Welcome to Make It Go Viral 🫠

Welcome to Make It Go Viral 🫠 a newsletter for everyone who loves (and loves to hate) being chronically online. It’s also the newsletter that can guarantee your next social post will be seen and shared by millions. Just kidding, we can’t promise that. 

But we can promise that we will roll our eyes in solidarity with you every time someone asks, ‘Can you make this go viral?’ for a poorly designed promo graphic that’s sized incorrectly for Instagram with a link in the caption.

We can also promise to share noteworthy news and trends across all social platforms so you can stay up to date every time Meta makes a change that will surely make your life more difficult. 

And lastly, we can promise that we’ll highlight some of the best work on social media because it really isn’t *all* bad here. 

My name is Anna Fogel, and I’ll be writing this fun little thing every week. I’m the Social Media Director at Pennant Digital, I’ve been working in social media since the Vine days, and I’ll always sprinkle in a Taylor Swift reference when I can… and even sometimes when I can’t. 

So buckle up, and let’s dive into our wonderfully weird world of social media: 

🗣ICYMI:

• Turns out, a high follower count doesn’t really add value? Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, says views and likes are more important when evaluating an account’s success.
• It’s your time to shine, Gen Z – Nospace (a MySpace alternative) is coming, and there’s already a 380K-person waitlist.
• What’s one more platform to manage? TikTok’s photos app – TikTok Notes – has officially launched in Australia and Canada. 
• Is it time to fully dive into Threads? Meta is reporting over 150 million monthly active users.
• Todd Beaupré, the man in charge of YouTube’s growth and discovery team, busted some myths about the platform’s algorithm. TLDR: Create content that your audience wants and have some faith that the algorithm will get it to them. 
• Instagram is testing out the ability to comment on specific images or videos within a carousel post

📈 LIKE//RETWEET//SHARE//ETC

New true test of a relationship just dropped. 

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation account is everything that’s right about this platform. They are extremely online in the best way, always one step ahead, they join conversations seamlessly and organically, and they’re consistently clever and delightfully weird. It’s everything you never knew you needed in a state agency Twitter account. Here’s why it works:

• The account’s reputation. By carefully crafting a consistent and cohesive voice, this first tweet could easily be a standalone tweet, and no one would bat an eye. But they’re able to take things one step further and use the initial post as the perfect tee-up for the actual content.
• They took what could have easily been a single post and turned it into multiple – maximizing reach, engagements, and replies along the way. 
• The image itself is compelling and fits within the parameters of what people expect from this account. Plus they were able to sneak the word ‘Oklahomie’ in the copy, which is always a win.  
• The work wasn’t done after hitting post. A large part of what makes this account so successful is the work they put into responding (thoughtfully and intentionally) to the top replies that roll in. 

Make it work for you: Reframe how you view an individual piece of work and ask yourself if any value can be added by turning it into multiple posts. Additionally, community management is so vital — it only helps solidify and enforce your brand’s strong personality and tone. 

P.S. don’t sleep on this account’s use of alt text. Toadlly perfect.

Is this a Dunkin’ video or an Architectural Digest sneak peek of Ben Affleck’s home? 

A departure from their normal product-focused content that typically leans fun, quirky, and trendy, this post taps into their audience’s love of the brand, which runs deeper than the Charles River (shoutout to the Boston crew). This dropped in early March, but it’s worth highlighting because this partnership works for multiple reasons:

• The collaboration is mutually beneficial. The artist was able to showcase their work to a largely new audience (thank you to Dunkin’s 5.9M followers across Instagram and TikTok) and Dunkin’ was able to put their stamp on his signature Coffee Table art, stirring up plenty of conversation along the way. 
• Dunkin’ allowed the artist to create the content in his style. They didn’t take over the creative and make it fit the brand, they let the content speak for itself.  
• This wasn’t about announcing a new drink or launching a new menu item, it was simply a cool piece of content that had everyone clamoring for their own in the comments, including one user who said ‘I’d sell an organ for this.’ 
• Oh right, it also racked up 12 million views on Instagram. Not. Too. Shabby.

Make it work for you: Experiment with content! Mix things up! Try something new! Especially when it’s going to open you up to a new audience (shoutout collabs).  

🏆Post of the week:

There are two types of people in the world: People who knew Hootie was singing about the MIAMI Dolphins and liars.