Content Marketing

The Rise of Memes and Why You Need to Start Using Meme Marketing

Today, you can’t miss to come across a meme as you scroll through  your favourite social media platform.  People relate with memes and they will often share them from one social media platform to another. You will even find pages or accounts dedicated purely to memes. Some social media users have even branded themselves as king and queens of meme-making. Since memes are being embraced globally and they communicate humorously, you should start incorporating meme marketing in your digital marketing strategies.

What are Memes

Going by online definition, memes pronounced as /meems/ are images, videos, pieces of text, typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations. One of the most popular memes in 2021 is a photo of US Senator, Bernie Sanders sitting with legs and arms crossed comfortably has been superimposed into images from around the world. This photo went viral and I bet you must have seen it.  

What is Meme Marketing?

Meme marketing is the use of memes by brands to promote their product and services Share on X. Some brands have taken lead in meme marketing as one of their social media strategies since they are free, easy to create and are sharable. According to the 2021 Social Media Trends report, meme marketing is one of the social media marketing trends in 2021.  The report says “memes are spreading across the internet as a fun way to engage communities. They’re not all positive and cute, however. As per any communication, they can be used to manipulate the mindset of viewers. They can be used to normalize extreme behaviour, like external agencies interfering with elections or other major events. In 2021, you need to be ready to protect your brand from memes.” The report further says thatin the coming months and years, expect memes to be used more to persuade consumers, both on key issues such as these, and the ones that could impact your brand Share on X.   Worldwide mentions of the term "meme" has been increasing over time according to Google Trends   Also Read: Tips for using hashtags on Facebook  for a Wider Reach

What to Consider when Creating Meme for Marketing

Here are some tips to consider when creating memes for marketing

1.      Know Your Audience

The first thing to consider before making a meme is to analyse your target audience. If your target audience is millennials or baby boomers you can craft content and caption what is relatable to them.

2.      Be Trendy

You need to keep up with trends and hijack your social media posts with memes of what people are talking about what is usually known as memejacking. Take for instance, on March 29, 2021 the Ever Given ship was freed in the Suez Canal by days after being since March 23 causing traffic in the canal. A number of brands were keeping an eye on the trending event and once it was freed they posted memes around their brands on Ever Given ship. Here are some examples trendy meme marketing on Ever Given

Don’t worry. We’ve got this. pic.twitter.com/JwOBhJtu4h

— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 29, 2021

A quick solution to the #Evergiven problem in the #Suez...

We give you, BATTAASH ⚡ pic.twitter.com/KH4xe1NM7Y — World Horse Racing (@WHR) March 29, 2021

However, be aware not to use meme on sensitive topics like violence, rape, race, assault etc that may damage your brand.

3.      Make Sure the Meme Matches Your Brand Voice and Personality

Just like any other brand content that you post on social media, from post to stories it should match your brand personality and voice.  It makes it easier for your audience to relate it to your band. Neil Patel emphasizes that, no matter what you decide to do with your memes, be consistent with your brand persona and stick with it. Otherwise, you risk confusing (and losing) your audience. What should guide you in creating memes that are in line with your brand voice and personality, you need to define the target persona.  Here are some guiding questions by Julia Enthoven in a Social Media Examiner article on how to use memes for marketing.

• What content does your customer consume?
• What music, TV shows, or celebrities do they like?
• How can you delight and entertain them?
• What problems do they face that are common to their community?

Note that the worst thing to do with memes is to add  a call to action (CTA) such as subscribe, purchase, or follow. Memes are a fun way of engaging with your audience therefore they will share them, which will then create awareness and eventually generate leads. Share on X

4.      Repurpose Popular Memes

Creating original memes might be difficult.  At times you may not be able to create one that matches the current moment of what is happening. As a result, you can reuse existing GIF or Meme libraries online.  Some of the popular meme online libraries include GIPHY, imgflip and Meme High Res Stock, and iStock just to mention a few. You can visit these meme libraries and repurpose exciting memes by adding captions, brand font and logos.

 

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5.      Be Cautious About Your Memes and Research Well

Research your memes well and understand the cultures so that you don’t offend online users. On one occasion, the Chelsea football club had to delete a meme after some fans took offence to the Kante meme shared by Chelsea. Chelsea had created a meme in wake of the huge container ship, the MV Ever Given, finally being freed after being stuck in the Suez Canal in Egypt since last Tuesday Also Read: What is Doomscrolling and How To Avoid Doomscrolling?

Benefits of Meme Marketing

You will notice that the most successful brands across the globe are incorporating meme marketing in the social media content strategy. This then begs the question of why you should use memes in marketing. Here are some benefits of using memes in marketing.

Memes Are Easy to Create and Cheap

Creating memes is easy since you can find existing ones on online memes libraries like GIPHY and  imgflip.  From there, yours is just to repurpose them to align with your brand voice and personality.

Meme Humanize Your Brand

When people are interacting with a brand online, they don’t want a robotic kind of engagement. They want to feel they are engaging with a human behind the screen. Memes give you that opportunity to humanize your brand through memes.

Memes are relatable hence Increase Engagement

The beauty of memes is that they are relatable with people and tend to share them willingly. How many memes have you seen today on social media? A number of them, right? probably you have even shared them or reacted to them. By nature, memes are widely shareable hence it increases engagement.

Memes create a sense of community

Memes create a sense of belonging among your followers and audience when you use memes that your community can relate to.  You must have seen comments like “I can relate” on a meme.

Conclusion

Meme marketing is still new and a few brands have embraced it.  You should also start using memes in your marketing strategy since they create engagements, allow brands to communicate their brand personality funnily, humanize a brand and create a sense of community. Connect with Egline Samoei on LinkedIn and Twitter

7 Privacy and Safety Tips on Social Media during Covid-19 Pandemic

Have you ever thought of your safety on social media? What content are you sharing online? Who are your friends or followers?  The use of social media platforms is on the rise. Covid1-19 has even accelerated social media usage as a means of communication since most people are working from home.  People are using social media for different reasons. According to the Global Web Index report, the following are the top reasons why people are using social media during the Covid-19 pandemic are to:

• Stay up to date with current news and update
• Fill up spare time
• Find funny or engaging content
• Keep in touch with what friends are doing.

With more people using social media platforms, it is also good to ensure your safety and privacy on social media. What content are you consuming? What personal information are you sharing online and how will that affect your privacy?  Well, this article looks at some safety measures you need to exercise to stay safe on social media.

1.     Use Strong Passwords

For your social media accounts to be more protected, use strong passwords. Your passwords should entail letters, special characters, numbers and make it at least 8 characters. For your social media accounts to be more protected, use strong passwords. Your passwords should entail letters, special characters, numbers and make it at least 8 characters. Share on XMoreover, be creative with your passwords. Do not use your names, place of birth, parents' name, your school, which are passwords that malicious people can easily guess. Other tips related to passwords for you are:

• Use different passwords for different social media accounts
• Do not share your passwords with anyone
• Use two-factor authentication that adds an extra layer of authentication
• Set up security questions

 

2.     Familiarize Yourself with Privacy Settings for Each Platform

Each social media platform has privacy settings that allow you to control or customize your privacy settings. You can control what should be visible to your connection, what people can share, your social media activities or manage how a social media platform uses your data. You can also choose to keep your social media account private or visible to everyone.   Have a look at the privacy settings of LinkedIn on what you can control.

3.     Be Selective on Friend Requests

Be selective on friend requests and do not accept friend requests of people that you don't know.  The friend request you could accept could be a fake account or a malicious person who wants to get hold of the information you share online. Be selective on friend requests and do not accept friend requests of people that you don't know. The friend request you could accept could be a fake account or a malicious person who wants to get hold of the information you share… Share on XMoreover, do not shy away from cleaning your friends list or connection. Last year, I noticed that I had many friends on my Facebook account that I didn't even know that I had accepted in the past. I took the initiative of unfriending strange people just to secure my account. Remember, you have the power to control the people whom you want to be your friend online and never feel guilty about rejecting some friend requests. Also Read: A Look at Social Media Universe in 2020

4.     Be Cautious of What you Share

"Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want to be plastered on a billboard with your face (or logo) on it."-Erin Bury Don't say anything online that you wouldn't want to be plastered on a billboard with your face (or logo) on it. Erin Bury Share on X As you type on "What is on Your Mind" on Facebook, "What do you want to talk about" on LinkedIn or "What is Happening on Twitter," remember what happens on social media stays on Google forever.   You may delete what you have posted but remember somebody might have taken a screenshot of it and saved it. So be careful before you hit that "Post" button.  To add on, be calm on what you post or share on social media. Do not share everything and anything going on in your life on social media. From what share, say a location malicious person can take advantage of that information and even come to where you are. Also, do not share sensitive information like your phone number, bank details, passwords, date of birth, account numbers on social media that hackers can use against you. When you have a complaint that you are raising to a company through their social media platform, learn to inbox them your personal details rather than posting the complaint with your personal details on their wall.Don't share sensitive information like your phone number, bank details, passwords, account numbers on social media that hackers can use against you. When you have a complaint that you are raising to a company through their social media… Share on X Hackers and malicious will take advantage of that information.

5.     Avoid signing Up on third-party apps with your social media credentials

You must have come across sites or apps that allow you to sign up using your social media accounts or email.  Avoid signing up on third-party apps using your social media accounts because you will be granting those sites more information about you.

6.     Avoid Playing Online Games and Quizzes

The most relatable games and quizzes are those fun games on Facebook like Nametests and Meaww. You may or may not have participated in those quizzes and names, but from today avoid participating in those games if you care about your personal security and privacy. All those clicks and taps give the Quiz company information on you. Avoid participating on social media games if you care about your personal security and privacy. All those clicks and taps give the Quiz company information on you. Share on X If you check the privacy terms of Nametests, an Instant game website available on Facebook, they say they process user's data such as name and profile picture. "When users create a user account with us, we store so-called inventory data, such as the first names of users or app-scoped IDs ("player ID"). Depending on which of our Online Services, our users use, other data, such as profile pictures or text entries may also be processed. We also process data on the use of our services, such as contents that have been viewed, times of use, their duration and technical details, such as browsers or devices used, in order to make our offer user-friendly and secure." Therefore, if you are mindful of your online data and don't want to share with third-party apps like this quiz site, stop participating in those games. Also Read: 8 Effective Habits for Quality  SaaS Content Writing

7.     Learn to Logout from Public Computers

To wind up, if you must use a public computer or device to log in to your social media account, learn to log out from those devices.  Failing to logout from the public device, a person who will use it after you will definitely be gaining access to your social media account and your personal information, which is not good.  For personal computers, ensure that you install antivirus software to protect your computer.

Wrap Up

To conclude, observing the above social media tips ensures your personal data safety and your safety on social media. If you need a technical writer who can write similar topics on security, the Internet and social media, kindly feel free to shoot an email on egline@samodigitalagency.com. For more topics on content marketing, kindly check out Samodigital Agency blog    

SaaS Content Marketing: 8 Effective Habits for Quality Content

Why Quality Content?

"Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first." – Wendy Pier.Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first. Share on X To rank on Google's top page, you should create content that is in line with Google's Algorithm. It is not just about ranking top on the Google search engine but creating authentic and valuable content for your target audience "Google wants to reward high-quality sites that contain original content. So not only does great content make a better website, but it also improves your site's rankings, which can have a very positive impact on your business.t that is useful to your audience." Says Neil Patel, the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. Therefore, there is a need to create quality content for your website or blog post. Now, let us look at habits you need to have to create quality content for any SaaS tool

1.     Have a SaaS Content Marketing Strategy

Having a strategy is a key ingredient in producing quality content.  Set out your goals, establish KPIs, profile your target audience, choose content type, and determine how you will measure the results.  As a content marketing team, ensure that you meet weekly or daily to discuss your content marketing strategy. The meetings have proven to be yield good results for content marketing. According to the B2B content marketing report, effectiveness is greater among teams that meet more frequently (61% of the most effective B2B marketers meet daily or weekly). With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing organizations to work remotely, you can still have meetings virtually via video conferencing tools like Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, etc. If you are a sole content marketer, you still need to evaluate your content marketing strategies and plan.

2.    Create Original Content

Always create original content that resonates well with your brand audience. Google does not like plagiarized content, and you will be punished for that. As a matter of fact, there many contents out there that you can reference but do not copy and paste the content to your website.

3.      Update Your Content

Effective SaaS content marketing is not always about creating new content only. It is also about updating the existing articles, How-to topics, blog posts or any content on your website.  Google Search Console is a great platform to give you clues on what you need to update on your existing articles.  You will find new search terms that will enable you to add or remove from your existent article. Take, for example, if you are into the SaaS industry and your company has added a new feature that is useful during the Covid-19 pandemic or software user interface has been updated. You have articles written base on the old interface. Is it not time to update them?

4.      Your Content Should Provide Answers

When writing SaaS content, write content that provides solutions to your readers or clients. Write educational content and avoid promotional content. When writing SaaS content, write content that provides solutions to your readers or clients. Write educational content and avoid promotional content Share on X A person clicks on a link to your article because they know the article will provide an answer to what they have queried on the search engine.  Neil Patel adds by saying that "people don't just want answers, they want answers fast. So, make your content easy to scan so people can pick up the juicy, important bits quickly."

5.      Monitor Brand Mentions

There are plenty of reasons why you need to track your brand mentions online. An online user can review your product or service and they fail to link back to your site. In this case, you will have a great reason to reach them out and request them to link back. On the other hand, if it is a negative review, you will reach out to them and handle the situation before it gets worse. Use tools like Google Alerts, Brand24, Brandmentions, Semrush Branding monitoring, among others, to monitor your brand online.Use tools like Google Alerts, Brand24, Brandmentions and Semrush Branding monitoring tool to monitor your brand online. Share on X

6.      Incorporate Images and Videos

The best way customers can learn and feel about your product or service is by adding images and videos to your website content. Using the visuals graphics illustrates the point you are making clearly.  For instance, you are writing an article on installing or using your app or software. Using images for each step provides the reader with a clear step on what they need to do.

7.      Share your Content

After writing your content or creating those beautiful infographics, you need to share them with your communities. Publish the content on your blog, share the content on social media and forums like Quora. Sharing content creates engagement, brand awareness, generates a lead, increases sales, and leads to upselling or cross-selling. With that in mind, always add a call to action in your articles.

8.      Monitor and Evaluate your Content Performance

Now, you have created your content, published it and shared it with your community. What next? What follows is for you to monitor and track the performance of your content. A good web monitoring tool you can use is Google analytics. It well helps you monitor your website activities such as real-time traffic, pages per session, bounce rate, traffic channels, user's behaviour and devices they use etc. From the Google web insights, you will be to understand your target audience, improve your site performance, and improve your SEO content.

Wrap Up

Quality and creativity are key to SaaS content marketing that you can infuse into your overall digital marketing strategy.  When creating content, always provide value to your customers and be simple and straightforward. Keep updating your content, and remember to evaluate your content performance. In an event where you want a SaaS content writer or tech writer to write articles, blog posts, guest posts, press release or editorials, Samodigital Agency can do that for you. Send an email at egline@samodigitalagency.com. You can also follow Egline on LinkedIn and Twitter.          

What is Content Marketing and its Importance to Brands

Do you know what content marketing means? Probably not because you have clicked on this article. It is a buzz word for digital marketers and marketers that pops up in their conversations.  This article explains what content marketing, types of content marketing, and its benefits. Let us get started with its definition

What is Content Marketing?

One of the popular definitions is “It is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action” according to CMI The takeaway from that definition is creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and retain an audience.  In one way or another, you may have engaged in some of these contents unknowingly. In simple terms, it is a type of digital marketing that enables brands to connect with their customers and audience without selling them their products or services. It is a way to tell brand stories through different content forms like blog posts, social media posts, emails, gated content, and video. To add on, content Marketing is not something very new since.  A brand like John Deere has used it since 1895. John Deere is OG’s of content marketing. They revolutionized marketing by introducing Furrow Magazine.

 “Furrow magazine provides the reader a mix of current issues in farming with both local and international background, and best practice examples as well as exclusive news and facts on John Deere products and company strategy.” Sriram Sankar

See that! John Deere is providing value to its customers who are farmers through the Magazine.

Types of Content Marketing

By now, you have an idea and glimpse of the types of content you should use.  Let us just list some popular types of content marketing used by modern marketers.

• Articles
• Audio-Podcasts, Voice tweets
• Blog posts
• Case studies
• E-books
• E-Courses
• Infographics
• How to guides
• Newsletters
• Press Release
• Presentations
• Photos
• Social Media content
• Videos
• Whitelists
• Webinars
• Website Content
• User-generated content

Now, if you want to get started with content marketing and want articles, blog posts or website content, contact Samodigital Agency.  They will help with content creation and writing since they specialize in content writing for brands.

Importance of Content Marketing

There many benefits that come with deploying content marketing as one of your digital strategies. Here are some benefits:

• Increased sales: Great content creates awareness of your brand to potential customers; build relations, and they will eventually consider your product or service over your competitor.
• Increased audience retention:  With compelling content, you will keep your audience hooked, and they will come back for more.
• Cost savings: It is cheaper compared to other forms of marketing strategies. A study by DemandMetric revealed that content marketing costs about 62% less than traditional marketing tactics, and it generates about 3 times as many leads!
• Better customers who have more loyalty:  Other than retaining customers, you will get loyal customers.
• Higher Search Engine Ranking:  Since Google loves good content, you will get high page rank hence high website traffic.
•  Building Email list: Content like newsletters, website forms, webinars enables brands to get relevant email lists from potential customers and loyal customers.
• Create brand credibility: When you create compelling content that is valuable, consistent and educational, customers will use it as a credible source of information. As a result, your brand will become credible.
• Generate Leads: Valuable content will make customers more interested in your brand. Therefore, when creating content, always add Call to Actions (CTA.)
• Social Media Growth: When the target audience engage with your relevant content, they will go ahead and follow your brand on social media. Others will even share your social media content or web content.

Conclusion

To conclude, content marketing is a powerful strategy that you need to use to build authority, increase sales, create brand awareness and create value for your audience. Samodigital Agency is a content creation agency that you can contact and help you get started.