A friend of mine just opened his taco shop here in Surprise Arizona. A great accomplishment considering all the hoops and nonsense he had to jump through to officially open (he owns a franchise, keep that in mind). It was business as usual on the day, balloons, flyers, music, tacos-a-plenty. I obviously filmed some content and we even did a fun little ribbon cutting to commemorate the day. Posted the highlights with an up and coming sound on tiktok and then forgot about it.

Next day I check the account, we were sitting at 55,000 views and counting. Oop! Then because the internet does what it does, the floodgates of comments, positive and negative, started rolling in.

“Their tacos are too expensive”

“I don’t like the cheese they use”

“Great, another trendy taco shop”

“That’s so close to me! I’ll have to stop by!”

“Why is the El Mirage location so slow”

“My algorithm is getting a little too local for my liking”

Here’s what going viral on accident taught me. Like any good social media manager I replied to the mostly positive comments and ignored the bad. Remember this a franchised taco shop and this business owner doesn’t own another location. I don’t think the general public understands that, nor do they care.

The post ended up climbing to 97,800 views and the overall account gained over 100 new followers. Nothing to scoff at and I’m proud of the metrics from that one video. However all of this was a complete accident. The way I post and create content is always going to be for a niche audience. If you like and support small businesses, want to try a new taco spot, and live in Surprise AZ or the surrounding area, great this post was for you.

This post was not for the taco haters, but regardless they found me! The beauty of the internet is that account made 100 new friends who want to love and support small business in AZ. The repercussions of that was the mass influx of cheese haters who popped out of the woodwork to tell me they do indeed hate cheese. Say your truth and c’est la vie!

Either way my friend was shocked and happy they are more well known in the local community now and at the end of the day even the cheese haters know where we are. Moral of the story, keep posting for the non lactose intolerant community.