You Do Not Need To Go Viral To Fill Your Diary

You're posting. You're showing up. You're doing the thing. And almost nobody is seeing it. Sound familiar? The rules of social media changed significantly and most chiropractors are still playing by the 2020 playbook. In this episode we get into what actually happened, why chasing more followers is the wrong game entirely, and what building real visibility actually looks like for a local, service-based practice. Spoiler: it's not about going viral. It never was. This one might change how you think about your content completely.

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About Philippa:

Philippa Wilmot is a chiropractor of 16 years and the founder of ChiroVisibility, a membership community helping chiropractors build real visibility through social media and marketing that actually feels like them. In 2026 she was recognised by Women in Chiropractic with the Impact Award - "an exceptional chiropractor creating IMPACT in the lives of others." She's also the host of the ChiroVisibility Pod, where chiropractic finds its people.

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Transcript

How Instagram Reach Works Now

Right Followers Train The Algorithm

Why Viral Growth Fails Service Providers

A Real Booking From Old Content

Three Visibility Mistakes To Avoid

Kindness And Connection Beat Hacks

Key Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Yay, you came back! I love that. I'm Philip Wilmot. This is the Chiropisibility Podcast where Chiropractic finds its people. And today we are talking about something I feel very strongly about. Visibility has changed significantly, and if you're still playing by the 2020 rules, this one is for you. When I started sharing on social media around 2020, the basic rule was really simple. If you posted regularly, your content would be pushed out to more people. Post more, it would go further. As long as you were consistent, visibility was pretty much guaranteed. That has changed significantly. Now posting the algorithm doesn't believe will resonate with enough people simply won't be seen at all. You could post every day, but if a camphographic, particularly those that doesn't catch enough eyes really quickly, especially in the first few minutes and hours after it goes up, then generally that will disappear in the ether. And it may get one like and it's invariably the same person. If you've ever gone through an account, you'll see it. And that's not what you want. But back in 2020, the average Instagram post would reach somewhere between 10 and 15% of your followers. By 2025, that figure has dropped 22-3%. So if you've built a following of around a thousand people, your post might be seen by 20 of them. Does that feel low? It might do. But here's the thing about that 2-3%. There are those are the people the algorithm tests your content on first. If they engage, if they stop scrolling, if they save it, if they comment, if they share it, if they watch for longer, the platform takes that as a signal that your content is worth showing to more people. That means it gets pushed out further and the circle widens and it can keep going like that. But if those first few people scroll on by without a second glance, it stops there and that content essentially disappears. Which means the quality of that initial audience matters phenomenally. A thousand genuinely interested followers will always outperform 10,000 who followed you for a giveaway three years ago and have not thought about you since. Because engaged people send signals that grow your visibility. And disengaged people, no matter how many of them there are, just don't. And it compounds another direction, too. The more your audience is made up of your actual people, the people who genuinely connect with what you do, who can come and see you, who have been to see you, who really, really resonate, the higher your engagement rate becomes as a percentage. And the higher that percentage, the more the algorithm decides your content is relevant to people just like them. So it's not pushing out your content to more people who look like your existing audience. More of your people, which means more engagement, which means an even wider reach. In other words, the right audience doesn't just help you today, it trains the algorithm to find more of the right people for you tomorrow and the next day and the next week and the next year. And it's not just a theory. There is a well-known Instagram content creator, someone actually in the content creation space who has taught people how to go viral, who recently shut down her account. An account with 119,000 followers. Because when she started out, it was all about going viral. She did it, she taught it, she achieved it consistently for years, but she also realized that the majority of those followers or following her when her account got big were no longer people who would ever buy from her. So she made a bold decision, shut it all down, start again with more intention, with more groundwork, with more alignment, with a proper visibility framework. If the person teaching viral growth has walked away from her own viral account, now that will tell you something. If you're a chiropractor listening to this, you might be thinking, okay, but how does that affect me? I am not trying to be an influencer, I'm not trying to go viral, I'm not trying to reach the world, and that's the point. Viral was never your goal. It was never going to serve you because you are a service provider. You need to attract your local people, the people who can actually walk through your door. Going viral in California does not fill your diary in Cheltenham. And if you have a niche, whether that's sports injuries, pregnancy care, families, death workers, you need to go even further in the opposite direction from viral. You need to be incredibly visible to a very specific group of people in a very, very specific place. And this is where so many chiropractors and other professionals get it wrong. They chase reach when they should be chasing relevance. They want more followers when what they actually need is the right followers, the ones who are already looking for exactly what you do, exactly where you are, and are likely to become your future practice members. So what does that actually look like? What does it mean to be visible to the right people in the right place? It means stop trying to game a system that was never built for you and start to build something intentional, something that works for a local, service-based, heart-led business. You don't need a hundred thousand followers. You don't need to go viral. You need the person sitting at their desk on a Tuesday afternoon with neckache, Googling chiropractors near them to find you. You need the new mum in your town who's struggling to stumble across your content and feel like you're speaking directly to her. That is visibility, and that's what we are going to build. And I want to be really honest with you here. Building that kind of visibility takes longer than going viral and it's less exciting to talk about. Nobody's going to make a reel about it that gets a million views, but it compounds. So every piece of content you create with intention, every review that gets left on your Google profile, every time someone finds you through a search rather than a scroll, that builds something real. Something that doesn't disappear when the algorithm changes again next year. Because it will change again. It always does. That's the first rule of social media. Everything changes all of the time. And for most people, that's something that irritates them. For me, I find that really fun. The chiropractors are going to thrive over the next five years and not going to be the ones who cracked the algorithm or the Instagram code. They're going to be the ones who made themselves findable, who built trust before somebody even walked through the door, who didn't just show up for their community, they built one. A community that they are a huge part of, where people feel connected to them before they've ever booked an appointment. And that's a very different game to the one most people are playing. So in this episode, we're going to get into what that actually looks like in practice and why the shift from changing reach to building real visibility might be the most important thing you do for your practice this year or even ever. Let me tell you about something that happened to me recently, because I think it illustrates this better than any statistic ever could. I shared a post on my Instagram about a podcast I created back in 2021. A podcast I'd honestly forgotten I'd even made. I shared a little explanation, nothing fancy, just a moment of rediscovering something I'd put out into the world years ago. And before I'd even really registered what was happening, I'd had an email drop into my inbox. Someone had found me on Instagram, clicked through to that podcast, listened to it, and then she'd booked her appointment. But I'll tell you what struck me most about that. She didn't just book an appointment with a chiropractor, she booked an appointment with me. She already knew what I did, she knew who I was, she knew what I looked like and what I sounded like. She even had a clear picture of my values, and she chose me specifically before she ever set foot through the door. That podcast had been sitting quietly on the internet for four years. It didn't go viral, it didn't get thousands of likes, although it has had a fair few downloads. But the right person found it at the right time, and she arrived already, trusting me. That's the difference between chasing reach and building real visibility. So what are the mistakes I see most often? Because I see them constantly, both in practices I work with and honestly in things I've done myself. I will never say I haven't done these because I have. The first is chasing viral, trying to create content that explodes, that gets shared, that reaches thousands of people, without any intention behind it, without a plan, and without a clear answer to the question, why? Why do I want this many people to see this? Who are these people? Can any of them actually book in an appointment with me? The second is speaking to the wrong people. And this one is so common, it's almost an epidemic in the chiropractic world. So many practitioners are creating content that resonates beautifully with other chiropractors. They're talking about technique, about philosophy, about the profession, and their colleagues are loving it, but their practice members, the people they actually want to attract, they might be scrolling straight past because it doesn't really speak to them. And it's an easy trap to fall into. We naturally speak the language of the people we spend the most time with. But if your goal is to fill your appointments, you need to be speaking directly to the person who needs you, not the person who already knows you. And then there's the one I see that makes me wince every time I see it. And I want to be really clear, this is absolutely not a chiropractic problem. This is not just a chiropractic problem, anyway. I see this across service providers generally, dentists, doctors, beauty therapists. I see this a lot. I see practitioners being unkind about the very people they're trying to attract, poking fun at patients, making jokes at their clients' expense, venting about the people who've cancelled, or ask a question they found frustrating, and I get the impulse. Running a practice is super hard, and sometimes you need to let off steam. But I want you to think about it from the other side. If you were considering using a business and you came across their content, and the first thing you saw was them being unkind about somebody just like you. A mistake that got made that you could make, a conversation you could have had, would you be in with them? Because I wouldn't. Not a chance. Your content is a window into how you treat people, and your potential practice members are watching. One of my favourite quotes from JM Barry, the author of Peter Pan, he wrote, always be a little kinder than necessary, because you never know what someone's going through. And if that's not a philosophy to build your entire online presence around, I don't know what is. And there's something else I want to leave you with, something I realized as I was doing this work myself. We talk a lot about algorithms. What the algorithm wants, what the algorithm rewards, what it punishes, and yes, it does matter. But here's what I've come to understand. The algorithm follows us as human beings. It has to, because ultimately it exists to show people what they actually want to see. It doesn't lead us there, it responds to us, to our needs, to our wants. And if there's one thing we want as human beings, we are hired, hardwired for connection. Which means you can predict what your people need. Not because you've cracked some code or studied some data or taken another online course about Instagram strategy, but because you are human and humans need connection. You know what it feels like to be in pain and not know where to turn. You know what it feels like to finally find someone who understands. You know what you need if you have a struggle and somebody is there to listen to you. You know what your practice members need to hear because at some level you have needed it too. And that instinct, that is your greatest visibility tool. I want you to trust it. So, what do I want you to take away from this episode? Firstly, going viral is never the goal. It was never the goal. And if somebody is telling you it should be, I want you to question what they're actually selling you. Second, attracting the right people is everything. Not the most people, not the most followers, the right people. The ones who are already looking for someone like you in a place like yours, someone who does exactly what you do. And thirdly, the way we shop online has completely changed. And it will completely change again. It already is. The platforms will shift, the algorithms will update, and the rules will rewrite themselves. And the practitioners who will weather every single one of those changes are the ones who are grounded in something that the algorithm can never touch. Their intention, their values, and a very clear sense of who they are here to serve. So before you plan your next post, your next reel, your next anything, ask yourself three questions. Who am I speaking to? Why am I here? And what is my intention? Because when you know the answers to those questions, visibility stops being something you chase and it starts being something you build and easily attract. So if you want to come further into my chiropisability world, the membership is open. It's here whenever you're ready, and the link is in the show notes for you. Get on the mailing list, follow me on socials, come and say hello. I'd love you to DM me. You are always welcome. I'd love to see you in there. And thank you so much for being part of the chiropisibility pod where chiropractic finds its people. I'll see you in the next one.