How to Create the Perfect Meme to Grow Your Instagram Engagement by @workinsocialtheysaid

This article is a complete Masterclass on Memes by our friends at @workinsocialtheysaid, exclusively for the Your Social Team community!

On top of everything else we worry about in social media, don’t forget polishing up your comedy skills to become a viral meme expert.

Memes are one of the most effective tools you can use to boost engagement.

Why? They humanize your brand, they’re shareable (and therefore increase your reach) and everyone loves to be entertained!

But without sending yourself back to comedy school, how do you create memes that you know will make your audience laugh (and boost engagement for your brand)?

@workinsocialtheysaid is taking over Your Social Team blog today for an exclusive Masterclass on creating meme content that will boost your engagement.

So bookmark this page and let’s do this!

What we will cover:

• What makes a good meme?

• Where can you find meme inspiration?

• Top tips to create the perfect meme!
  

What makes the perfect meme?

• Short and simple – The most successful Memes are very basic. A meme should be easy to understand within 3 seconds – any longer and your audience may not get it!

• Often use trending content (but not always) – using instantly recognizable images or videos will often increase the engagement. Top tip: look out for moments that start to trend after major events e.g. the Bernie Sanders meme after the inauguration or the weekend after the Superbowl.

• Relatable – the best memes are moments that we can all recognize. Consider what your target audience is talking about right now, the more current the meme, the better!

• Sassy but not too mean – the best memes are those that playfully make fun of a situation. Make sure you keep it on the right side of ‘mean’, especially if your meme is poking fun at other professions.

Where can you find meme inspiration?

• Other meme accounts

  They don’t have to be in the same industry as you. In fact, it’s probably better if they’re not. It will help you think outside of the box and create truly original content. Create a saved collection on Instagram and save memes that you find funny. Think about how you could apply the same humor to your industry.

• Everyday life

  The best memes come from the heart. Listen to the challenges or successes that people in your target audience are facing. Those extreme moments are often the places you can source inspiration for humor from.

• YouTube and Twitter

  YouTube is a great source of funny videos to create memes from. Twitter is a great source of short, simple humor. A simple search of “funny videos” on Youtube will give your hours and hours of content to choose from. Top tip: video memes are often easier to create because a lot of the humor already comes from the video itself. Following “Viral Tweets” or “Funny Tweets” topics on Twitter will give you an insight in to written formats that are capturing the current mood, and may give you an idea for what humor will tap into the current mood.

• Tried and tested meme formats

  Some formats never get old! Once you have trialled a few memes, you will notice which topics generate lots of engagement from your audience. Reuse the same humor in different formats!

Top tips to create the perfect meme

• App recommendations

  There are so many apps out there to help you create memes without having to use Canva or Photoshop. Mematic is my absolute favorite. It gives you examples of trending images to help give you inspiration, allows you the ability to add your own photos or videos, gives you different styles of memes and let’s you add a watermark just using drag and drop features.

• Test it on a friend or colleague

  Once you’ve created your meme, show it to someone else. If they laugh, that’s a good sign!

• Consider formatting

  If you have a meme account, you may get away with just using an app like Mematic. However, if you have branding to match, you might want to consider adding a background to ensure the whole meme can be seen in your profile feed. Or even creating a twitter account where you can post the meme and then screenshot in a 4:5 format for Instagram.

  PRO TIP: that also directs followers to your Twitter account.

If you guys enjoyed these tips, head to @workinsocialtheysaid on Instagram to see how it’s done!