"What has this boomer got to tell me that I don't know already? " might be the first question that pops into your head. Quite frankly, that's what I'd have thought too, and you might be right. You might click off this page knowing everything and having learned nothing. Contrary to those 'w o k e' individuals, there might be some of you who might learn a lot.
About 4 years ago, my casually-made meme got featured on Pewdiepie's LWIAY i.e. the video right above. It made me realize the power that I had if I used my creativity correctly. As a 17 y/o at the time, this was truly eye-opening for me. Since then, I've devoted myself to become a better marketer and learn how one can combine humor and creativity to make IRRESISTIBLE content.
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and all the other places, you name it and memes will be there. These social media platforms are even aiming to provide further avenues with short videos and stories making it even easier to create funny/interesting content that garners a large outreach. The major outreach and developments in the past decade has turned it into something much more than just a trend - they can practically be called 'culture' now. You could refer to the classic examples of DogeCoin and GameStop and see how keeping on top of meme trends helped individuals generate massive amounts of wealth.
Everyone from Netflix to Mercedes wants to become a part of this revolution, but even some of these big budget MNCs fail to do it correctly. Given this massive influence and global outreach, you won't want to keep yourself in the dark anymore. It's time to let go of the doomer ways of creating content and to embrace the revolution brought about by gigachad zoomers. Without rambling on any further, I'll begin:
1. Keep it Fresh
You know what's common between the iceberg lettuce in your refrigerator and memes? They get STALE incredibly quickly! Some trends only last a week or two; the lucky ones might last a month or a year. This longevity mostly depends on one key factor - popularity. If a meme trend gets too popular too quickly, consider its days to be numbered and you must hop on it quick. You can think of popularity and longevity as a linear graph going downward. For one of them to go up, the other must go down.
Exceptions do exist
The best thing you can do is follow a lot of meme pages, join groups, subreddits and and do whatever you can to look for new, zesty templates that are gaining popularity
2. Make it Personable
You can use this tip for all kinds of marketing, but it plays a vital role in memes. "Relatable" is one of the most common response you'd see on most meme pages and rightly so. You're creating content FOR the people, not for yourself. If the people are not able to relate with it, good luck generating outreach.
The next time you make content, you may start by asking yourself these key questions:
- Who am I making this for?
- Where do they live?
- What do they do all day?
- What kind of problems do they face?
- What 'level' of memes do they understand?
3. Two Essential Elements of Irresistible Content
It'd be injustice to this blog post if I were to explain it for you.
TL;DR: Meaning + Fascination
4. LESS TEXT=YES
Writing more text on memes is only going to hurt you. It's common knowledge that explaining a joke 'kills' it. The same principle carries over to memes.
Memes are a medium to communicate a lot of information (sometimes even a feeling) with a caption or very little text. You know what else has very little text? The heading for this paragraph!
Next time you're writing captions for your meme masterpiece, try following these steps:
- First, think of 5-10 suitable captions
- Second, shortlist 2-3 best ones from the list
- Third, boil these down and make them as short, meaningful and entertaining as you can
- Lastly, for choosing the best one, try consulting your friends, siblings or anyone you think has a knack for humor in your circle
5. How to plagiarize correctly
Plagiarize is a heavy word. However, you do need to consider that most of the content we're bombarded with everyday is in most ways, doing just that. A significant proportion of us won't always have a gold mine of meme-worthy ideas in our heads. So it's worthy to consider getting good ideas whichever means necessary.
Some classic Karmic knowledge: Always credit your source if you're 'stealing' their content, you won't like it when it happens to you.
As mentioned previously, seriously consider diving into the deep depths of social media to find relevant, relatable and interesting content. Every social media platform has plentiful ideas for anyone willing to devote 40 or 50 minutes everyday.
6. Practice, Practice and ...
Practice! Like with any other hobby, passion or skill, you know how it goes. Don't skip it. This is by far the most important.
Do it in your free time, make a schedule for it whatever works for you. Regular practice will lead to multidimensional content and it's no biggie to be better than the current best if you're willing to give your time to it. It'll help you -
- Live like an artist
- Value Effective Communication
- Develop empathy
Side note: Most of the content is easy to create. Especially the things that work on social media platforms. Here's a list of my personal favorites:
- PicsArt : Hella ez phone app. It's very popular and one of the easiest offerings available
- Photoshop : Not necessary, but it'll help you work with complex designs and I just like to use it.
- Kinemaster : Fun, kinda alright phone app. Simple tools for adding text, messing with the audio are available
- Premiere Pro: Video editing made easy. You can do anything with it, and the basic stuff is easy to learn.
All these softwares are, in my opinion, easy to learn and let you do most of the basic meme editing that you'd ever need to do. Each of them can be learned within an hour of YouTube Tutorials.
If you're still here, thank you for taking your valuable time and reading through one of my earliest copywriting attempts. If it isn't too ridiculous for me to ask, make sure you upvote and reblog my post if you liked it.
Thanks again, and I hope this helps you become a better meme artist/connoisseur . Cheers!