With the rise of Tik Tok, many brands have changed to a content creator first approach meaning that their focus is on being funny or interesting. This approach works because people engage with content that affects them and humour has the biggest impact on a viewer.
Whilst this comedy first approach is mostly seen on Tik Tok, it’s slowly making its way across all social medias. There’s more content creators popping up each month which means that there’s more social media content that could be seen and engaged with than ever before. So how do you make sure that your content is the stuff that gets seen?
The answer is with the value that your content provides someone, and comedic value is the highest from of that. If someone sees something that makes them laugh then they’ll likely share it onto their own feed. If someone in their feed sees it and also laughs then the cycle continues. Tik Tok might have algorithms for content going viral, but the core principles work the same on every social media platform.
Memes are the most cost/effort effective way of achieving this. Better yet, most memes aren’t great so if you can create some really good memes within your field then you’ll immediately stand out.
Why You Should Include Memes in Your Social Media Strategy in 2023
Memes have a few massive benefits over every other type of content online:
- Memes are likely to get a lot of engagement, especially shares
- Memes can be easy to make and are therefore quite efficient
- Memes connect brands with their customers
Brands like Ryanair and Duolingo have social media strategies that are almost entirely meme based for all of their platforms. This works best on Tik Tok because videos can achieve a lot more than a picture, but the principles follow through to every social media platform. Memes get engagement, they get shared, and they organically spread the brand across social media.
Memes are very effective pieces of content because they can achieve multiple goals at once. If you’re looking to grow your social media following then memes will get the job done. Those same memes could also be a part of a strategy to promote a new blog post that’s releasing or to attract the right people beforehand. They’re simple pieces of content that can have a massive effect.
Why are Memes Funny?
At their core, memes take something and add a new context to it that creates a joke that wasn’t there before.
Memes are funny because of the relevancy to the viewer and the creativity of the meme itself. For example, if you’ve worked in fast food then you’ll probably know how freezing cold it is to clean out the freezer in a morning. If you were to then see a meme about cleaning the freezer then it’ll have some effect on you because you’ve experiences it. You might then send this meme to a colleague who you used to clean the freezer with, and it’ll have the same effect on them.
There’s also an element of creativity with memes when it comes to the new context vs the old context. For the freezer example, imagine if the meme was a picture of a north pole exhibition with a few people struggling through the snow in big coats with the caption of “Cleaning out the freezer” or maybe “trying to clean out the back wall of the freezer”. Whilst this is a simple example, there is some cleverness behind it because of the logical connection between the freezer being cold and the North Pole being cold.
There’s a weird but very successful sweet spot of fans of the original media and people who can relate to the meme. These people are almost guaranteed to engage with your content because it’s so relevant to them. This means that it’s a good idea to put some thought into the templates you’re using for contexts since some might reach further than others. For example, more people have seen and are familiar with Lord of the Rings than the Hobbit trilogy.
How to Make Funny Memes
I’ve gone through the basics behind what makes a meme funny so now it’s onto how to make them.
A little tip from me, find the media first and then create a new context. If you start with the new context first then you’ll get stuck and will suffer from perfectionism. If you do have a few ideas for context, then write them down for later and use them if you find a fitting media.
How to Develop Funny New Contexts
The key to making funny memes is to take ideas to their logical extreme.
This means over exaggerating reactions, situations, or sequences of events. It’s making a small situation into a massive situation and vice versa. The idea here is that you’re taking a situation that people would know (which is the relevancy) and then making a joke out of it. If you were to just state a situation, such as the freezer is cold, then it has some effect on people but no comedic effect which lowers the engagement rate.
Start by thinking of an experience that your audience might have experienced. This could be annoyance with a system you use or follow or maybe something about public transport in the morning. Then make that experience work within the context of the template and then try to make a joke from there.
There are a few universal experiences that everyone will face that can be used if you’re aiming for a broad audience. These memes have more chance of going viral, but they need to be considerably funnier than if you were aiming for a smaller niche. These experiences are:
- School (there’s so much you can do with school memories)
- Work / going to work / time off from work
- Relationships / heartbreak / couple situations
- Social situations (parties, nights out etc)
If you cannot think of anything then use one of these experiences and tailor it to your needs. For example, you could have a picture of a guy sitting at his desk wearing sunglasses (this could even be picture of you) with the caption “when your teacher said you wouldn’t amount to much but now you spend your day doing x”.
How to Write Funny Captions for Memes
The caption is how the new context is delivered and you can achieve a ridiculous amount with how you word it. Every word can change the meaning and target audience of a meme and even the placement can convey its own messages.
To start with, figure out what you goal is, who you’re trying to target, and how you want people to interact with the meme. For example, is your goal to have people commenting and tagging their mates or is it to have the meme shared on their feed? Each goal requires a change in the language which is why you need to know what you’re aiming for beforehand.
If your goal is to have people tagging others, such as on Instagram, then you want to write as if you were in a situation with someone else. For example, “when your mate” or “that colleague who x” will get viewers to tag their friend who the caption applies to. By outlining a character, you invite others to fill in that character for you with people from their own life.
If your goal is to get shares then you want to write as if you were talking about the viewer or yourself. Use a lot of “when you” or “me when” or “the x (person) when” to appeal to as many people as possible. The aim here is to have the viewer picture themselves in that situation and therefore be more effected by the meme. If the meme regards someone else, such as “the teacher”, then the aim is for the viewer to use their imagination or to reflect on a relevant situation they’ve had.
How to Find Templates for Memes
Finding templates for memes can be as simple as using stock images or as complex as drawing something from scratch. There truly is endless possibilities for what can be used as a template thanks to the context being the important part. The only rule is that the template is of good quality but even that depends on the joke.
There are quite a few “classic” templates that can be used or even trending templates that you can find on Google or by looking at what everyone else is doing. These templates are great for starting off as there is usually a rule or flow to them which you just slot your content around. They do have a problem of being basic so everyone uses them as starter memes, but a good joke can overcome this.
Finding your own templates is time consuming but pays off with higher engagement rates. To get your own templates, watch a piece of media and capture the shot you want. Then go into a photo editor and add a caption. If you have the skills to do so then you should play around with cutting characters out of templates and inserting them into other backgrounds.
The key to hilarious memes is to have everything work towards making the joke. For example, if the joke is about experiences in a hospital then you might take a template of one of the Avengers, take the character out of the original scene, and then put them on a background of a hospital wing. This adds several layers to the joke and therefore makes it potentially funnier.
How to Craft Perfect Captions on Social Media for Memes
The placement of the caption varies between social media platforms, but the core principle remains the same. The caption should be an observation or a continuation of the meme and add to the joke.
If we go back to the freezer example, the caption could say “it’s cold in there” which would be an observation. The key to observations is to write what someone who’s experienced the situation might think or what you might think after the experience. You can also write it as if it was someone witnessing the experience which can work too. It doesn’t have to be clever, with usually simpler captions acting as a nice balance to extreme situations in a meme, but it does need to connect to the meme.
In the freezer example, the caption cold say “*puts on hat” which would be a continuation. Think of continuations as what the meme doesn’t show but happens just before or after the meme. For example, a meme about customers saying they’ll never eat at this restaurant again could have the caption “cries in the toilet”. Taking continuations to their logical extreme works best but really anything can work, simple or complex. As long as it’s a logical step in the timeline of the experience then it’ll work.
You could also try a call for action such as “tag that mate”. This can work but you are sacrificing an element of the joke to do it. You can achieve a similar effect by talking about mates in the context (” that 1 mate that x”) which makes it a redundant strategy in my opinion.
How to Incorporate Memes into your Social Media Strategy
There are a few methods you can employ when it comes to using memes in your social media strategy.
The best method would be to use memes to attract the right people to your brand before you release a new blog post or piece of media. You can do this by making a few memes specifically regarding the topic of your next piece of content and then incorporating them into your usual daily output a few days before. This method takes a bit of effort but should attract the right people to your post as well as grow your social media following.
Ryanair and other brands incorporate memes by creating comedic content around whatever the latest trending show is. This touches on all aspects of why memes are funny to begin with and it’s a successful strategy for them. Examples of this would be all of the memes when Squid Games came out or the dance from Wednesday (surprisingly, Stranger Things doesn’t get much meme fare on a professional front).
You could also use a meme as the image when making an “update” post as this not only grabs attention but also increases engagement on the post. These memes don’t have to be funny or clever as they’re usually quite realistic (i.e., a genuine reaction to a situation) and they often don’t have much shelf life because of this. Nevertheless, they are the easiest type of meme to make and can therefore be quite effective when the rest of the post is good.
Overview
- Memes take something and add a new context to it
- Memes can get a lot of engagement which makes them great for growing a social media following
- Memes are very versatile and can be used to achieve many different goals
- Take ideas to their logical extreme to make memes funnier
- Use the caption to target your audience and what you want them to do
- Find your template first before thinking of a context
- Use the social media caption to add to the joke