Does your content strategy include memes? These quirky, funny photos are an engaging way to reach customers, show your brand’s creativity, and drive brand awareness. If you’re not already, consider trying memes in content marketing plans.
Benefits of using memes
Memes might not seem like a professional marketing tool, but like any piece of collateral, they have uses and advantages. Benefits include:
Everyone loves a good meme
Memes are light-hearted and humorous. Research shows 74% of people between the ages of 13-35 send or share memes on a weekly basis. Usually, they’re sent to make a friend smile, and they can do the same for your brand.
Memes show your playful side
Increasingly, customers buy from relatable brands. Ninety percent of customers say they search for and buy from authentic brands. A stuffy, buttoned-up image isn’t playing well with customers anymore. Memes give you a chance to shake off your rigidity and connect with your audience.
Brands often see engagement stats rise
Memes tend to boost your likes, shares, and clicks. One case study shows memes are two times more engaging than regular content and four times as effective. With stats like that, sprinkling a few memes into your content strategy might give your brand a much-needed social boost.
How to incorporate memes on your brand channels
To add memes to your content calendar, here are some tips to get started:
Make a popular meme your own
You can take a popular meme and put your brand’s spin on it. Memes have a way of going viral and then being repurposed for different things. However, it’s hard to know which memes are hot at any given moment. To help, consider following a few meme accounts on social.
When you see a recurring meme, you can make it your own. For instance, this “Be Like Bob” meme made its rounds recently. Brands reused the meme image and tweaked the messaging to fit their product or service.
Do a comparison
Split-screen memes are popular, too. You can use them to do a comparison. The meme below is a good example.
You can do something similar with your brand’s product or service. On one side, you have a disastrous picture of life without your product or service and on the other, a picture of your product providing a tranquil solution.
Blk Rooster Taqueria used a snap of Oprah to compare cold tortillas versus the brand’s made-to-order tortillas.
Use a photo
A lot of memes are centered around a funny picture of a celebrity. It might be a funny face made by Steve Carell’s character on “The Office” or a shot of Leonardo DiCaprio making a toast in “The Gatsby,” for example.
It can also be a politician. The picture of Bernie Sanders bundled up during the inauguration in 2021 went viral and turned into a bunch of memes. A beauty brand, Benefit Cosmetics, decided to “adapt” the image of the senator into this meme:
Tips to create memorable memes
As you produce memes to share with your audience, keep these tips in mind:
Stay on brand
You want a meme to be funny, but it should tie to your brand in some way. Keep the messaging in line with your brand’s tone too. Don’t be tempted to craft a message that prioritizes laughs over your brand’s voice.
Use tools to create memes
You don’t need a degree in graphic design to create memes. Fortunately, there are platforms and apps available to help you build apps quickly. Try PhotoDirector or Memematic, for example. You can easily add photos, layer text on top, and utilize stickers, filters, and other editing tools.
Share memes in a timely manner
Memes aren’t evergreen content. They’re meant to be created and shared in a timely manner. Stay on top of trends, create memes quickly, and share them while the masses understand its meaning.
Make sure the text is readable
When you layer text on a picture, make sure the text is large enough for people to read. You could put black text inside a white box too, to make sure it stands out.
Also, keep the text away from the edges, you don’t want any letters to be clipped when it’s uploaded to a social platform.
Are you ready to add memes to your content now? You can use the tips above to produce memes for your brand. Be sure to watch your analytics to see which types resonate with your audience.
