Meme Marketing Explained
Social media can be a strange and confusing place, particularly for people who did not grow up as digital natives. However, as a small business owner, if you can understand the technological, economic, and sociological forces that shape Internet culture, you can use them to your company’s advantage. One of the most powerful tools of the internet age is the meme. Memes can redefine brands, create or destroy careers, move markets, change election outcomes, and even help fight wars.
There is a reason that the world’s most powerful people and institutions have embraced memes, but the power of memes comes from their accessibility. Anyone can create and share memes using nothing but free apps and knowledge of meme trends and the communities in which memes originate. Read on to learn from Thump Local’s “chronically online” social media experts about how you can use meme marketing to help your small business.
What Is A Meme?
To utilize meme marketing, you first have to understand what a meme is. The pre-internet definition of meme was “an idea or element of culture that spreads rapidly between individuals through imitation.” An example of a pre-internet meme is “Kilroy was here,” a graffiti cartoon that was spread across Europe by invading American service members during WW2. In modern times, memes are defined as an “image, video, audio file, or phrase that is copied, altered, and spread by social media users.” Memes are typically humorous, but they can also be created to elicit other emotions like anger, sadness, nostalgia, or hopefulness.
Internet memes also make use of shared cultural touchstones and recognizable templates to maintain their relevance, so it is important to do the same in meme marketing. Meme formats are templates used to create a meme before a particular creator changes it to make their specific joke or point. Meme formats often (but not always) make use of characters, screenshots, quotes, and audio from TV shows, movies, video games, music, webcomics, viral videos, and current events. On the other hand, some meme characters, such as Doge and Wojak, were popularized by memes directly and were not ripped from existing popular culture properties.
How To Understand & Create Memes
If you want to make use of meme marketing to benefit your small business, you need to understand memes and how to create them. If you want to use memes, it is a good idea to keep an eye on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and Instagram to keep track of the latest meme trends. However, even for people who use these websites regularly, it can still be difficult to keep track of and understand the latest meme trends. Thankfully, you can utilize Know Your Meme to identify unknown memes and determine if using them is an appropriate idea for your business. Know Your Meme is a user-generated wiki website that explains the origins and meaning of different meme formats. In other words, it’s like Wikipedia for memes.
It is important not to wait too long to jump on the latest trend, particularly if your business is trying to appeal to younger generations. While a few meme formats are evergreen, most have a relatively short lifespan of just weeks or days. Using out-of-date meme formats can attract ridicule for your brand and make you seem out of touch, though this is much less of a risk if you cater primarily to an older customer base. Once you are ready to create your own memes about your business using the latest meme trends, you can easily do so on a computer or smartphone with free apps like Mematic or more advanced editing software like Adobe Photoshop. On the other hand, you can also leave your meme marketing needs to the experts here at Thump Local.
The Power Of Meme Marketing
Meme marketing can be an effective way to make your small business stand out from your competitors. The basis of the advertising industry is making companies memorable, and comedy is an effective way to do this. Corporations traditionally do this with humorous commercials (think about every insurance commercial you have seen for the last two decades), but you can do it inexpensively using meme marketing.
The absurd humor of memes is a good way to make a company memorable and attract more customers. A company that posts clever memes in line with the latest trends will have a more memorable social media presence and will have a better chance of being remembered, recommended via word-of-mouth, and hired. A humorous, meme-filled social media presence will likely encourage more engagement, such as likes, follows, comments, and shares, exposing your business to more potential customers. The social media experts at Thump Local are here to help you harness the full power of meme marketing to help your small business thrive and grow.
Trust Thump Local With Your Meme Marketing Needs
Meme marketing can be a powerful tool for promoting your business, but it can also be a difficult one to use effectively. Thankfully, Thump Local offers social media management services that can utilize meme marketing at your request. Contact us to learn more about how meme marketing can help boost your business’s online image!