Memes: Traffic Booster or Brand Enhancer?

You’re active on social media networks, but you seem to struggle getting engagement from your audience. What type of content are you posting?  Is it always promotional?  Do you ever try to engage your audience in a fun way? Social is about sharing and content that plays off of pop culture has the potential to appeal to a large audience.

What is a meme (meem) anyway?

According to dictionary.com a meme is ¨a cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes¨.

What makes memes viral?

• Memes have the power to reach large audiences since they often connect emotionally with people. This is because memes reflect real-life situations through sarcasm, jokes, past experiences, and old sayings. Ultimately, people become familiar with memes and connected to their message.
• Memes are highly visual (perfect for social!) content. As a business, do not only focus on writing posts, sharing long articles or promoting yourself constantly. Visuals are a great way to catch your customer’s eyes and call their attention.

How do I get started?

• Be original with your content and understand popular trends within your industry. Getting in your audience’s shoes and thinking like them will help you choose or create the right memes to promote your brand.
• Include memes as a part of your marketing strategy. Plan how often and how long you want to be using them for.
• Be consistent and share your memes on a regular basis.
• Research which social media networks your stakeholders are using the most, time of day and how often. Make sure you test different social media channels and identify which one is the most effective for your company.

The most recent example in which companies used creative and original memes is the birth of the royal baby. Companies such as Coca Cola, Starbucks and Oreo welcomed the baby with memes across social networks. Twitter exploded with its numerous tweets by using the #Royalbaby hashtag in the Twitter Trends.

But…Be Careful!

On the other hand, memes can also have a negative influence in a business. The perfect example is the recent and famous online scandal of Amy`s Bakery. People started creating all types of memes in images, videos, and commercials to make fun of the owners who claimed themselves innocent from the scandal. As memes are a powerful tool to boost your online presence, they also have the power to damage your reputation quickly.

Take advantage of the positive side of using memes and get involved in increasing your online presence by tagging your pictures properly with labels or hashtags. If you want to get some meme ideas or find online trends, you can visit websites such as 9gag.com, quickmeme.com, knowyourmeme.com and reddit.com. They contain a large database of all types of memes that have been ever created.

Add value to your social media content, start promoting interaction with your audiences, and stay on top of mind. Be different, fun and don’t forget to measure how people start interacting more with you from now on!