Relevance Is Built in Reps, Not Reach: Why Your Viral Obsession Is Costing You

Most organisations are chasing the wrong thing.

They're obsessed with viral moments. That one post that reaches millions. That campaign that breaks the internet. The moment everyone talks about them.

What happens next?…nothing.

The viral moment fades. The engagement drops to zero. They're relevant for 48 hours and invisible for the next six months. Then they chase the next viral moment.

It's exhausting. It's ineffective. And it's why most athletes and brands never build actual relevance.

What Viral Actually Gets You

Viral gets you attention. Not relevance.

Attention is people noticing you exist. It's a spike. A moment. A blip on the radar.

Relevance is people caring that you exist. It's consistency. It's predictability. It's showing up so regularly that people expect you and plan their engagement around you. These are not the same thing.

An athlete can go viral on one post and lose half their audience the next week because that post wasn't representative of who they actually are. Viral attracts the wrong people. A brand can have a campaign that reaches 10 million people and convert zero of them because there's no relationship. No trust. Just noise.

Relevance doesn't work that way.

How Relevance Actually Gets Built

Relevance gets built through reps. Not reach. Reps.

Think about how you actually get good at something. You don't get good through one perfect performance. You get good through thousands of imperfect repetitions. The athlete who trains consistently beats the athlete who trains intensely once a month.

The brand that shows up every week beats the brand that shows up once a quarter with a "big campaign." The club that engages supporters year-round beats the club that only focuses on matchday. Relevance works the same way.

It's built through:

Consistent messaging. You say the same thing repeatedly until people actually understand what you stand for. Not because you're boring. Because repetition creates clarity.

Regular engagement. You show up in your audience's world consistently. Not just when you need something. Consistently.

Continuous storytelling. You tell your story in different ways across different moments. Not one big announcement. A narrative that unfolds over time.

Each interaction is small. Seemingly insignificant. But collectively, they build something: familiarity. And familiarity builds relevance.

The Specificity That Matters

Here's where most people get it wrong. They think "reps" means "post constantly."

It doesn't.

An athlete posting ten times a day with random content has high volume. Not high reps. Reps means: consistent, purposeful repetition of the same core message. One athlete posting twice a week about the same core topic (resilience, performance psychology, authenticity, whatever) is getting reps. Another athlete posting ten times a day about everything is just creating noise. The first athlete builds relevance. The second athlete builds a following of people who scroll past.

The same applies to brands and clubs.

A club that tells one coherent story about community year-round is building relevance. A club that does random initiatives whenever something's happening is just creating chaos. Reps means: the same core message, delivered consistently, in different formats, across time.

That's how you build relevance.

Why Viral Kills Relevance

Here's the counterintuitive part: chasing viral actually prevents you from building relevance.

Because viral requires you to be unpredictable. To chase trends. To do something different every time something trends. That's the opposite of what builds relevance.

Relevance requires predictability. Consistency. Knowing what you stand for and repeating it until it's unmistakable. Viral is chaotic. Relevance is disciplined.

When you're focused on viral, you're abandoning the very thing that builds actual commercial value: predictability and consistency.I see this constantly with athletes who get one viral moment and think that's the formula. So they keep chasing viral. Their content becomes scattered. Their messaging becomes unclear. They lose the audience they built because they're no longer predictable.

Meanwhile, the athlete who focused on consistency, who posted the same type of content about the same core topics, who built a predictable presence — that athlete's relevance is growing while the viral chaser's is fading.

The Math of Reps vs Reach

Let's be specific about what actually drives commercial value.

The viral play:

• One post reaches 1 million people

• 2% engagement = 20,000 interactions

• 1% of those convert to actual relationship = 200 people who actually care

• Of those 200, maybe 5 ever buy anything

The reps play:

• Post reaches 10,000 people consistently

• 40% engagement = 4,000 interactions each time

• 20% of those convert to actual relationship = 800 people who actually care

• Of those 800, maybe 160 eventually buy something

The reach is 100x smaller. The actual value is 32x larger. This is why brands with engaged audiences are worth more than brands with big audiences. This is why athletes with coherent fan bases get better partnerships than athletes with scattered followings. This is why clubs that build community get higher sponsorship rates than clubs that just chase attendance.

Reps build relevance. Relevance builds value.

Reach doesn't.

What This Looks Like in Practice

For an athlete:

Instead of: "I'll post about everything and hope something goes viral", try: "I'm going to post twice a week about [core topic]. Different format each time. Same core message. For the next six months. Then I'll evaluate."That's reps. That builds relevance.

For a brand:

Instead of: "Let's run a big campaign and see what happens", try: "We're going to tell one story consistently across all our channels. Every week. For six months. Building toward a specific destination." That's reps. That builds relevance.

For a club:

Instead of: "We'll do community initiatives whenever we have time", try: "Here's our core narrative. Here's how we tell that story every week, on and off matchday. Here's what our supporters can expect to see from us consistently." That's reps. That builds relevance.

Of course, it’s boring…

Building relevance is boring.

It's not exciting. It doesn't feel like progress when you're doing it. You post consistently and see slow, incremental growth. It feels like nothing is happening. Then one day you realize: your audience is coherent. Your messaging is clear. Your commercial opportunities are better. Your partnerships convert.

That's when the reps pay off. But you have to be willing to be boring first.

Most people aren't. They want the viral moment. The excitement. The feeling of progress right now. Those people never build real relevance.

The people who do? They're the ones who are willing to be boring for six months. To show up consistently. To tell the same story in different ways. To build familiarity through repetition.

And then they're the ones who are actually relevant when it matters.