Fyreside Newsletter - 9/15/25

Hey Reader,

Last Thursday, I got to taste the sweet honey of TikTok success. I posted a silly, little video that, at time of writing, is sitting at about 10.2k views. Hooray for me!

Often when I talk about social strategies with potential clients, they come in with a conviction. There seems to be this belief that more views = more success. Literally everyday I chat with someone who says, “I just need people to see me!” or, “If I could just crack the algorithm, things would come together.”

Well clutch your pearls folks, I’m about to crush your dreams. Let me walk you through exactly what it looks like to get 10k views.

How I Did It

This is always the first question when a video goes viral, and the honest answer is: I got lucky.

Now don’t let luck blind you to the strategy. I posted a video that…

Aligned with an ongoing series on my profile
Tied into current events and trending topics
Was tightly constructed and edited
Had an attention grabbing opening

I also posted early in the day and picked very strategic hashtags. All of that is great and it certainly lent to my post’s success, but that’s not what made my post successful. I’ve used this exact same strategy for dozens of other videos. They’ve all hovered around 1k views, but this is the first one to pop. That’s the reality of social media, sometimes you just get lucky.

What 10k Views Got Me

Let’s walk through the analytics of this post. Screenshots below, but keep scrolling for my takeaways.

What 10k Views Got Me (pt.2)

First thing worth noting is that it took three full days for this video to hit 10k views. By the end of day one, it was just over 7,000 views. Day two added another 2,500. Day three got us across the line with another 600. The takeaway: virality takes time.

Next I want to point out how many followers I gained. 10k views earned me nine followers. That’s a conversion rate of about .0009 followers to views. The takeaway: virality doesn’t lead to explosive growth.

The second screenshot shows a stat labeled as “Total Viewers.” This is the number of unique viewers that saw this video. That means, of my 10,200 views, I only reached about 9400 people. To put a positive spin on this, that bumps our conversion rate up to .001! The real takeaway: view numbers are inherently inflated.

I’ve got one more screenshot for you, but this one is from my website.

That sad graph shows visitors to my website over the weekend. To quote prolific American actress Sigourney Weaver in 2003 smash-hit Holes, “Can you hear the empty spaces?” While I was experiencing a #moment on TikTok, not a single person was visiting my website. I didn’t pick up any new newsletter subscribers this weekend, either. The takeaway: social media success does not immediately create business success.

That's Content Marketing, Baby!

I yearn for people to understand that virality will not save you. Going viral, with 10k views or 100,000 views, is a lot of fun. It’s super validating to know that people resonate with what you create. Virality will bring you some social growth and it might birth a superfan of your brand. All of those things are great, but they don’t pay bills.

Content marketing is a game of patience. As exciting as it is to pop off, that’s not where the real benefits come from. Brand strategy and community growth are my specialty and I’m very good at them. If you want what I have, virality is a fun side quest, but it’s not the main goal.

To sum up all my ramblings, I’ll leave you with this: Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.

-MC

p.s.

I'm now just 172 followers away from my next TikTok goal! Drop me a follow if you don't already!
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