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Memes are all the rage nowadays, especially on social media with individual users and businesses using humor and sarcasm to get through to their audiences. The classic meme comprises an image and text in bold fonts that poke fun at others, tell jokes, commiserate with those who have made blunders, and rejoice in shared experiences, and more. Some tips for using memes correctly so that people can have fun and brands can engage their audiences:
Get to Know Your Audience Really Well
Not only is humor often a slippery plant to walk on but also the issue is complicated because not everyone understands what memes are all about and even if they do, it is quite likely that they are into different kinds of memes. Even though people of all ages and backgrounds have taken to memes, typically, they tend to be favored more by the younger generation. Also, it is important to appreciate that meme humor also tends to be culture-specific so, what may be popular in the U.S. may hardly be understood in neighboring Mexico. You can be more confident that your memes will boost brand engagement if you research your target audience intensively and find out what makes them tick, observes a senior consultant at Meme Scout.
Get Your Memes Right
If your memes are so tangential that they do not make any sense to your target audience, you will have wasted your time and effort. Additionally, if you have not researched your target audience well, you may well end up offending with inappropriate or culturally insensitive content that will reflect badly on your brand. Using memes without thinking and making mistakes can not only hurt your brand, make you the butt of innumerable jokes but also alienate users who will think that you are careless, lazy, and or incompetent. Some memes that were plain fun to start with have also been politicized, so you need to steer clear of them. According to Washington Post, many memes have inbuilt biases that may not be readily apparent.
Using Older Memes Is Not Prohibited
A lot of people will tell you that to successfully drive your content marketing; you need to make your memes ride the latest trends. Of course, this strategy can often be very successful if you can spot the trends early. However, it does not mean that you should always stay away from the older memes and consider them dead. It is quite an accepted practice to use images that have been used in memes earlier because you can link them to specific ideas and experiences that have been shared by your audience in the past. This kind of nostalgia-inducing memes can be a very strong weapon in the hands of savvy marketers, as Hollywood has demonstrated time and again.
Conclusion
You need to be careful about using memes. Just because they have the potential of being successful, you should not overuse them in your content unless, of course, your website or social media account is dedicated to memes. It is also very important to get the timing right because, otherwise, it can go down badly with your customers.
