The vast majority of our media and information environments are functioning around the dynamics of “going viral” or virality. Media stories are shared, and increasingly written, to catch attention quickly, gain momentum and turn heads. Although virality is attractive as the dominant form of social influence today, it is not the most effective way to garner support for a cause or increase dedication to a set of values such as those advanced by the work of nonprofit organizations. Below we share what we know animates the phenomena of virality, and how it is actually out of step with the logic of strategic influence that should drive your work to build a thought leadership platform. We share some tips to get you thinking about your individual or organizational thought leadership to advance your objectives through communication.
For a variety of reasons, virality has steadily grown in the last two decades as a go-to framework for understanding influence. One reason is because of the blossoming of social media platforms, and the shift to social media as a source of information among significant swaths of the adult US population. In September 2024, Pew Research Center found that more than half of their respondents in a nationally representative survey indicated that they get news from social media at least sometimes (54%). A full 25% of the population often relies on social media with one-third of respondents using platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, as the top two. Other highly cited platforms were Instagram (20% of respondents), TikTok (27%), and X (12%). From a global lens, in February 2025, 64% of the global population and 94.2% of all internet users utilized social media as a news source. As social media has flooded our go-to information-gathering environments, virality-based algorithms are an increasingly important mechanism for defining our social understanding of influence.
In the US we have observed a related dynamic in the first few months of the current presidential administration. As rapid changes have occurred across the country impacting almost all sectors simultaneously, keeping up with news events has become even more difficult. This has resulted in the expansion of news roundups by prominent journalists and outlets, influencers or Substack authors, providing running lists of events a week at a time (or sometimes daily) for their audiences. Although this provides a service to many people seeking to stay on top of rapidly changing events, it is another way in which some of the dynamics of our information environment are being transformed. Specifically, transformed into even shorter headlines or quick synopses of ongoing events. One could point to the rise of Twitter/X and its word limits, but the reality is that in today’s political climate, a wide range of factors are pushing us more and more to shorter bits of information that are more rapidly consumable and more rapidly spread.
For organizations and or their leaders, this provides food for thought. When your objective is to deploy influence in this critical moment in order to sustain momentum in elevating historically minoritized and excluded communities, viral influence does not contribute to a long-term sustainable plan for communications. If you are carrying out the vital work of equity, in the face of mounting challenges, virality and sound bites are not going to serve you well. Instead, organizations and leaders should focus their attention on building their thought leadership platform in order to contribute to the narrative environment in which they are working.
Strategy is Everything – and Strategy Is Patient
Thought leadership is an approach that places strategy at the center of communications decisions. As we shared in our recent Thought Leadership Snapshot, thought leaders are individuals who influence and inspire us to think and behave differently by contributing new ideas, information and expertise to benefit the greater good. These are not necessarily the most popular, or highest-viewed names in your sector, but individuals that people seek out because their contributions help others in the sector think about the future more effectively or grapple with complex internal organizational problems.
Developing thought leadership can take many different forms, tailored specifically to the level of experience of an individual, their specific contributions and the positioning of their organization within the field of their work. For example, increasing your thought leadership capacity through strategic action can include:
- Identifying and refining the topics you can most effectively engage around and clarifying your understanding of where your voice fits into the current conversation.
- Mining your experience-based expertise to tease out innovative ideas about the challenges facing your sector, the dynamics frontline communities are facing most directly or pathways to solutions.
- Strategizing to increase the cadence and variety of thought leadership engagement you create, to include, if necessary, a wider range of channels and venues in order to boost your influence among key audiences that could help advance the sector.
These activities are of a completely different nature than aiming to garner social media shares. Although an explicit social media campaign can absolutely augment a thought leadership approach by expanding your reach, it is not the starting point.
Sharing your experience and insights can be a turning point for collaborative action in your sector. This is because, when executed effectively, thought leadership can establish you as a trusted voice on key topics and can generate innovative ideas in the sector simply by inviting others to think about an old problem from a new angle. Investing in your thought leadership can be a significant win for increasing awareness of the work your organization is doing and can unearth opportunities for collaboration beyond the capacity of just one entity. It is hard at times to withdraw from the virality trap, but focusing attention on a strategic thought leadership plan is an excellent way to move beyond the flash-in-the-pan model and to initiate more sustainable influence-generating work.
If you are interested in learning more about how your organization can strategically deploy its communications to move beyond the sound-bite cycle, contact The Wakeman Agency for a private consultation.