Today, the terms link building, viral marketing, and social engagements have become very common with inbound marketers and SEO experts. While it is no doubt not an easy task to get strategies to achieve all of these, one method remains outstanding; memes. Memes are internet concepts such as quotes, videos, stories, images, or even audios that spread very fast (go viral) within a very short time and die off. They are particularly useful in driving traffic to your blog, site, or post. Here is an account of 5 simple steps that will help you to increase traffic using memes.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Understand your memes
To understand Memes and know how they operate, you need to study and become part of their culture. To do this, take ample time in places where best memes are made. These include SomethingAwful, Imgur, Tumblr, Reddit, and 4Chan. They are communities that have very different cultures and you can select where to fit in appropriately. The key goal in this step is simply watching and ensuring you learn everything about making memes.
People interested in understanding memes can also learn by visiting catalogs of internet cultures such as Know Your Memes. The catalogs have all info about memes like image preparation and wording. The main disadvantage of using the catalogs is that many memes take a lot of time to be included. Once you understand about Meme, you will be able to prepare appropriately, launch and watch it go viral. Remember that some memes can be created and go viral in SomethingAwful and die even before it can be picked by Tumblr, 4Chan or other communities.
Step 2: Identify a trending meme
Every meme follows a lifecycle that is very short; it is born, circulates in the community, gets felt, and finally dies. Rarely do memes become timeless. The standard meme will commence with a major theme and then branch into sub-themes that will eventually die individually. The world of memes is very interesting because communities rarely accept new memes. Therefore, you need to pick a trending meme and use them to drive yours to the pinnacle.
Step 3: Be as funny as possible
To drive traffic using memes, the community wants to get something humorous that can be shared to bring a unique thrill to all. Make sure to understand the baseline of any online marketing strategy; sticking to your niche and understanding targeted community so that you can generate very relevant info. For example, if you are selling tourism services, the memes should have tourism related humor. Be crafty with words and select appealing images so that the meme can work.
Step 4: Craft the Memes properly
When crafting memes, be extra careful. Well, while this can be as simple as editing an image in Photoshop and dropping some text, such a method will rarely work. Since memes utilize the impact font, trying to imitate them brings an awkward outlook even when done by people with good Photoshop skills. As opposed to starting from scratch, consider using great apps such as Quickmeme and Memegenerator that have been used in generating some of the best memes. They are very easy to use by simply editing content and dropping your image.
Consider practicing how you create memes by preparing some drafts until you have that perfect meme that will generate a lot of traffic to your post, site, or blog.
Step 5: Share your new meme
If your meme is niche specific, sharing with the outside community can be an uphill task. For example, in Reddit, new memes are down-voted while Imgur keeps new memes on the User sub. To break the barrier, consider introducing and sharing your meme on your specific community, blog, or even site. Facebook and Twitter are great points to start because you already have some following.
If the meme is general and would like people to appreciate that your brand designed it, take it to the top meme sites like Tumblr, Reddit, 4Chan and Something Awful among others. Release it there and watch it grow, hit the peak and finally die. Most of the followers are going to note your brand and follow the link to your page. Well, think of using a landing page to communicate the info you want to the followers or convert them to your mailing list.
Conclusion
When you understand memes, pitch tent in top communities, and generate highly niche-specific pieces with a lot of humor, you can drive a lot of traffic within a very short period. Remember to understand the cultures and include all the humor you can think of to make everybody hit your meme. Because memes only have a very short lifecycle, it is prudent to master the art of creating them and keep releasing new ones to drive traffic continuously.
