To a small blogger, like myself, a single post that generates over 1,200 views in two days is amazing. It’s not Viral with a capital "v" but it’s certainly viral.

The problem with this "hit" is the driver was Flipboard. And I have no way to track it back to the source, or the champion who added my Apple Watch post to their audience on Flipboard. I used all my tools. I saw the hit coming, I pushed a few extra times on my Twitter feed, but I was clear the Flipboard boost was a single event. I even wrote another quick Apple Watch post to see if I could get some residual traffic. And that worked pretty well. A normal post for me does about 200 reads on the first day. My "apple watch" post yesterday got 356 views. So it did get a boost, but not in the 1,200 views mark.

The feeling of a viral hit is awesome. The day after it looks like the metrics are giving me the finger.

What do we learn from a big hit on a post.

• Do it again.
• Refresh the content.
• See out the influencer who drove the page views.
• Write more content to the audience that read the post.

Other than that, a viral hit is fun, but it doesn’t really change my process or my plans for what’s next. I would love to architect a viral hit a week. Imagine where I could take the numbers on this site. But that’s not likely to happen. I’ll keep trying though. And I’ll keep picking myself back up after the rush of a hit lets me fall harder into ennui.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)

permalink: https://uber.la/2016/02/the-day-after-a-viral-hit/

other viral-related posts:

• The Swallowed Elephant Is Leaving My Metrics: Looking for Virality
• Breaking Down the "Value" of a Viral Hit on Social Media

And a few more of interest

• Death of the Social Media Strategist: Overselling & Underperforming from the Start
• Bungle in the Jungle or What’s In a Snipe: Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement
• Learning to Manage the Information Overload of Social Media