Blogging Tips :: Is Blogging Worth it if You Never 'Go Viral'?

Last updated on 18 June 2026

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You don’t have to spend ages online to see people talking about blogging a lot more these days (‘these days’ being 2026). And you can read more of my thoughts about why this is here in this post on long-form content making a comeback.

But it’s an interesting topic to be thinking about, especially when on the flip side is so many people working hard to go ‘viral’ on social media.

Perhaps you have a blog, and you’re publishing your blog content, but for whatever reason (and there could be lots of reasons), you get like, 47 views over the course of 3 months and 12 of them are probably you refreshing the page, and maybe your mum and grandma (props for the support though, fam!).

Meanwhile, you’re on Instagram or TikTok, and someone has just filmed themselves reacting to a supermarket receipt or something equally ‘small’ and got 2 million views overnight. And you’re sitting there wondering – what is even the point?

If you’ve ever opened Instagram, watched a reel rack up half a million likes in 48 hours, and then looked back at your blog like it personally offended you with those 47 views … I get it.

Virality was never designed for bloggers

Virality is a social media metric, and we really need to remember that. It was built for short-form, fast-moving platforms where content catches fire for a day or two or maybe a week, and then gets buried by the next thing.

It’s designed to reward content that stops a scroll – which usually means something funny, shocking, or emotionally charged enough to make someone share it immediately.

Blog posts aren’t really built for that.

While yes, sometimes blog posts can suddenly gain a lot of traction, the likelihood that it shoots up to something we might consider ‘viral’ these days is slim.

When you write a blog post and someone finds it through a search engine three months later at 11pm because they typed in exactly the question your post answers – that’s actually what we want.

We don’t want a million people coming to our blog on a Monday and then 10 people that Friday.

While, yes that might be nice, ideally we want traffic consistently over the course of our blog’s lifetime and not just for a blip in time.

The people reading your blog are different to the social peeps

Think about how someone ends up on a viral social media post.

They were scrolling. They probably weren’t looking for anything in particular. The algorithm decided to show them something, or maybe someone sent them, and they stopped for a few seconds to enjoy the Reel or TikTok.

But if you think about how someone fines you blog, if might be because:

They typed a question into a search engine like Google
They searched for something on Pinterest, maybe and clicked through to your blog from a Pin
They clicked a link in your newsletter

That is a completely different kind of reader. And a much more valuable one.

Hopefully, they’re not just a passive scroller, but they’re someone who is genuinely looking for whatever it is that you blog about.

And while a social media scroller might check out your profile or give you a follow, a blog post reader might take a bigger step and sign up for your emails, or even make a purchase. Which is amaaaaazig and what we really want.

Your blog doesn’t disappear on a random Tuesday

When a Reel or TikTok or Carousel or whatever it is goes viral, it has maybe a 72-hour window. And yes, it can have a resurgence, or it can last a few days or even a few weeks.

But after that, the algorithm moves on, the audience moves on, and the post lives in a graveyard of content that was exciting once. You can’t build a business on something that expires faster than a bag of spinach. (And I love spinach, so I really get how fast it goes off haha)

A good, well-written, properly optimised blog post can drive traffic for years. Literally years.

Some of my best, most visited blog posts are pre-2020. Some even around the 2015 mark.

That’s insane. 🤯🤯🤯

And a viral video could NEVER.

So what does “worth it” actually look like?

If you’re measuring your blog against viral social media content, you will always feel like you’re losing…that’s just how it is. That’s just the way the world works.

(Whenever I say ‘that’s just the way the world works’ I just think about the conversation between Nick and Schmidt in New Girl … if you know you know!).

But comparing views on social to views on your blog is almost like measuring how fast you can walk against how fast a car can drive. I’m gonna be sloooooow on that one, let me tell ya. 🐢

So you’ve really got to ask yourself what you think of as ‘worth it’?

So is blogging worth it if you never ‘go viral’? I definitely think so.

Because even when a blog post genuinely goes viral (coz it does happen), the direct income from traffic alone is often pretty modest, if that’s something you’re taking into account.

The real money – the course sales, the coaching enquiries, the email list growth – comes from the audience that was already there, built post by post over months and years. Any sort of viral moment for a blog is going to be a nice boost but it’s not going to be sustainable.

Here’s what success might look like when you’re blogging with intention:

A post that ranks on page one for a keyword your ideal reader is actually searching.
A reader who emails you to say your post helped them.
Monthly traffic that grows steadily, quarter on quarter.
A lead who books a call and says, “I’ve been reading your blog for months”

Blogging asks for a bunch of patience. And perseverance. And commitment.

If you want results in 48 hours, it’s going to feel slow and frustrating and you’ll wonder constantly if it’s working.

But if you’re building something – a brand, a business, a body of work that represents what you actually know and do – blogging is one of the best long-term investments you can make.

It builds trust in a way that a 7-second clip paired with trending audio and a clever hook never really can. It gives your audience something to come back to. And unlike most things on the internet, it sticks around.

You don’t need to go viral as a blogger. You need to be findable, useful, and consistent, and, hopefully, a place that people come back to.

And it’s far more important than a blog post that goes ‘viral’.