If You Want to Go Viral Then Focus More on Quantity — Than Quality

Going viral depends on many different parameters and not all of them can be controlled by you — except quantity

“How to make your content viral?” is a million-dollar question.

When it comes to “how to market your content?” there are 2 types of ways: publish multiple pieces of content per day, or publish quality content 2 or 3 times a week.

So, which one is more relevant in making content go viral on the internet?

You may think it’s quality…but wait!

Don’t just choose yet. First, hear me out.

Quantity leads you to quality

The main problem in content creation is Quality v.s. Quantity — Which one should be given more attention to and which one not?

Whether it’s in books, articles on the internet, tips from writers, we always find ourselves hearing about how the quality of the content comes first. How quality is more valuable than providing content on a set, high-frequency schedule?

That in terms of importance, quality is a close runner-up.

But we often neglect the fact that as much as the quality of content is one of the key factors behind a post going viral, writing more amount of content is also one of them. We forget that when it comes to writing good quality content — writing in more amount leads you there.

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed” — Ray Bradbury

Tom Kennedy in one of his article also explains the importance of quantity:

“….We’ve always been led to believe “quality over quantity” is the way to go, which makes sense on the surface but the reality is that the best path to quality, is actually a quantity.”

In a study conducted by Ernest O’Boyle Jr. and Herman Aguinis, it is found that the top performing 5% of creators had actually created 400% more stuff than the average creator.

In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. What many people fail to realize, is that in creativity quantity leads to quality.

See it this way: the more ideas you generate, the bigger the chances are that you will stumble upon a brilliant idea.

It’s all a number game.

“When it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality.” — Adam Grant

Each new quantity piece attracts new traffic

The main strategy behind going viral is to drive more and more traffic using your content. So that clearly explains for itself that: every single piece of content that is published somewhere on the internet act as an entry point to drive traffic to your site, or blog posts, or on whatever other platforms you’re making your content.

Research by Hubspot shows that brands that publish at least four blog posts per week receive five times more site traffic than those that publish less than once a week.

The more pieces of content you publish, the more reach you will have to your audience. The more reach you have, the more traffic you can get.

Psychologist Dean Simonton summed it up the best:

“The odds of producing influential or successful ideas are a positive function of total number of ideas generated.”

Let’s look at the examples:

In a 5-year window, Shakespeare produced 3 of his 5 most popular works and 2 of which rank among the worst of his plays, and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and character development. Thomas Edison pioneered the light bulb, the photograph. But during that period, he also filed over 100 patents for other inventions.

Psychologist Dean Simonton also notes that: “Periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the major works appear.”

This also explains the fact that why posting multiple content pieces can drive more traffic than posting only two or three pieces — as publishing multiple content pieces gives you the opportunity to reach new and different audiences, every time you publish a new piece.

“Quantity has a quality of its own” — Joseph Stalin

Writing more often and trying out many variations increases the odds of your content going viral, you may never know which post will be praised by the audience and may go viral.

You can’t control quality — but the quantity

“If I cannot overwhelm with my quality, I will overwhelm with my quantity.” — Emile Zola

Quantity is a measurable metric. For quantity, you’ve to introspect about the number of blog posts you can publish a day, how often you should publish on your website, how many blogs you should post in a week to improve your website traffic, and more.

But quality isn’t something you can control and it is actually a lot harder to measure.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with creating quality content and you do need to make sure that the quality of your work is decent. I mean you can’t post any random video on Youtube without doing basic edit of a video. You can’t just tweet every other thing that comes to your mind. You do need to make sure that people love your work by maintaining a good quality of your content.

But what’s the point of spending hours of photoshopping photos, that people will see for a maximum of 5–6 seconds? What’s the point of keeping your blog posts in the draft for weeks just to edit again and again?

What’s the point of spending too much time perfecting content when it isn’t going to be published anytime soon?

It’s seriously useless.

“The smallest quantity, strictly speaking, is “Nothing”.” ― Khalid Masood

Being extra focused on quality standards to make your piece as perfect as possible keeps you from posting content on a regular basis.

Going viral depends on many different parameters like luck, right keywords, audience preferences, good timing, and not all of them can be controlled by you — except quantity.

The more content you publish, the more chances you have to drive more traffic and go viral. You may never know which piece of content will be praised by the audience.

Focusing more on quantity rather than quality will give you excellent results.

“A massive amount of quantity with a deliberate focus on improvement leads to the knowledge and experience of how to make quality” — An Na

The more you write, the better you get. The better you get, the more your work will be loved. The more it’ll be loved, the more it’ll be shared. The more it’ll be shared, the more traffic it’ll get and thus go viral.