The ‘Viral’ Trap, Explained

0:00If you make content and you're trying to turn views into dollars, you have to avoid this one critical mistake. Do not chase virality. Now, you would think more views equals more dollars. But it doesn't. This is called the viral trap. And it's the biggest mistake creators make, especially if they're using content to build a business. Now, I spend all of my time in the content world. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views. I can go viral whenever I want. Yet, I've realized pure virality is the wrong strategy. So, in this video, I'm going to break down the better one. If you're a business owner

0:32making content, I'm going to explain how to avoid the viral trap and a better strategy for building a content machine that prints money for your business. All right, first off, let's tackle the elephant in the room. Why is pure virality a trap? Think of social media like a giant wheel. Around the wheel, there are lots of different slices, and each one of those slices represents a topic. Fitness, business, cooking, nursing, there are thousands of different topics covered on social media. Now, the width of each of those slices maps roughly to the amount of

1:01people that spend time in those areas. Some slices are super narrow because they represent smaller topics like tax accounting, for example, and others are super wide because they represent bigger topics like fitness or health. The big slices usually have lots of little slices baked within them if you zoom in far enough. So, for the big slice of nutrition, you might have smaller slices within like fasting, dieting, insulin resistance. Now, when you make a new video or any piece of content, think of it like a ball being placed in the middle of the wheel. And based on the topic and your previous videos, the algorithm will swivel the wheel to try

1:34to aim that ball to get it in the right slice. In other words, if you make a video about nursing, the algorithm's job is to find that nursing slice and slot the ball in. Now, the quicker the algorithm is able to make this decision, matching the nursing ball to the nursing slice, the further down the slice the ball is able to travel. And this is really important. People that hang out towards the center of the circle are more passive viewers. These are pure entertainment seekers, lurkers, and passive scrollers. But the people towards the end of the slices, towards the edges of the wheel, those are people

2:04with more specific pain points that have a much higher intent to buy. And that makes sense, right? For a massive slice like fitness, if you hang out towards the center, you're not really going to be able to differentiate between bodybuilding and crossfit. But the further towards the edge you go, the more those defined sectors start to come alive. So, the point is, if you're trying to convert views to dollars, you want your ball or your videos to get as far down the slices towards the edge as possible because that's where the buyers are spending time. Okay, now here's where things get interesting. The size of the ball changes and it represents

2:36how many views your video is getting. As more people from different slices find your video relevant, the ball will grow in size. So, the bigger the ball gets, the more viral the video. But there is a drawback. The bigger that ball gets, the fewer slices it'll be able to fit down to get to the edges. And so big balls typically stay towards the middle. So for example, let's say you make a video about Apple's new iPhone release. Well, this would be for sure applicable to tech enthusiasts, but it also might interest gym rats that use their phone in the gym or teachers or designers or gear heads. Essentially, that video has

3:08the potential to get 10 million views and will be a giant ball that would get stuck in the middle. super high resonance, super high views, but very low sell-through potential. Who's going to take an action to buy based on an Apple iPhone release video? Probably no one. Now, conversely, let's say you made a video about stretching and mobility for millennials. That's a pretty specific applicability and a fairly easy slice for the algorithm to locate. It would find health, then it would find fitness, then it would find mobility, and then somewhere in mobility, there's a mobility for millennial slice. The algorithm would find that and shoot the

3:40ball straight down it right away. Now, if you made a video talking about mobility for millennials, it's pretty easy to imagine someone making a purchase straight from there, either for a mobility stretching app or some coaching program. See, this whole explanation, it's a bit of a crude metaphor, but it visualizes the point and the trade-offs of pure virality super well. If you're trying to optimize for mass views, you want the biggest ball. But if you're trying to optimize for conversion, you don't necessarily want the biggest ball. You want the biggest ball that's small enough to fit all the way down the slice where your target buyers live. So, it's not pure

4:13virality that you're after. What you're after is ontarget virality. In other words, how many people within my target slice can I get to resonate with a video without that ball getting stuck, weighed down by all these other people outside the slice? And this is the big point. If you make a video designed for max reach, in order to get that reach and borrow people from all different slices, you likely would have had to make the topic so general that it won't resonate deeply enough to get someone in your slice to buy. And in my metaphor, that's because

4:41the ball gets stuck towards the center. But in reality, it's because when the video goes insanely viral, the topic is too broad to be tactically useful. Now, if you're watching this and you haven't figured out how to go viral at will, this is probably music to your ears because that means you don't actually need 10 million views to drive a ton of sales for your business. All you need to do is train the algorithm how to find the right slice that your buyers live in and then consistently shoot balls down

5:06that slice over and over and over. Okay. Now, if you've been watching my videos for a long time, you'll know that anytime I cover a topic, I'm never stopping at just the strategy. We're always going deep into the tactics for how to unlock whatever the topic is that I just talked about. So, in this case, the issue or roadblock for you is that

5:23you're not focused on ontarget virality. And so, the question is, are there ways that you can adjust your content strategy to trigger more ontarget virality? And of course, there are. When you're making content, there are four filters I recommend you run it through to ensure you're optimizing for ontarget virality. Now, before we go through those, if you're a business owner and you're trying to level up your content, which is why you should be watching this channel, I made a completely free community with 25,000 other entrepreneurs, all helping each other get better with content. There's training, tutorials, and a massive community, all for free. It's called Wavy World. If you want to join, I've

5:57got an invite link in the description. Okay, back to the filters. These are the four filters that I'm running my content through to make sure I'm optimizing for ontarget virality. The first filter is the biggest one, and this is called the idea filter. When you select your content ideas, you want to make sure they'll be applicable to your target slice. For example, if I'm making marketing content for small business restaurant owners that are struggling to grow, will this idea be actually interesting and relevant to them? Now, here's a visual and a framework for how to think about picking ideas so this is true. I call this the concentric circles

6:31of idea targeting. There are four rings inside of each other where all content ideas live. The innermost ring is called core. And within this ring, all the content ideas are specifically focused on the target buyer's specific problem in their specific niche. So for example, in the case of a small restaurant struggling with marketing, these core ideas would be focused on restaurants and marketing. The target problem is marketing. The target niche is restaurants. Now, this core ring is an

6:58absolute bullseye for your target buyer. It's super narrow, so it's not going to get a ton of views, but it is a dead red fit. And if you can find that narrow slice of restaurants, this ball will shoot right to the end. Now, the next ring, the second one out, is called inner. And in this ring, we have content ideas that cover the target buyer's problem, but in tangential niches. So maybe instead of restaurant marketing, we're still talking about marketing, but now applying to any local brickandmortar business. Maybe a window washing company, plumbing company, or HVAC. So, you can now see we're starting to slightly expand the applicability for

7:30who would find this idea interesting. And these content ideas will still work super well at attracting restaurant owners because even though we're not highlighting restaurants specifically, a restaurant owner can see a related cousin business and extract that framework and value applied to themselves. Okay. The next ring, the third from the middle is called outer. And in this ring, we're highlighting content ideas that talk about the buyer specific problem but in any niche. So here we might cover ideas where any

7:57business is struggling with marketing. It's still marketing, but now any business is in play. And the last ring, the widest, the furthest one out is called max. And this is where all the rest of the topic ideas live, where we're covering only the broadest topic or connective tissue. In this case, any video about marketing. Could be tools, could be frameworks, could be a random marketer doing some story. Anything marketing related goes in that max circle. So content ideas generally fall into one of these four buckets. Anything outside like iPhones or gym equipment obviously doesn't relate to restaurant marketing. So those are even a further ring. But those four rings, that's where

8:33content ideas would live for this sector. So the million-dollar question of course is which of those rings should you pick ideas from? And how many ideas from each should you make? What should the content mix look like to best target that restaurant owner slice? And here's the thing, the strategy for getting views differs from turning views into dollars. These are two different buckets. I'm focused on turning views into dollars and building a real business with content. If that's what you want, the right strategy is 40 4020 from inside out. If you're making five videos a week, two should be from core, two should be from inner, one should be

9:06from outer, zero from max. Now, let me explain this. The core and inner videos will be auto converters for you. If the right person sees those videos, in this case a restaurant owner, they're going to convert on whatever you have, lead magnet, email list, or maybe a low ticket item, they're going to convert right away. And that's of course assuming you make a good piece of content that's actually valuable. That's table stakes. But we're talking about targeting the idea. Now, the outer, the one video a week for outer is meant to be what I call controlled chaos. One time per week, you go wider on purpose,

9:36but it's still directionally aimed at the slice. You're still doing business marketing, but it's slightly wider than restaurant marketing or local brick-and-mortar marketing. Now, with these outer ideas, they have the potential to get way bigger. So, those balls will swell. Pause. And it's likely that they will not reach all the way to the edge. These are not meant to be conversion vehicles to get people to buy right away. But, it's possible that a business person, non restaurant related, sees that video, has a restaurant related friend, and shares it directly to them. That's what you're looking for with controlled chaos. You have no idea where those cross partner shares will

10:11come from and you're trying to inject a little bit of variability one time per week and you're willing to make that trade not as perfect but directionally there in exchange for controlled chaos so that you can inject some serendipity once in a while. You do not want to make any videos in the max bucket. As tempting as this is, and this is where the millions of views come from, if you do get one to go viral that's offtarget, you're going to get tons of likes, followers, and comments from the wrong people. it will signal you incorrectly and you will start building the wrong type of audience match. Okay, so that's

10:40the idea filter. If you go 40 4020, I guarantee you will convert way more leads. The views will be down, the follower growth will be down, but the dollars will be up. Depends what you're looking for. And if you take this approach, which I recommend, you will not see videos with millions and millions of views unless your starting category is huge to begin with. But that's okay. I cannot overstate this idea filter enough. Okay, the second filter you should run after the idea filter is called the value filter. And this is more of a question you ask yourself once you pick the idea and

11:10begin to figure out how to frame it. This is going to sound obvious, but when you pick your content ideas, you want to make sure they're actually valuable to your ontarget audience. And what you're looking for here specifically is called walk away value. If somebody in your target slice watches your video, then they put their phone down and walk away. Do they have some tip, some idea, some framework that they can tactically apply to their problem to incrementally get a better solve right away? If not, you got to change the way you're developing and framing that idea so you build in more walkway value. Again, if you're trying

11:39to go for max reach and build a media platform, that's a different play. You're in the ads business. You're looking for views. This does not apply to you. If you're looking to convert views into dollars and not have to go viral to build seven figure and eight figure businesses, you need tactical walkway value. People tend to follow and buy from areas where value is dripped repeatedly against their pain point. So, your goal if you want to turn views into dollars is to use this value filter to make sure you're actually dripping some value. All right. The third filter check you should run your content through to

12:09make sure you're optimizing for ontarget virality is called the peer share filter. When you look at a finished video, your only goal is for that video to compel one person in your ontarget audience to share with another person in your ontarget audience. This creates an ontarget virality loop. One restaurant owner sees it, it's so valuable, they share with another. If a restaurant owner sees your video, are they going to go out of their way to text another restaurant owner friend to share the game because it's so good? If so, you pass the peer share filter. But if a restaurant owner thinks it's interesting, but then would share it

12:41with their cousin who's a landscaper, well, this is a little bit less valuable and it can create an offtarget virality loop. This is not what you want. Your goal is to increase that peer-to-peer share rate within the slice. And the way to do this is to maximize the tactical walkway value that we just talked about in the second filter. The thing is, if you focus your targeting and then actually add value, you'll grow exactly how you need to. All right, the last filter is the audience match consistency filter. It turns out there's one more aspect to the ball and wheel visual that I forgot to mention earlier. The more

13:14consistently that you target the same slice, whether it's wide or narrow, over and over and over, the better the algorithm gets at swiveing and finding that slice quicker. It's kind of a memory for the algorithm. There's like grooves in the system where it knows where you want to go. This consistent algo fit, it's called audience matching because the more confident the algorithm can be at knowing what ball you'll produce and what slice it should go to, the faster it will spin the wheel to find that slice. And the faster that wheel spins, the quicker the ball gets down, the further down the slice the ball's able to go. So the consistency

13:46filter is just to double check when you're making an idea that this idea will also be correctly matched with the other ideas you've previously made that have worked. If you're going to intentionally violate this match, you got to be really certain that this new idea will be even more valuable for your slice than the things you've made before. You want to stay super disciplined and on target to increase the speed that the algorithm can find the fit. All right, guys. That is all I've got for this video. As I stated at the beginning, if you're trying to turn views into dollars, you have to avoid the viral trap at all costs. And it's a

14:18bit cheeky with the naming, but now you get it. You're not going for pure virality. You're going for ontarget virality. Don't fall into the trap of chasing pure virality. It's a worse game, harder business, and less money for you. Hopefully, that visual we went through at the beginning made it super clear about the difference between the two and what the implication really is if you chase the wrong thing. Now, as a summary, the best way to make sure your content is tracking for ontarget virality is to apply these four filters to every content idea that you make. The first one is the idea filter, and that's

14:47to use the 4040 20 for the core, inner outer, max frame. The second is the value filter. Make sure there's actually tactical walkway value the viewer can take to apply towards a painoint. The more you do this, the more you drip value, the easier it is for that person to associate you with solving their problems, and they'll likely buy from you in the future. The third is the peer share filter. When you make a video and it targets someone in your ontarget slice, would they share it with a peer,

15:12another person in your ontarget slice? If not, you got a problem. If so, it'll create an ontarget virality loop and you're good. And fourth is the audience match consistency filter. Make sure you're targeting the same audience profile over and over and over. The more you do this, the faster the algo fit gets and the further down the slice your ball will travel. As always guys, there is so much free stuff in the description. People comment all the time. They can't believe how much I'm giving away. I just made this channel to try to help business owners improve their content. So, make sure to check out all the links I have below. Whatever

15:43problem you have, short form or YouTube, I've got something for you. Make sure to check it. And if you're a business owner and you want to join a community with 25,000 others that are working on content, definitely join Wavy World. It's completely free. All right, until the next video. We will see you guys

15:56then. Peace.