Today, Instagram is one of the most used social media networks globally. The best part, rather than act as a social tool for communication, more and more people are utilizing this network as a business platform to promote sales.
Statistics reveal that the social network was one of the most influential advertising channels in 2020. However, one of the biggest challenges associated with Instagram as a marketing tool is active engagement.
With more and more people diving into similar industries, many brands find it challenging to get more engagement from their Instagram community. Add the fact that over 200 million active users who utilize IG pages for pleasure but get more Instagram to reach, large and small-scale brands are looking for a way to drive traffic to their page.
Well, here’s the answer you’ve been searching for “Instagram Memes and Fan!” Memes help IG users increase their engagement, build brand identity, and drive product interest as a social media strategy.
In this post, we look at some top tips by FollowersID marketers that help Instagram users grow their accounts with followers and interactions, to learn how to correctly use memes and humor to get more reach for business.
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What are Memes and Fan?
In today’s pop-culture world, memes are often clever and funny media pieces that combine text and images with adding humor to content. Memes typically come in the form of a photo, video, or GIF and usually comment on anything that has cultural relevance, especially cultural events and social ideas.
On Instagram, memes are popular engagement tools used by some of the most active IG accounts, with more than one million followers.
It’s no wonder brands today realize that a social media strategy using memes increases brand personality, adds variety to their business page, and shows off their uniqueness compared to other competitors with a touch of humor. Memes help brands kick their social media marketing campaign up a notch.
Why Employ Memes for IG Marketing?
Across various industries, memes help people communicate ideas using inside viral jokes that are relatable, fun, and will earn more likes, saves, shares, and comments, unlike ancient digital marketing techniques. Hence, meme marketing on IG ensures that brands can effectively engage hard-to-reach customers and relate with their audience. Some other reasons to use memes include:
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They are Inexpensive
Most viral memes on IG today are user-generated, saving digital marketers and small-scale businesses the cost to create unique and original content. This means that brands can create meme marketing content without spending money on in-person or influencer marketing routes.
Otherwise, brands can choose the DIY route to create original memes at little to no cost and without worrying about high-resolution images or lack of graphic skills. All they need do is find a catchy and funny meme to post on their feed, add a unique touch to relate their brand voice, and viola, there comes the original meme-worthy masterpiece. The best part, businesses and content creators won’t need to hire a professional photographer or videographer to create a meme-themed IG campaign.
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Meme marketing incites likes, shares, comments, and followings
By nature, memes are designed to reach a larger audience through shares. When the audience finds a meme funny, they like, comment, follow the page and repost them across multiple platforms. This gives businesses the chance to reach a wider audience while gaining new loyal followers.
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Memes foster community building.
Memes help build a friendly community and relationship between brands and their customers. How? If viewers find a meme funny, they feel at ease communicating their ideas since the meme may resonate with them. When brands can make their audience happy and laugh with memes, they attract users’ attention, enabling a broader organic outreach.
How to Incorporate Memes into an IG Marketing Strategy to Get More Reach
Technically, posting funny memes will earn a page more likes, saves, and shares than ever. Unfortunately, it’s not just about how funny they are; it's more about building a strategy that will go viral and drive traffic for the brand page.
If you’re wondering how to use memes to get more Reach correctly, here are some tips to help you through the process.
1. Create memes that resonate with viewers while expressing brand values
While most brands and content creators know what kind of memes might appeal to their viewers, it can be challenging to incorporate these meme-themed contents while maintaining ethos, brand voice, and values.
It's no wonder many big-name firms continue to experiment on pieces that will stay relevant to their audience while growing their Reach. But, because memes can look and sound offensive, it's always best to walk a fine line with experiments. Businesses need to educate themselves on winning meme themes on IG.
Take @wendy’s, for instance. The US fast-food chain often posts funny, witty, and spicy pop-cultural meme content on their IG page while showing their brand values. The same also applies to @curology, which often uses memes audience will appreciate while sharing an extension of their brand.
The trick to achieving this is to create authentic meme content and avoid being overly conservative. Everyone can make a meme, but not everyone can find the right GIF, photo, or video that communicates a message to the audience while capturing brand identity. Authentic contents demonstrate brand voice and set businesses apart from vapid competitors.
When deciding on what meme to capture brand identity and appeal to the audience, start by answering these questions:
- What pages do your customers visit frequently?
- What contents do they like to consume?
- What past-time entertainment and celebrities do they follow?
- What common challenges do they face in their IG communities?
- Will your services solve their challenges?
Once you can answer these questions, create relatable inside jokes and comment on cultural trends that hold their attention.
2. Develop a Meme Library
Developing a meme library will give businesses better opportunities to engage users on their page. A library like this makes it easy to access meme jokes at any time for different purposes. To create your business meme library, you can try repurposing existing ones or creating one unique to the brand.
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Repurpose Existing User-Generated Memes
An added benefit of borrowing existing memes is that creators will often encourage the audience to repost their designs to get attention. But, it’s not just about building the creator's voice; it's about utilizing catchy and humor-inducing meme content designed by another person, adding a brand unique statement on it, and reposting to get more Instagram reach.
For instance, @runningworld, with over 348 thousand followers, used this strategy by reposting a swear jar meme template created by a new account with a minor following while including credit to the brand in their caption. This strategy brought more exposure to the smaller IG accounts, and in turn, provided @runningworld with good content that gained them many new followers.
To regram creators’ existing memes, look through online meme themes on places like Giphy or Imgflip. Alternatively, check other social media platforms to find viral videos, images, or GIFs that stand out, then recreate it to add brand personality by adding an original caption.
Businesses can also recreate a dialogue of famous movie scenes to create meme content that appeals to the audience y spinning the familiar scene to communicate the audience's humor and brand personality.
Alternatively, brands can create a meme joke by redesigning meme content used in other community IG pages. To do this, take a screenshot of the content post on your page but make sure to include the Instagram page or IG handle of the original content creator in the screenshot.
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Create Original Memes
Apart from repurposing existing memes, content creators can create something original and never used by competitors. Repurposed memes on your content strategy may look nice on business IG feeds. But, since different brands might have had the same thoughts as you and regrammed the meme, they may not have the desired winning impact. Take the time to create original and authentic memes that will drive better results from the audience.
The downside of this is that creating original content can be more tasking and demanding than repurposing since creators have to find inspiration for the meme, source materials, decide on the format to use, and communicate the message to the audience through an original caption.
Creating original content can be time-consuming, stressful, and requires creative technical know-how. The better the aesthetics of the design, the more appealing they are to the audience and the higher their chances of gaining traction for the brand page.
When personalizing original memes for viewers, here are some variables to keep in mind
- Meme types: there are different options available for creating a meme, the images, GIFs, screenshots, and videos. Experiment with each to know which best works for the brand.
- Fonts: Calibri or Times New Romans may be challenging to read due to their small letterings. Montserrat and Helvetica Neue are two common meme fonts used in meme captioning. Apart from these, Arial and Comic Sans also make texts readable with their bold font style.
- Design Template: consider using visual effects like emojis, embedded texts, and high-resolution colors for the design.
- For physical products, create content that users won’t expect in that context. If you find a customers’ photo or video inspiring for the next content, seek legal use of them. Alternatively, content creators can try to shoot or film their meme videos.
Conclusion
Memes are the newest and most prominent trend on IG feeds. Memes are taking over text and video campaigns on many social media networks, especially Instagram.
Although they can be a bit more challenging to create, they are funny, insightful, exciting, and have the potential to increase your likes, views, shares, saves, and comments. In essence, they are powerful publicity for your business. And while it was once used years back for fun jokes between peers, they are one content strategy that drives traffic on the social network today.
Brands and entrepreneurs who use memes create a fun platform to communicate with their niche, giving them the chance to go viral as their organic outreach and followers increase.
There you have it! With these tricks, small and large-scale businesses can use memes to grow more engagement on their IG page. However, while memes are a fun, versatile marketing tool, essential brands express their personality rather than creating random picture jokes. Create memes that are value-adding and relatable to your niche.