know, and still we found out that they don't really know. And it's this really interesting thing. So our biggest takeaway, number two, is that you are probably gonna have to put in a lot of work to figure this out. So I think that everybody's looking. I just. I wish I could tell you that there was a hack. I wish I could tell you that there was a tactic, a strategy, one song, one, you know, hook, one caption, one type of thing that's gonna help you go viral, but there's not. This is something you're gonna have to put a lot of work in to figure out. It really needs to be something that you want to do because you're gonna have to focus on it a lot. You're gonna have to absorb yourself. You're gonna have to look at the data every single day. You're going to have to trial and error and fail and succeed in order to make it work. And that's a lot of time. And so the thing that we really encourage you to think about here is if it's going to take you a lot, Tim and I have a lot of skills. I would say that we are pretty highly skilled in, you know, copy, in creative, in hooks, in captions and things like that.

Cooking.

And definitely probably not cooking as much. But we're pretty good in the world of marketing, I would say. And we're struggling to figure out how to go viral. And we're putting a lot of time, effort, resources, connections behind this, and we're going to have to continue putting a lot more time into. Because we haven't hacked it yet. My question to you needs to be in. The question you probably need to ask yourself, if you're listening to this, is, is this the right investment of my time for me in my business? Because I know a lot of people think that going viral is going to solve all of their problems. But every single. Yeah, every single person that we know who's gone viral doesn't actually see a huge uptake in additional revenue long term. So initially, yeah, you might get some boosts, but long term, the up, like, you know, we're talking six months, 12 months down the line. A lot of those followers are unfollowing, a lot of them are ghosting, A lot of them are going quiet. We're not seeing a huge uptake in additional revenue long term. So this is your reminder that going viral doesn't immediately mean that you're going to make a lot of money. Or it might mean that you make some money in the short term, but not in the long term. And that. And I think the thing that has been most paramount for you and I in our learnings on this has been like, we can do what needs to be done to go viral, but do we want to for our brand and for our integrity and for kind of our soul's purpose and our mission? Because a lot of the advice that Tim and I have been given about going viral is to do really, like, generic kind of based content.

Yeah, lame shit.

Like, stuff that we don't feel very good about. Like, you know, take one of Alex Hormozi's podcast posts and, you know, copy it, or take one of his posts and tear it down and disagree with it publicly and that'll get you viral. And all of this stuff that we just don't. We don't really agree. We're taking people down on the Internet. We don't really agree. We're copying people's stuff. We don't really agree. And so there's this level of integrity for us as thought leaders and as leaders in our industry where it doesn't really feel good. And I don't know if the Payoff is worth the lack of, of integrity that we're going to have to put into it to make it happen. And so I really encourage you guys to also think about this. Like, in order to continue going viral or to go viral in the first place, are you willing to do things that maybe don't align with your brand or your key messaging in order to do it? And so for us, that's been something that we have had to really think about for ourselves. And for us, it's probably not worth it.

Yeah. I've got a question for you, Steph, and I want to give this a little bit of context. So we know a lot of people trying to go viral and actively trying, which we appreciate. And then you've got, you know, the other end of the spectrum where people are poo pooing on that because they're doing things that maybe they don't agree with and then they are poo pooing that publicly. So what are your thoughts on people that poo poo other people for trying to go viral? It's really common in the Bisbee world.

Yeah. So we are seeing this, this surgeon. So I think it's really sad and I really hate that we're seeing this surgeons like, resurgence in the industry right now of especially female entrepreneurs. Yeah. Poo pooing other female entrepreneurs for having a go. And, you know, we see people trying to take people down the Internet. You know, I've seen coaches say this. I've seen brands do this. I've seen, you know, companies do this and they. All they care about is money. I've seen people taking people down for using B roll. I've seen people taking people down for wanting to go viral. And it's just like, guys, just stay in your own lane. Gives a. Yeah, stay in your own lane. Like, I think, you know, really focus on what you want and how you can be the best. Like, we see stuff on the Internet all the time that we don't agree with and we don't take people down for it because that person's actually probably just trying their best. Yeah, they're trying their hardest. And I think that if we could all just be a little bit kinder to each other and less judgmental. And I really don't think that being judgmental helps your brand because, you know, if you think about it like, so petty, it looks petty and it makes your. It makes your clients feel unsafe. You know, we don't judge our clients. We don't judge anyone on the Internet because of that. Our clients feel really safe to work with us, to be with us, to know that we're never going to judge them. And so I really encourage you guys, if you're. If you're the kind of person right now that's making content that is taking other people's, you know, content and kind of trying to take them down a peg, I really encourage you to think it probably a little bit bigger than your current context and really think about the fact that you are not creating safety for the people who are witnessing you and watching you. And it's going to create a distrust in your brand, and it's probably doing you no favors in the long term. So, yeah, I think that's. That's really interesting. But for us, I think, like us, you really need to consider if you actually want to go viral and what you're willing to do to get there.

Yeah. All right, guys, we're moving into eight hacks that we learned, so we're going to give these to you free. I'm going to do the first four, and then Steph is going to do the back four. So there are a few different thoughts patterns or, you know, ideas around hashtags. Do they work? Do they not work? These kind of thoughts change all the time. From what we have seen the commonalities, all of these courses is 4 to 5 hashtags. They are placed at the end of the caption in a really nice, succinct way. So not in the first comment at the end of the caption. There's a few tools around them. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure. But you need to find ones that are relevant to your audience. The other thing with captions or sorry, hashtags is that there are banned hashtags which will, you know, quote, unquote downvote your content if you use them. So you need to find out which hashtags you're using and are they banned? Okay. Because that's going to negatively affect you.

Yeah. And we'll add the link to that hashtag research tool down below so you guys can get access to it.

The second one is we want to be posting reels daily. Okay. Reels are the things that bring in the audience. Okay. So they're going to be growing your audience. Carousels, pictures. These types of things are going to be more nurture tools for your audience. So reels daily, so 5 second reels or shorter reels are really popping off. You want to kind of maximum of 20 seconds. And this is on Instagram. I know other platforms are A little bit longer. So YouTube shorts is about 50 to 60, 60 seconds is the ideal time. And then tick tock can be 60 seconds plus now as well. So but for IG reels under 20 seconds, 5 seconds is great. And looping, okay, so looping because that racks up the view count as well. Obviously if you post it to your stories as well, you're going to get a ton of views there. But reels daily, so the carousel posts are also daily. These are more of a nurture tool. So if you're trying to teach someone something, provide value, etc. That is what you're going to do in the carousel posts. And then there are no more than three posts per day. Okay, so let's say you do two reels a day and then one carousel post. There are ways to do this very easily, Steph and I recommend like B roll on the background and then some words like they're pretty easy reels to make. Talking heads are another one where we're talking to camera. It's a little bit harder to make and you need to be a little bit better on camera. So it's quite hard to do.

The only other thing that I would add to the reels is if you're going to do a long form reel. So you know, Tim kind of mentioned like maybe a talking head or something that's going to go for more than 20 seconds. We got recommended that it is really important to constantly changing the scene behind it. So every two to three seconds having a scene change in the background, it just keeps people really connected to the reel and keeps them interested. If it's just your face talking and talking and talking, there's nothing really changing on the screen. People are going to click off it. You're going to find that you're, that you're not going to get that loop, you're not going to get that watch time, you're not going to get that replay. And so we highly recommend that you every two to three seconds kind of change the background or change something about the screen to make it engaging and interesting to keep watching.

All right, our third hack guys, is we're going to optimize for shares, verse comments and likes. So we want to think about our content in the eyes of our consumer, not the eyes of ourself. Okay. We want to build content for other people and have it shareable. Okay. So quote posts, you know, value based posts, things that people can take away, share with their friends are all things we want to optimize for. So I want you guys to ask yourself, next time you're creating reels, is this shareable and is this providing value for someone else? That's going to be a really good filter for you to create really good content going forward. Our fourth hack, guys, is replays and time on the app are what Instagram is optimizing for. Okay, so we want to make sure that people are watching our reels multiple time and they're spending as much time as possible on Instagram. So if you've got a carousel, make it 10 slides, because reading 10 slides is going to optimize how much time they're spending on the platform. Therefore you're going to get a boost in the algorithm.

Them that. And like when we talk about replays, you know, if you do a five second reel with a really long caption, as someone's reading the caption, the the reel is going to be replaying in the background, which is going to be clocking up your views and it's going to be showing Instagram that people are watching your content a lot. And obviously then your content is going to be reprioritized. So that's where the 5 second reels come in really handy. Um, yeah, in Instagram are trying to keep people on the app. So when, when it goes to shares and follows it, it's. Well, when we go to like it's optimizing for shares, it's because if you share a reel with a friend, which happens a lot in like the DM these days, if you share a reel with a friend and your friend gets a notification, they're going to come back on the platform. And that's what Instagram are ideally optimizing for is people to keep coming back to the platform. So make it something that they can see themselves in so they can share it with their friends and be like, oh my God, this is you or this is me or oh my God, this is us, that sort of thing. Because then you're going to get more and more people back on the platform. Instagram is going to love you for doing that. And then they're going to optimize and push out more of your content. Countdown timers on real. So this is point number five. You can put countdown times on your reel. So basically as you are editing the reel across the bottom, there would be a bar that would count down how many seconds are left of the reel. This works especially well for like a talking head reel. So if you're speaking to camera about something, it just lets people know it's kind of like that, that Concept of like watching your Uber driver drive down the road to meet you. It's kind of like you enjoy almost watching how long it goes for. It's almost, almost this kind of. It's almost like a trance. And so I highly recommend adding a countdown timer to your reel. It lets people know that there's. They do it on YouTube as well, you know, three seconds to the add ins that sort of thing and you kind of get kind of almost hooked into the countdown timer of that. So that's a really easy hack to add onto your videos in the editing platform. Number six is B roll of you. So we spoke about, you know you can use a lot of B roll, you know, which is just basically behind the scenes videos with text on top of make sure that all of your B roll is actually of you and not stock videos or images. It just allows people to connect with you more. And sometimes like if you, especially if you're doing a long reel that 60 seconds and you're doing a lot of chopping of scenes in the behind the scenes make sure all of the B roll that gets entered is actually from you, from your life, from your world. And that's going to make people build that no like and trust and really buy more into your brand really quickly. Number seven is if you are under. This is a piece of advice that we got given and something that I did when I was growing my account but you know, stop doing because I think the advice changed at some point but I think I guess it's back in fashion now. If you're under 10k followers make sure that you follow back and like and comment on your followers stuff. So someone follows you follow them and they're an ideal client especially follow them back like and comment on their stuff. Really build and nurture that community again. That was something that I definitely did up until probably 15k followers and then stopped doing.

All right, flexing. Yeah, yeah, 23,000 followers.

But this was a piece of advice that we got. It just says that like basically what allows you to like build a community and ultimately that's what these platforms are supposed to be for. They're supposed to be for social, you know, media. Like it's supposed to be about being social and building community. So that's where that works. And then last but not least, please space your captions out. So we don't want huge blocks of text, ideally line by line, lots of emojis. It just allows people to read the content really easily. If they see a massive block of text, they're going to be more likely to scroll through and just scroll on. We want them to read every single line. So there are eight, eight hacks that we paid honestly a lot of money for over the last. At least, probably a couple of grand over the last couple of months to teach you guys. That's what we've learned from it, I guess for us and I guess where. I would love to know, Tim, where do you. Where does this leave you now? Like, you know, all this stuff we've learned, all this stuff we've been playing around with it. What's your movement or feeling on this moving forward?

I am not relying on going viral to change lives, fulfill my mission and get rich. That's kind of where I sit. I definitely post every day or every weekday across multiple platforms. For me, I'm more about going deep with people as well. You know, no pun intended on any of that. But I, I'm more about providing like really deep value, really like good content, really solid information that they can take away rather than this like clickbaity, realsy type stuff to go viral. So where it leaves me, I'm definitely going to use the stuff that we've learned in courses in my content as well. But I'm probably going to focus more on personal Facebook. That's kind of my platform of choice at the moment. What about you?

Yeah, I think that I liked a lot of what I've learned, but I have no interest in gaming the algorithm and like losing brand reputation or changing the way that I present or my thought leadership or the things that I want to share to try and make that happen. And just a reminder guys, like, you know, we're on track this year to hit, you know, well over $2 million and we have have between us 30, 000 followers. So I just want to remind you, like, you don't need it. And a lot of people that we know that do go viral aren't making as much money as us. And so there is just that reminder that like just and honestly going viral can be also a headache because you have a lot of dms, a lot. Like you have to really be ready for when that hits. Like, okay, so if you went viral tomorrow and you had 70 people reaching out to work with you, are you actually prepared for that? Is your business actually set up, up to receive that? You know, we can sit around hoping and waiting and wishing and wanting when that happens, that's make or break time for your business. And so if you are planning on going viral, you've really got, if this is, if this is your number one focus. You've really got to have a business that's ready to actually receive that as well.

Yeah, I just want to. From what we've seen, like from our clients, I think the couple things that go wrong is they don't post enough. I'd say the quality they post is substandard. And then lastly, I would say that it's kind of an afterthought for them. Content. They're like the top three things. So. Episode recap. Steph, do you want to kick us off?

Yes. So the things that you need to take away and remember from this episode is that you will have to make a concerted effort to go viral. No one has a secret or a hack. It is all trial and error. You've got to decide for you where the best investment of your time is. Okay? So you could figure out how to go viral and spend all this time trying to make these viral reels and spend trying to spend all this time trying to bring in this audience. Or you could spend just as much time learning ads or focusing on any other app where your ideal clients hang out and potentially make more money from it. Going viral is not as easy as people make it out and oftentimes it's not worth it unless you are able to actually attract ideal clients. So I'm going to give you a really quick example here. But if you have a brick and mortar business, going viral may not help you. Okay. It probably won't help you because it's unlikely that you're going to attract for an hour. Example is unlikely that we're going to attract people who live close enough to our gym to actually attend it. Okay? And then last but not least, guys, please. My biggest takeaway for you today is to review where you get the most sales from in your business and focus on that platform first. Don't get distracted by the shiny allure of virality. Okay? It's not all it's cracked up to be. It's not as easy as they make it out to be. So please don't feel like you should be doing that. I like if you. The number one thing that we give our clients advice on in success school is if you want to get a fast result in your business to make more money in business, we just want to dial up what's already working for you. We don't want to jump around and add more stuff to your plate because it's going to make more time, more effort, more overwhelm, which you obviously don't want. So focus on the platforms that are currently working for you first.

Alright guys, if you got some value from that episode, don't forget to subscribe or follow the show on whatever platform you're on on. Also, send us a message with some top takeaways that you guys got from that. It's been great. Thanks Steph.

Thanks so much.