There’s a lot to love about memes. They’re bite-sized bits of humor that can spread rapidly and can become a sort of in-joke, helping to differentiate those who are in the know from those who are not.
And they’re an attractive not just for sharing laughs, but also for sharing information and advertising products.
But trying to force a meme is a tricky business. If you want to know how to make a meme go viral, you need to do more than just post some text over a jpeg and call it a day. To help you, here are some things for you to keep in mind.
Understand Your Audience
This is probably the most important aspect of getting your meme over. If you fundamentally don’t understand the audience that you’re trying to court, the best you can hope for is for your meme to just get lost in the shuffle. At worst, it’ll go viral for all of the wrong reasons.
In the 2020 Democratic primary, Michael Bloomberg tried to use meme marketing to win over young democratic voters. But without having any apparent knowledge of what memes are, the move was a disaster that helped make his campaign look even less attractive than it already did.
Do Your Due Diligence
A standard tactic is to just use an existing meme and piggyback a new message onto it. It’s a common technique and is actually more effective than you would probably imagine.
But what you want to be aware of is the origin of the meme that you’re parodying.
You have to remember that this is the internet and that some memes come out of less-savory corners of the web. By using one of those memes as a template, you could unwittingly be giving your post unfortunate implications that you’d be better avoiding.
PhotoShop is Not Required
In the old days, if you wanted to post a meme you’d have to make the whole thing from scratch. But nowadays, you need not worry if your graphic design abilities are limited to cropping photos in your phone’s pictures app.
There are plenty of easy-to-use meme generators on the web, particularly useful if you’re just co-opting an existing meme. We’d recommend Adobe Spark’s meme creator. Not only is it free, but you can upload your own images to create fresh content, unlike many meme generators.
Learning How to Make a Meme Go Viral is More Art Than Science
Memes are an emerging field of scholarly study, and it’s not hard to see why. Despite most of us being bombarded with them day and night, no one has ever really cracked how they work.
That’s why learning how to make a meme go viral tends to come through practice. Not unlike any other form of comedy or means of disseminating information. And learning how to successfully integrate memes into something like a digital marketing campaign is a skillset all on its own.
The digital landscape is always changing, and success means keeping up with all of the newest developments. So to make sure that you’re always in the loop, be sure to keep up with all of the latest from Zero Forum.