5.7 Million Views. 600 Followers. Here's Why That's Not a Failure.

Waddup y'all! Hope everyone had a great week + weekend.

Quick story before we get into it. This past week I posted a skit on Instagram. It was a stitch of people in an office running to the "I love working from the office" side, then I cut in playing HR holding a sunglasses case like a gun, basically forcing everyone over to that side. Dumb humor. Workplace satire. That was it.

That video did 5.7M views. 114K likes. 1,568 comments. 109K shares.

You know how many followers I gained from it?

About 600.

Now stick with me here because this is the point most founders completely miss.

Every week I have founders tell me some version of "we just need to go viral." Or "can you make us go viral?" Like going viral is the finish line.

It's not. It's a starting line. And most of the time, it's not even the right race.

Here's the math on my own account. Every time I've gone viral with humor content, I average around 100 new followers per million views. Every time I've gone viral with educational content, I've gained tens of thousands of followers off a single video.

Same person. Same account. Wildly different outcomes.

Why?

Because humor is a moment. Someone scrolls, laughs, maybe sends it to their group chat, and keeps scrolling. That was the transaction. You gave them 15 seconds of their day back feeling a little lighter. Great. That's the whole exchange.

Education is different. When someone learns something from you, they think "I need more of this." That's when the follow button gets hit. That's when they share it with intent (not just for the laugh). That's when they remember your name.

When I was at SuckerPunch (DTC food and beverage, also in retail), we went viral on TikTok. Our account went from around 2K followers to 5K in a few days. Huge spike on paper.

You know what happened to sales?

Nothing.

DTC stayed flat. TikTok Shop stayed flat. We got two extra TikTok Shop sales that week and we couldn't even attribute them to the video with any certainty.

I walked into a meeting with the founder and broke it down. The video worked because it was a trending pickle joke. It had nothing to do with our product. People weren't watching because they wanted pickles, they were watching because they were in on the joke.

He hated that answer. So he pushed us to recreate it. We did, multiple times, and none of them hit the same way. And while we were chasing that lightning-in-a-bottle again, the actual trend died. A month later it was dead and we didn't capitalize on any of it because he was making every decision himself (and most of them were wrong).

That's the viral trap. You get one hit and spend the next six months trying to recreate the exact thing that worked, instead of building the thing that actually converts.

I have a friend who's had videos do 20.1M, 18.1M, 18.8M, 7.6M, 7.3M. That's over 70 million views across his content.

He has 28K followers.

All of his stuff is toddler dad content. Great stuff, genuinely funny. But the videos are basically video memes, not original skits with his authentic voice. When you're a meme account, you're interchangeable with every other meme account in that niche. People engage with the post, not the person.

Compare that to a client I work with (the one I talked about a few weeks back). Their most viral videos are 4.7M, 1.1M, 750K, 568K. Way fewer views than my buddy. But they have 28K followers off of a MUCH smaller view total.

Why?

Education. Value. Every piece of content teaches their audience something specific about the category they play in. So when someone watches, they actually have a reason to follow. "I want to learn more from this brand."

That's the difference between being entertaining and being useful. Both are legitimate strategies. But only one of them builds a business.

Think about this for a second. If 5.7M people watched my video last week, and only 600 followed me, what do you think would happen if I was selling something?

The follow button is free. It costs nothing. If those viewers weren't even willing to tap a free button, they sure as hell aren't pulling out a credit card.

That's the reality founders need to sit with. A view is the cheapest engagement possible. Followers are slightly more valuable. Buyers are at the top of the pyramid. And the conversion rate between each layer is brutal.

I'm not saying humor content is worthless. It's not. It has a real job to do. Viral humor is an upper funnel play. It puts you in front of a massive audience cheap. It builds awareness. It can make you a cultural reference point.

But it won't sell product overnight. And it won't build a loyal audience by itself.

If you want an audience that actually converts, you have to give them something they can use. A framework. A perspective. A way to do their job better. A way to think about their life differently.

That's what makes someone hit follow. That's what makes someone open your email. That's what makes someone buy.

Here's a quick filter I run before anything goes up. Three questions. If you can't answer yes to at least one of them, you're making entertainment, not growth content.

1. Would someone learn something specific from this?

Not "feel something." Learn something. A tactic. A framework. A behind the scenes look at how something actually works. If the takeaway is "lol relatable," that's a vibe post, not a growth post.

2. Does this sound like me, or could any account in my niche post it?

This is the video meme trap my buddy fell into. If you swapped the face out and it would still work, the content isn't building you. It's building the format. Your audience has to be following YOU, not the trend you caught a wave on.

3. If someone watches this and never sees another post from me, did I earn the follow on this one alone?

The brutal one. Most content doesn't pass this test, including a lot of mine. But the stuff that does is the stuff that actually grows the account.

Run those three questions on your last 10 posts. You'll figure out real quick why your growth looks the way it does.

If your strategy is "go viral and figure out the rest later," you don't have a strategy. You have a wish.

I tell the founders I work with this constantly, and thankfully they get it. None of them are coming to me saying "just make us go viral." They care about consistently making content that teaches their audience something and moves them down the funnel. Sometimes those videos go viral. More often they don't. But they compound.

6M views felt good last week. I'm not going to pretend it didn't. But it also didn't meaningfully move my business. You know what moved my business? The tactical newsletter I sent the week before that went out to 2,400 people. That's where my clients come from.

Small, intentional, valuable beats big, random, and entertaining every time.

Reply and tell me. What's the last piece of content you made or paid for that chased views instead of value? No judgment, we've all done it. I'm just curious what it looks like in your world.

Talk soon,
Chase