Why going viral could destroy your business
For most “normal” businesses the worst it could happen is that you get cancelled by Twitter and you get review bombed on Google Maps or Tripadvisor but for online businesses it’s a whole other story
Having developed a lot of digital products through the years I saw on multiple occasions how going viral can be bad for your business if not handled well and can even lead you to close your company.Here I want to share with you a few examples and tips that I hope will help you if you ever go viral, maybe a few things will be obvious for some but hey you never know.First of all, you need to ask yourself what would happen if tomorrow you wake up and your product/site/social went viral during the night.Would be it actually beneficial to you? Would you be able to get the most out of it?Now that you have asked yourself this question lets see how you can be prepared for the occasion.
In which cases it could be damaging to you?
Costs of infrastructure: I want to start with the example of this mobile app we developed for one of our clients, they had been crushed by the cost of the server due to the fact that their app was free to play, they went viral with their MVP but they had not been able to convert many users. Long story short they end up if a lot of free users but they didn’t have the capital to wait and try to convert them through time and they end up to finish all the money and they had to shut down the app.
Prone to error: Obv a lot of new users means a lot of new bugs, in the case that one of this is game-breaking you could be in deep trouble. It happened with one of our apps, an MPV got downloaded 30.000 on the first day but due to a bug in the play store the transactions were not going through, the fix was up and running if a couple of days but we missed the wave and lost a few grants. In this case, it wasn’t our fault but be sure to have your app properly tested.
Negative feedback: If you end up with one of the problems above you could also encounter a lot of negative feedback but even without any technical trouble with a lot of people you will also encounter a lot of heaters, just be prepared for them to come and be part of the going viral. Stay positive and kind and you will be fine.
How to be prepared and get the most out of it?
Scalability: As you have read above this can be a double-handed sword if not handled well but it’s essential to get the most out of going viral, your servers/site needs to be up running with 10 people just like with 100k people.
Backup contact: depending on your business(especially if your product has a limited supply) channelling a lot of people can be a monumental task, even if your product/service can’t satisfy all these people you need to retain as many contacts as possible, have a newsletter to notify when your product is back on supply and be sure to have as many ways as possible to retain the audience.
Have a plan: like a lot of other things having a plan can make a lot of difference, take an hour to draw up a list of steps you would need to take and keep it handy in a drawer.
Move fast: nowadays things move fast, like really fast, one day you are in trending and the next one nobody remembers of you, if you go viral you need to act super fast, free yourself of all your commitments and focus on this one in a lifetime event.
To wrap up everything you if are not developing the app/website yourself sit down with who is in charge of it and ask them what would append in this occasion, but remember do not overthink it and over-engineering it too much, focusing too much on what would happen if you had 1M user can be even worse than not being prepared for an occasion that could never come.
