Do you get discouraged by your follower and engagement counts on social media even though you’re posting consistently and working hard to achieve success?
Many influencers plan and create content with the intent to go viral, but there’s actually a lot of value in creating good content on a regular basis.
In this post, we explain how consistency can actually be better than virality for your long-term success on social media.
Consistency vs virality explained
What does consistency mean when it comes to social media? And what does it mean to go viral?
When we talk about consistency versus virality, we’re talking about growing an audience by choosing a posting schedule and sticking with it for a long period of time.
When we talk about going viral, we don’t necessarily mean a video that suddenly receives millions and millions of views and gets reshared to multiple social media platforms in many different ways.
“Viral” to us means posts that receive a significant increase in views and engagements.
Many creators who post inconsistently plan content specifically in the hopes that it’ll go viral. They’ll cover popular events and plan collaborations in advance.
This is perfectly fine, but we’re going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of choosing this strategy over posting consistently.
Algorithms like both but favor consistency
Social media algorithms like consistency and virality. This is because what algorithms favor most is engagement.
With this line of thinking, it’s safe to say that posting consistently is the better path to success because it allows you to receive many engagements even if your posts never truly go “viral.”
Plus, creators who post consistently are more likely to publish more posts than creators who only publish posts that have the potential to go viral.
So, when the algorithm finally favors one of your videos, it has many more to choose from to fill your audience’s feed.
This is also why being consistent with the type of posts you publish is also important.
It’s also why some creators who go viral are rarely heard from again. None of their videos are like the one that went viral.
They also don’t post often enough for the algorithm to pick up on their content.
Consistency builds trust
Social media users are complex. Some are easy to win over while others need to be a fan of yours for a while before they start to trust you.
Consistency helps build trust because it demonstrates your ability to show up for your audience regularly over time.
Your content discusses or references topics in your niche only other members of your niche would understand, and your content is always top notch.
Over time, the audience you build will start to trust your opinions on brands and products you recommend as well as any products you sell yourself.
Viral videos, while entertaining, don’t instill enough trust for this.
Consistency improves your chances of going viral
The more you post, the higher the likelihood of your videos getting picked up by social media algorithms.
When TikTok favors a creator, it’ll place more of that creators’ videos on the For You Page (FYP) for users who have liked similar content.
The more tiktoks you post, the more likely one will show up on the FYP.
And if a user likes one of your posts and watches it all the way through, they’ll see more of your content on the FYP.
Take TikTok creators @jourdangames and @peter_mai_ as examples.
Both creators have 7.2 million likes.
But their followings are quite different. Peter has 326,000 followers while Jourdan has 82,000.
Peter has uploaded 297 videos, according to SocialBlade, while Jourdan has uploaded 400.
This shows how a higher number of engagements does not necessarily lead to a larger audience.
Consistency helps virality
So, if consistency is a more reliable way to build a loyal social media following, should you bother trying to go viral at all?
Of course not.
It’s still a very good idea to cover trending topics and collaborate with other creators in the hopes of getting more attention from the algorithm.
A consistent posting schedule is simply what will encourage casual viewers to become followers and eventually fans when one of your videos goes viral.
This is also much easier to do if you have a large library of similar posts for them to watch.
Check out this quote from a study conducted by researchers working in the Department of Computer Science at the Sapienza University of Rome in Italy:
“When virality manifests following a sustained growth phase, it represents the final burst of that growth process.”
The study was conducted to evaluate the effect viral posts have on social media.
This conclusion shows how a consistent posting schedule and a viral video or moment goes hand in hand to successfully take a small to medium-sized creator out of the growth phase where they’re earning followers but not necessarily a loyal following and into a phase where they have active fans.
Brand consistency encourages growth
You may not put yourself on the same level as Duolingo, a successful SaaS company who have demonstrated that brands don’t need to be stiff and professional to be successful on social media, but you’re still a brand.
You’re a small-time media company who generates money from ads and sponsorships, just as talk shows have done for decades.
It’s this distinction that can truly help you understand the importance of consistency on social media.
Studies show that when brands are consistent on social media, meaning they follow a strict publishing schedule and regularly create the same types of content, their growth increases.
According to a survey conducted by Marq, 33% of professionals say their brands have grown by 20% or more by being consistent on social media.
35% have seen growth rates between 10 and 20% while 21% have seen growth rates between 5 and 10%.
Only 11% of professionals have seen very little growth.
Consistency will help if your niche goes viral
Sometimes it’s not a specific creator or video that goes viral on social media. It’s an entire niche.
There may come a time when the niche you’re a part of becomes more popular on social media.
When it does, your content will suddenly increase in views and engagement as social media users become more eager to learn more about topics related to your niche.
What does it mean to be consistent on social media?
Consistency on social media is easy to define and can be broken down into two components: how often you post content and the types of content you post.
Unfortunately, there’s no set posting schedule that works for everyone.
It all depends on the type of content you want to create and how much effort you need to put into that content.
Quality is more important than quantity, so you should base your posting schedule on how long it takes you to create a quality piece of content.
To be consistent, stick to your posting schedule once you choose it.
As for what consistency has to do with the types of content you create, let’s check back in with the two TikTok creators we discussed earlier.
Even though they have different follower counts, at 7.2 million likes each, both @peter_mai_ and @jourdangames have found quite a bit of success on TikTok.
Jourdan’s most popular videos have around 2.5 million views each while Peter’s most popular video has 22 million. He also has a few that have around 1.5 million views each.
However, these videos are just one of many.
Much of the time both creators have been on TikTok has been spent creating the same type of content.
Peter posts hiking videos in his home country of Austria while Jourdan posts comedic skits referencing popular video games.
The majority of Peter’s videos include a vibrant personality and a genuine love for life and nature while Jourdan’s videos feature faithful yet simple cosplays of characters as well as references that demonstrate how familiar she is with the games she makes videos about.
Because of this consistency, when a user comes across one of their videos on their FYP and likes it, the algorithm is able to find several more just like it that were posted fairly recently.
Therefore, it’s safe to come to the conclusion that consistency is key to success on social media.
Why engagement is most important for success
You can teach social media algorithms what you’re into by being careful about the kind of content you watch, like, follow and search for.
This is why engagement is so important for social media. The more users interact with your content, the more they’ll see it in their feeds.
This increases your odds of appearing in other users’ feeds, not just those who have interacted with your content.
So, while you work on being more consistent with posting high-quality content on a regular basis and publishing content that has the potential to go viral, you should also work on receiving more engagements from your content.
Along with likes, these include comments, shares and follows.
We have a post on video ideas that generate engagement.
They include ideas like publishing behind-the-scenes videos, answering a question on TikTok with a video, creating a video series, and publishing how-to videos.
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