How to Go Viral

Christian Stone | Standing Stones Healing Co.

Everyone wants to go viral...including in our Reiki business, right? In this article, I'm sharing the secret formula with you. But use at your own risk because going viral has its drawbacks...

Often when we talk about "going viral," we mean that a post or video has been seen thousands or millions of times. We usually think this is something positive for our Reiki business, but oftentimes going viral is an isolated event that doesn't really bring lasting visibility our business. It doesn't bring more clients or potential clients, and the viralness is simply a number of views. So you can go viral and have little benefit from it. This is the first drawback with going viral: it doesn't really have the effect we wan or expect.

The second drawback with going viral is that, if it does result in a sudden and even unexpected increase in followers, subscribers, and especially clients, we can be overwhelmed by the response and not have the systems in place to deal with it. Systems are important in our Reiki business, and systems are something that we often grow and refine as our businesses grow. But without the proper systems set up in your Reiki business to turn potential clients into clients or to handle an influx of clients, going viral can create a whole host of problems. The worst of these is customer service challenges that disappoint our clients and potential clients and don't reflect well on our business or us. 

There's nothing wrong with going viral, and it can be great for our business, but I personally am a proponent of slow and steady growth. With slow and steady growth in our Reiki business, we have the opportunity to change and adapt, to see what works, to see what we like, and to grow into our role in the business as a Reiki business owner.

Of course, when we're thrown into challenging circumstances, we adapt. But I would rather adapt in a way that allows me to continue to maintain a high level of customer service and quality service for my clients, students, and potential clients. When we go viral without the support systems in place, our business may suffer in terms of the quality and the high level of customer service that our clients and potential clients deserve.

But...here is how to go viral, particularly on YouTube.

1. Pick a mega niche with at least one channel with 1 million+ subscribers.
Find a channel with more than 1 million subscribers, which means that people are interested in that topic. Going viral is all about riding the wave of the current trends. Find what people are already interested in and use the hashtags that are used in those videos in your hashtags for your videos. But not celebrity channels. Because celebrities are their own brand, they aren't a niche, and you want to choose a niche in this formula. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know of any Reiki channels with more than 1 million subs...but that's ok to me. I'll keep making Reiki content, anyway. 

2. Find trending videos published in the past year with more than 100,000+ views.
On this 1 million plus subscriber channel, find trending videos with more than 100,000 views. Videos with 100,000+ views mean that the topic is of interest to a wide variety of people. So lots of people are tuning into and interested in those videos, and when they've been published within the past year, it speaks to the recency of interest. On YouTube, especially as videos are on the platform for longer, they gain more views. A video that might have gotten 100,000 views a couple of years ago might not be of such great interest now. So choose trending videos within the past year with more than 100,000 views.

3. Study the video titles and thumbnails and model them.
Titles on YouTube videos are important, and you want a title that hooks people in. The formula calls for tweaking the titles of those 100,000+ views videos to use for your video titles, particularly with an 80/20 ratio of using 80% of the model title and changing 20%. It's completely legal to use another video's title, especially if you make changes. I don't necessarily advocate it, but yes, this is legal. The formula says to model your title after their title because, obviously, people are attracted to that kind of title. Thumbnails are very important as well. Copying thumbnails, though, is illegal, so don't do that. The formula simply recommends modeling your thumbnails after popular ones because an attention-grabbing thumbnail will draw people in.


This formula is a real formula used with purpose to "go viral" and gain a lot of subscribers. What's problematic about this is that it's very focused on going viral rather than on creating authentic content. Rather than creating content that aligns with what you really want to be doing and what resonates with you, you're finding what others are attracted to and then using that in order to go viral. I personally don't do this, and I personally don't advocate it because being authentic and creating content that I believe is helpful and that resonates with me and how I want to be showing up is so much more important to me than having millions of subscribers and videos with thousands and thousands of views.


The next part of this formula involves what is called the "pivot strategy." Tune in to this episode of the Build Your Reiki Business podcast to learn more about going viral and the "pivot strategy" component.