A guide by InSain · Updated · 6 minute read

How a local business goes viral

Nobody can promise a viral video. What you can do is make the kind of film that travels, make it often, and keep going when one takes off.

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Still from “Every mechanic knows that feeling”, a short video for Icon Auto Centre
Still from “The beef wrap, start to finish”, a short video for Da.Si.Mar Shawarma
Still from “Mechanic leg position, explained”, a short video for Icon Auto Centre

Viral films look like luck from the outside. Up close, the ones we’ve made had things in common: a stranger understood them in a second, they showed the business itself, and they came early, though never first.

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What viral means for a local business

A post goes viral when each platform’s recommendations show it far beyond your followers, to many times the people your posts usually reach. For a local business, that’s a means to an end: more people who know your name and your street. Nothing else gets there as fast.

How a post spreads

Instagram describes the process plainly. Every eligible post “is shown to a small audience that we think will enjoy it, regardless of whether they follow the account that posted it or not. As this audience engages with the content, the top performing set of reels are shown to a slightly wider audience, then the best of these are shown to an even wider group, and so on” (Instagram for Creators, 30 April 2024). A viral post is one that keeps winning each round.

TikTok says its recommendations weigh what people do: “User interactions such as the videos you like or share, accounts you follow, comments you post”, then details of the video such as “captions, sounds, and hashtags”. A strong signal, it says, is “whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end”. And “neither follower count nor whether the account has had previous high-performing videos are direct factors” (TikTok Newsroom). A small following doesn’t shut a shop out: both platforms describe weighing how people respond to the post itself.

Two shops whose films travelled

For Icon Auto Centre, a Toronto garage, a few hundred views at a time had been normal. The day after our first film, it posted two more: a bolt held up between two fingers against a pair of sneakers resting on an engine (“My POV”, “Your POV”), and the face a mechanic makes when a tight bolt finally comes out by hand. Both went viral. Two weeks later, a film reading a mechanic’s legs under a car went viral too.

For Da.Si.Mar Shawarma, on Yonge Street, the film that travelled had no joke and no words: one beef wrap, start to finish, in twenty-four seconds. It was our third, six days in, and in under four weeks our films for the shop reached 3.88 million views.

What they had in common

  • A stranger got it in a second. Every mechanic knows the tight bolt; anyone knows a good wrap when they see one.
  • They showed the business. The shop floor, the spit, the grill.
  • They were short. Seven seconds, eleven seconds, twenty-four seconds.
  • They came early. Icon’s were posted the day after our first; Da.Si.Mar’s was our third.

A checklist for a film that can travel

  1. The first frame shows the thing itself: the food, the work, the face.
  2. Someone who has never heard of you gets it without the caption.
  3. It’s as short as the idea allows.
  4. It ends where it should, with nothing after the point.
  5. There’s a reason to send it: a joke about someone they know, a dare, a sight worth sharing.
  6. It was filmed by you, upright, and uploaded as your own file to each app.
  7. The business is in it, so a viewer knows where to go.

What you can’t control

Which post travels. Nobody knows in advance, which is why the number of posts matters: each one is another chance. “How often should a business post?” covers the rhythm.

What holds a post back

  • Another app’s watermark. Instagram’s eligible content “has no visible watermarks”, and when it finds identical copies, it recommends only the original (Instagram for Creators).
  • Content that isn’t yours. Instagram may not recommend “Unoriginal content that is largely repurposed from another source with only minor, immaterial edits” (Instagram Recommendations Guidelines), and TikTok says “We also don’t recommend duplicated content”.
  • Engagement bait. Instagram lists “clickbait or engagement bait” among content it may not recommend.
  • Content TikTok keeps out of the For You feed, such as content that “may not be suitable for a broad audience” (TikTok, For You feed eligibility standards).
  • A trend with nothing to do with you. A view from someone who will never visit doesn’t help.

Can you buy your way to viral?

Bought likes and followers don’t make a post travel, and can stop it. Instagram tries not to recommend accounts that have “Repeatedly engaged in misleading practices to build followings, such as purchasing ‘likes’” (Instagram Recommendations Guidelines). Paid promotion is an ad, which is a different thing: it reaches people because you paid, not because they passed it on.

The day after

A viral post sends people to your profile, often all at once. Be ready for them:

  • Check the profile: name, what you do, your street, your hours, a link that works.
  • Reply to comments, especially questions about where you are and what to order.
  • Post the next film on schedule. The people arriving should find more like the one they saw.
  • Don’t copy the viral film frame for frame. Make another film of the same kind, from your own business.

Icon Auto Centre’s next viral film came two weeks after its first.

Let us make them

On every plan we film at your business, post every video on all four platforms and guarantee the views: from 250,000 to 1 million a month. See the plans.

Questions owners ask

How do you go viral on TikTok as a small business?

Nobody can promise it. Make short films a stranger understands in a second, show the business itself, and keep posting: the one that travels is rarely the first.

How many views is viral?

There’s no official number. For a local business, a post that reaches many times its usual views has gone viral for that account.

Do I need a lot of followers to go viral?

No. TikTok says follower count isn’t a direct factor in its recommendations, and Da.Si.Mar Shawarma had 1,760 Instagram followers when our wrap film for it went viral.

Can I pay to go viral?

Not with bought likes or followers: Instagram tries not to recommend accounts that buy likes. Paid promotion is an ad, a different thing from a post people pass on.

How do I start?

Apply to work with us: a few quick questions about your business. We read every application, and if we can help, we write back to set up a free thirty-minute video call. Apply to work with us

Keep reading

Sources

Updates

  • : Lengthened: how recommendations spread a post (Instagram’s originality post re-read, TikTok’s recommendation post read), a checklist, what holds a post back (Instagram’s Recommendations Guidelines and TikTok’s For You feed standards read), why bought likes don’t help, and the day after.

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