Did you miss the latest installment of the webinar series “The Short Forum: Creators, Content & Culture”? Get the details and watch on-demand here.

What Does Virality Mean To Creators?

For creators, one of the best moments in their career is experiencing their content getting so much attention and eventually becoming “viral.” They get to see other users use their audio or reference them as inspiration. After that first milestone, the drive to make content that can go viral becomes higher. However, being viral can mean different things to people. Some see it as high engagement, with people commenting or liking their content. To some, viral means they are part of the pop culture conversation; people cannot talk about what’s happening lately without referencing them. In our latest installment of the webinar series “The Short Forum: Creators, Content & Culture,” we discuss the topic of “What Does Virality Mean to Creators?”

The special guests for this webinar are two content creators, Annabelle Kline, and Coco Mocoe. Anabelle Kline is a TikTok influencer, music curator, and founder of That Good Sh*t. With over 124K followers on TikTok, Kline often recommends new music to her audience, gives updates on music news, and gives advice to people who want to work in the music industry. Coco Mocoe is a TikTok influencer, marketing professional, and the host of the podcast Ahead of The Curve. Mocoe discusses pop culture and digital trends predictions with her 937k followers.

The creators talk in depth about social media trends now and where they believe the direction of social media is heading. Kline said that when it comes to music promotion, nowadays, artists post snippets of their upcoming songs frequently to grab people’s attention. Both agreed that social media, especially TikTok, is over-saturated and that getting viral is less exciting now because it has become a more common experience.
Foreseeing the future, Mocoe explains that she thinks social media will shift to longer-form content because, with the 15 seconds video, it may be easy to be discovered but hard to be remembered. She thinks live streaming is also on the rise because the audience wants less entertainment but more companionship. Kline also added that storytelling will be even more popular because people will want to understand your story, “it will be more about building the community… so less gimmicky, less about trying to sell.”

Going into personal experiences with virality, they talked about how to stretch the attention they were getting after going viral for the first time. Kline talks about how at first, she focuses mainly on feeding into what the people want. She created content based on what the people said in the comments or from which content gained the most attention. Kline made sure to interact with the community, replying to their comments or duetting their videos. After a while, Kline starts to diversify the topics and form of content so “it does not get stale.” Mocoe added that it is always good to think about what content people would be interested in by thinking about “what I want to watch that I can’t find anywhere.”

Kline and Mocoe wrapped up the conversation by giving their opinions on the negative aspects of going viral. Kline said it is always good to stay grounded and “spend time with family and friends who actually know who you are.” Kline added that she is no longer bothered by negative attention because she thinks of it as people paying attention to her. Mocoe explained that sometimes going viral can be mentally draining, but negative attention generally comes with fame. She thinks that as long as she keeps showing up and keeps creating content that she likes and her audience enjoys, it becomes worth it.

Watch the complete discussion on this topic on-demand here, and follow us on @songfluencer and @genniapp for announcements of future webinars.

Author: Jasmine Theodore