I went viral (and it made me hate social media).

Before that, I’d spent years posting to 150 followers.

So when I finally had my “big break” last year, I was over the moon!

But I didn’t want it to go away.

I’d wanted to be a full-time artist for so long and this was my shining moment — my chance to make that dream come true.

So what did I do?

I doubled down on the content that was going viral, and I stopped making the content that wasn’t.

This was my first mistake (though, I didn’t know it at the time).

This strategy worked for a while. I had several reels go viral, and that was great.

There was just one problem: I was starting to lose interest. Most of my reels were the same.

Same clips

Same topic

Same format

I grew tired of making the same thing over and over again.

So I started experimenting with different types of content.

Unfortunately, that didn’t go so great. My new content wasn’t performing as well (and this was a problem).

Why?

Because I’d spent weeks creating content for the wrong reasons.

This made me rely too much on the numbers for motivation. So when the numbers dropped, so did my desire to create.

This was my second mistake.

Looking back, I understand why some posts went viral (and why others didn’t).

There were two reasons for this.

The first was that my viral posts followed a viral-worthy format.

It consisted of reels that were:

• 5-8 seconds long
• Educational
• With long, informative captions

The second reason was that I lacked experience making longer reels (so I didn’t know how to capture and hold attention with them).

That’s why it’s important to study the content you want to make (see the Inspiration page inside my content planner).

Then apply what you learn to your own content.

That’s exactly how I learned to make my viral reels.

Over time I’d lost touch with that truth so when my posts began to under-perform I’d take it personally.

That was my third mistake.