I don’t know about you, but I like to know who I’m doing business with.
I always appreciate when I know a little about the owner of a business and not just the business name—it helps me feel more comfortable about spending money with someone if I can see that they are who they say they are.
But personal branding isn’t just for the business owner—in the digital age, it’s for everyone, even your grandmother!
Tim Ferriss, Author of the 4-Hour Work Week has this to say about your personal brand:
“Personal branding is about managing your name — even if you don’t own a business — in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. Going on a date? Chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name. Going to a job interview? Ditto.”
The point is, your info is out there, whether you’re aware of it or not. You can let it sit out there, looking good or looking bad on its own…
Or you can take control of it.
Your personal brand doesn’t just encompass your professional work it is anything related to you—online and offline.
Ready to take control? Here are 3 helpful tips so you can start building your own personal brand:
1. Google Your Name And See What Comes Up
This is step numero uno. If you have no idea what your name is associated with, you need to find out now.
Your name could be associated with nothing.
Or, you could share a name with a famous tiger-taming comedic actress in sweden.
But if you don’t check, you’ll never know.
Once you know what’s out there, you can work on influencing it. I find value in having a Google+ profile because it allows me to have a little more influence on what Google displays about me and how it displays that information.
And since Google is not only where most people start researching you, but also the place where you have the least control, any method of influencing it should interest you.
Did you know that you can set an alert on Google for your name and even your business? Sh-yeah, neato!
That way, when something new is posted online, like a news article (or a Facebook post that went viral for all the wrong reasons), you will get a notification #ThanksGoogle.
2. Develop Your Personal Mission Statement
Every successful company has a mission statement—something they strive to do or be.
At Blue Steele Solutions, our mission is to help small businesses grow, be more efficient, and perform like the big guys!
My personal mission is to make an impact in and through the areas I care about most: family, community, and marketing.
Ready to write your own mission statement? Start by asking yourself, “What do I want to be known for?“ Create a word cloud by writing down all the words you want to be associated with you.
Then, start putting these words into short phrases, little sound bites about you. Finally, write a sentence. Keep it short and sweet. Use strong verbs and focus on what you want to do and how you want to do it.
3. Get Digital
Part of building a personal brand is building and nurturing connections—and one place to start is with friends and family.
Guys, there are so many tools we can use to update our friends, family, and network about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Letting the people around know what’s going on with you is a great way to start networking (and be a part of your community at the same time!)
Social media is a great place to start, but that’s not the only marketing tool available to you. Building a personal website is awesome, but you have to know what you’re doing—you don’t want to build some junky weebly website that reflects poorly on you. The personal website might be something you put together down the road with the help of an expert.
In the meantime, you can use a few simple digital tools to tell your circles about the initiatives in your life that are in line with that “personal mission statement” you just made. Here are a few of my favorites:
MailChimp allows you to create newsletters and deploy them to your email contacts at no cost. That’s right! Free-gratis-frei!
Consider creating a monthly or maybe even quarterly newsletter—this helps you foster a sense of community and also keeps you in their minds for that mission you’re trying to achieve. That way, when an opportunity arises that falls in line with your mission, you’ll be the first person they call, and not the last.
If you’re a professional and you’re not on LinkedIn, literally what are you doing with your life? Get on there!
LinkedIn is a necessity for a business professional (or anyone that thinks they will one day be looking for a job).
And unless you’re independently wealthy or have a secret trust fund I don’t know about, that’s basically everyone.
Your LinkedIn profile should incorporate your personal mission statement in some aspect, but it’s more than that.
It is a catalog of all your successes—like a digital resume. You can show off all the fun organizations you’re involved in and a listing of all the people that you have networked with. Instead of keeping a drawer filled with business cards (and facing the nightmare of sorting through them), LinkedIn sorts everything nicely for you—and it’s free!
Plus, LinkedIn’s publishing capability allows you to create posts in blog form to share with the online community. If you’re not ready to make your personal website just yet, LinkedIn publishing is a great place to start.
These Are Just Beginnings—Your Ultimate Goal Should Be A Website
At the end of the day, you have something of value that you want to share with people. Your business card, your social media posts, and your LinkedIn posts all should point somewhere—to one place that people can find out what you’re really about—and that’s your website.
If you’re in the beginning stages of building your personal brand, the website might be far in the future, but it should always be the ultimate goal.
Social media management isn’t as easy as sporadically sending out Tweets and posting pictures to Instagram. That might be fine for your personal accounts, but when it comes to marketing a business, there is a lot more involved. Connecting with influencers, finding the right content to publish for your audience, running ads and creating custom content are just some of the daily tasks that come along with social media marketing. In order to be more productive and keep some of your sanity, it’s a good idea to load up your social media apps toolkit.
Your kit should include apps that make some of the more tedious aspects of social media management easier. That way you can effectively streamline your workflow and maximize your results. Here’s our compiled list of eight apps that will help you accomplish all of that, and more:
1. Canva
If you want to be successful on social media and stand out, you need to get visual. Tweets with images get:
18% more clickthroughs
89% more favorites
150% more Retweets
Canva is one of the most popular graphic design apps for creating visuals in the social media industry. Whether you want a perfectly-sized Facebook Cover or a custom graphic to advertise your latest sale on Twitter, Canva makes it as simple as dragging and dropping the different elements into your image.
You have access to a huge library of free and paid photos, graphics and fonts that allow you to make professional looking social media graphics even if you have zero design skills. There’s also a Design School that’ll allow you to sharpen your skills a bit. Stop resorting to boring stock images and see what you can create in Canva.
BuzzSumo is a content discovery and influencer outreach tool that shows you:
What content gets shared the most in your industry
Who’s sharing the content (influencers)
It’s an ideal social media app because you can use the information you gather from BuzzSumo to figure out what type of content you should create and share in order to get more traffic and social media engagement.
You might find that listicle or “how-to” articles get the most shares. Then you can start to share more of that type of content to generate additional interest for your social media posts. On top of that, you’ll also have a better idea of which influencers to reach out to on social media. As you build relationships, you’ll be able to get your content organically shared by top influencers in your industry.
BuzzSumo will give you a good idea of what type of content to share. But you’ll also need a source to get a steady stream of blog posts, videos and articles to distribute. That’s where Scoop.it comes in. Scoop.it is a content curation tool that will crawl the Web for content related to keywords you enter. The app will also give you a list of relevant articles to share around that keyword.
One great benefit of Scoop.it is you’ll get to share content from a variety of sites. A lot of businesses make the mistake of only sharing content from the same two or three blogs, including their own. When you’re constantly sharing content from different sites, you have an opportunity to connect with more people by including an @mention to the original source of the content. The content creator will more than likely Retweet you, which gives your business exposure to a new audience. The more influencers you mention, the more reach you have.
Some of you might be wondering what Google Analytics is doing on a list about social media apps. Before you start thinking we’ve lost our minds, let me explain. Measuring your social media marketing efforts is one of the most important steps of the process. Unfortunately, 41% of companies have no idea whether or not their social media efforts are paying off because they don’t track their activity. Google Analytics makes tracking your social media campaigns much easier. In fact, we’ve written a couple of guides on how to do it:
Within Google Analytics, you can track which social media platforms are bringing in the most traffic, which pages on your site are getting the most social traffic and even what your social media ROI is. Nearly any type of data correlation between your website and social media that will help you make decisions can be found through Google Analytics. Plus, this tool connects with some of the other social media apps on our list, so it makes for easy integration!
Automation can be extremely helpful for social media marketing. However, you have to be cautious of what you choose to automate. In case you’re unfamiliar with IFTTT (If This Then That), it’s a very handy tool that lets you connect different apps into what’s called a “recipe” to streamline your workflow. For instance, maybe you want to automatically post the photos you share on Instagram to your Tumblr page or a specific Pinterest Board. IFTTT makes it possible by connecting your social accounts and automatically performing these tasks without the need for additional work.
The beauty of IFTTT is that its capabilities are only limited to your imagination, and you can make it work to fit your needs. Think of some of the most tedious and time-sucking social media tasks that you’re doing manually. Now, head over to IFTTT and see if there’s a way to create a recipe to automate it. Here are some time saving Instagram recipes to get started.
A social media dashboard is one of the first social media apps you should add to your toolkit. The native interfaces you get with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn weren’t made for marketers. They’re meant for casual users, so each platform doesn’t have the functionality businesses need to be efficient. Your dashboard will serve as the home base for all of your company’s different social media profiles. Instead of having to log into five or six different accounts, you access everything from Sprout Social.
Within Sprout Social, you can:
Schedule your social media posts
Track brand mentions
Get in depth reports
Track social conversations
And much more
It’s also ideal for agencies and companies that have multiple people who handle the social media marketing efforts. You can track who’s publishing content, assign tasks to specific team members, insert message approval systems and communicate with your team in the dashboard instead of emails. A social media dashboard is a necessity for any business that does social media marketing.
Facebook has one of the most robust advertising platforms online. The data the social network collects from users allows marketers to ensure their ads are being seen by their target market. When you’re only running a couple of ads with a relatively small budget, using the native Facebook Ads platform is perfectly fine. But once you start to get more advanced, run multiple campaigns and do more split testing, staying organized can become a hassle. AdEspresso is a Facebook Advertising tool that makes running multiple ads much easier.
Not only does AdEspresso allow you to better manage your ads, but the app helps you optimize ads to improve your ROI by analyzing them and providing actions you can take to get better results. Even though Facebook Ads are relatively cheap compared to other advertising platforms, you can waste a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you haven’t been seeing very good results with your Facebook ads or have been struggling to stay organized, give AdEspresso a shot.
Have you ever came across an awesome photo on Instagram that you wanted to share with your audience? Unlike Twitter, Pinterest and Google+, Instagram doesn’t have a way to let you share content from other users within the app. You can only like pictures and leave a reply. This forced people to use workarounds like using screenshots and cropping out the image they wanted to share. That’s inconvenient, inefficient and sometimes unprofessional looking. Instead, the Repost for Instagram app allows you to easily repost content you find on Instagram and give credit to the source.
This is a good way to start networking with other Instagram users, or even share content across multiple company profiles. For instance, if the entire company attended an event and you post a group selfie on the company page, everyone else can repost it to their individual accounts too for more exposure.
What Does Your Social Media App Toolkit Look Like?
It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you have the right tools at your disposal. Add these eight social media apps to your arsenal to find and share better content, streamline your processes and become a more effective social media marketer.
In a fast-moving online culture, it seems like we’re always catching up to the next tech advance…or at least waiting eagerly for the next smartphone upgrade. In reality, though, technological innovations are a logical and natural continuum—sometimes long in the making and slow in the perfecting.
This progress could be the case for market research in 2016. Several technologies might finally bear fruit, though, instead of remaining as forbidden fruit no one can touch.
The issue is whether researchers notice instead of lingering in the already-halcyon days of phone polls and paper surveys.
Nobody knows that answer except 2017. In the meantime, here are some of the technologies that could potentially influence market researchers in 2016.
Eye-tracking technology: It’s doubtful this will make you a Blade Runner running around with the Voight-Kampff test, gleefully exposing Replicants trying to migrate to Earth. Yet this technology will get you much closer to deciphering participants’ intimate motivations in qualitative projects.
Eye-tracking technology is not only becoming accurate but also cost-effective, not something only the Tyrell Corporation can afford. As we reported:
The idea of eye-tracking technology on smartphone screens and other mobile technology was once deemed too pricey. This is no longer the case, with companies already offering eye-tracking technology for home devices at under $100. Samsung, as an example in the marketplace, has incorporated eye-tracking technology for a variety of its mobile products.
Automation: The word “automation” probably unnerves many researchers. It does evoke a notion of losing control, and that traditionally translates into wayward data. Yet companies with automating capabilities in their survey software—such as our sister company QuestionPro—can assist gaining insightful snapshots of consumers, as well as quick and often real-time feedback from respondents.
By no means does automation replace a robust research project or nurtured sample. Nevertheless, automation is beneficial for companies seeking “to find efficiencies similar to those enjoyed by media planners and campaign analysts.”
Quick, economical and easy when you need it…
Mobile: At qSample, it seems we’ve been beating this dead horse all 2015. It’s just too important of a stallion to ignore. Some have predicted online surveys completed from mobile devices to approach 50% in 2016.
Don’t get left behind like the career of Nicholas Cage after he did Left Behind.
Big Data: Sorry, but nothing to here see here, kids. Wait until 2017. Please let me repeat the quote from our executive that exemplifies what Big Data truly is:
It’s like teen sex. Everyone talks about it, everyone wants to do it, everyone thinks they know it, but no one is doing it.
If that’s not enough, here is telling research from Adobe explaining that “companies that embrace creative marketing are 3.5 times more likely to see their annual sales revenue grow by 10 percent or more compared with companies that exclusively rely on big data.”
Stay human, my friend.
Social Media Research: Social Media has been around almost as long as Big Data, but at least the former may potentially be harnessed in 2016 by market research. Sure, the age of organic social media is gone; yet that just means that companies like Facebook can corral their demographics in far more tidy ways. It’s a matter of market research listening better and leveraging automation in the right way for real-time data mining (and again, not replacing traditional research projects but complementing them).
As Fernando Anzures, Liquid Thinking Group CEO, recently said:
From Fan Pages to Brand Communities, it’s time for brands to go further and use social influence to create real conversations between brands and ambassadors. Co-creation at the center of social interaction. Social Media at the center of market research. Moving from ethnography to netnography, every aspect of a brand will be observed and determined by monitoring human behavior on social media.
Honorable mentions: Virtual Reality, wearables, and the Internet of Things. These three technologies will likely boom in the next year and beyond—or at the very least blossom—and already they have become vehicles for a sensible amount of market research.
In the meantime, don’t pass up the mentioned technologies in 2016. If not, even the Tyrell Corporation will not be able to save your data slipping away like a Replicant after a badly-conducted Voight-Kampff test.
2015 saw a great deal of new social media platforms rise, fall, and smolder in their own rubble. Many of these tragic cases didn’t even rise high enough to attract any significant attention. Lo and behold, we’re still waiting for the next revolutionary development in the world of social that will assuredly shake the very industry to its core. So, what will 2016 bring us that will challenge, and possibly even replace, our beloved Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram? Here are some hypotheses on what the world of social may present us with in 2016.
BRANCH
Branch is not just your average social content sharing platform. What makes Branch a revolutionary social media concept is its true 1:1 model. For every one of your friends/followers who are looped in on your content, one of their friends/followers (who is not within your social network) will also see what you’ve decided to share. That’s right! There’s no need for privacy settings within Branch. Every post will be randomly shared out across concentric social circles far beyond your own, increasing the overall impressions of each of your posts and ultimately garnering more exposure for each piece of your content you choose to share. But wait, there’s more! With Branch, you’ll be forced outside of the comfort of your carefully crafted social circle. Why? The creators of Branch want to return us to a time when our actions carried consequences and we were held accountable by others. By Branch-ing out, you’ll be urged to recall the vulnerable openness of truly human exchanges! In short, Branch will remind folks that they’re not the centers of their own universe, the reality of which we expect to pleasantly surprise the network’s users. Knowing your audience just got a little trickier!
HONK
It’s no secret that everyone loves to share a piece of their mind in the social sphere, but just how factually accurate that piece is, however, is an altogether different matter. Honk offers users a chance to urge their fellow human beings to reconsider their confident diatribes about why T Swift opted out of Spotify, whether or not Adele’s “Hello” can really quell family disputes, and the like. Honk is strictly about providing a fact-checking service via the myriad users actively Honk-ing at one another. The best case scenario might involve a user being relieved of a misconception and directed, politely and patiently, toward the fact of the matter, but, as we’re all well aware, honking in traffic is hardly ever that productive or constructive. However, should a user get a bit of social road rage, other users will be absolutely entitled to Honk at a misguided Honker, correcting that individual’s misconceptions or bad facts whenever they should present themselves. It’s all about keeping the waves clear of misinformation and, in turn, providing folks with the most accurate, fact-based truths, rather than a sea of increasingly polarized opinions. Honk if you’re right!
TROLLIO FROM HONK
Sick and tired of people Honk-ing at you when you were, in fact, correct, or at least when it comes to light that they weren’t? Well, now, thanks to Trollio from Honk, you can exact vengeance by way of a companion social platform designed by the people who might bring you Honk. Trollio gives users the opportunity to challenge unruly Honkers to a Trollio duel, during which an affronted party and a misguided individual are engaged in an antagonizing battle of wits. Once entangled in a Trollio duel, the instigator will write an initial post, and then each party will go back and forth (within a 15 second time cap, so the duel of trolls will look something like a disgruntled park bench chess match). A duel will go on as long as it has to for both parties to experience reconciliation, or at least for one party to be outmatched and leave. Despite the best efforts of the folks who may or may not design Honk, there will inevitably be false accusations and a general misunderstanding of what the platform is designed to accomplish (i.e., the sharing of better, more knowledgeable and accurate information). In response to this certainty, Trollio will serve as an in-app companion platform, checking and balancing the whims of Honk users everywhere. So, if you’re going to Honk, you better be prepared to troll for your life!
There you have it. 2016 might well be filled with new, wonderful and even more improbable social media channels than ever before. It’s the future, after all, and, as such, it’s inherently uncertain, but amongst all of that unknown is an almost infinite plethora of potential just waiting to be realized. So, for those of you who are already at the edge of your seats awaiting Branch, Honk, and, most fervently, Trollio from Honk, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath, but you just never know, now do you? Source
As any social media marketer knows, the key to good social media marketing is being able to make a connection with your audience. If you want to connect with potential customers on the internet you have to first immerse yourself in internet culture. How familiar are you with Annoyed Piccard, Imminent Ned, Satisfied Seal, or Rage Comics? These days, it’s hard to scroll down your newsfeed without coming across at least one meme. Memes have the potential to spread like wildfire across the vast space of the internet and clever marketers have been quick to use these viral pieces of content to their advantage. Some companies have hit the jackpot and earned widespread attention from online consumers through meme marketing (Think Most Interesting Man In The World, Grumpy Cat, and Left Shark). The art of hijacking popular memes for marketing purposes has become known as memejacking.
However, there are a lot of marketers and social media managers out there who have been slow to adopt the art of memejacking. There are several reasons why there might be hesitation towards memejacking, but one of the reasons we hope to eliminate with this post is a general lack of understanding towards memes and internet culture.
What are Memes?
First off, in case you were wondering it’s pronounced ‘meem’ and not ‘mimi’ or ‘me-may.’ The word meme was first coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976. A meme as defined by Dawkins is a, “package of culture.” Pre-internet this meant things like regional sayings, fashion, and architecture. These are styles, concepts, and behaviors that are infinitely replicable. For instance, Greek Columns are an architectural meme that has been transferred across cultures and generations.
Memes as we know them today are simply humorous images, videos, and pieces of text that are copied and spread across the internet. The most popular type of meme is what’s known as an image macro which is a picture superimposed with humorous text over it.
Why Memejack?
Memejacking for social media marketing is beyond awesome for so many different reasons. If you’re a marketer who isn’t yet on board with memes, you will be after reading these benefits.
1) They’re Already Viral
Why create something from scratch and hope it goes viral when you can piggyback off of the success of something that’s already viral? A concept isn’t classified as a meme unless it’s fun, engaging, and wildly popular. That’s one of the biggest reasons why memes are fantastic marketing tools.
2) They’re Great Content For Social Media
With Instagram recently opening up its advertising platform, marketers have been rushing to better utilize the social media app they had previously been neglecting. Visuals perform well across all platforms, but Instagram in particular is a platform built around visual content. Memes are an engaging form of visually oriented content that is made for sharing across all social media platforms, including Instagram. Trying to come up with an ad to utilize Instagram advertising? Why not use a meme?
3) They’re Magnets For Traffic, Likes, and Links
Because memes are so share-worthy, they naturally generate traffic and visibility to your social media accounts. Memes attract +1, likes, repins, comments, and shares like crazy making it more likely that your social content will gain traction in social media and spread. Furthermore, when memes are used on your website or blog, you’ll reap the benefits of added traffic and inbound links.
4) They’re Effortless To Create
For inbound marketers, content creation is a daily job. With so much of your marketing campaign depending on content (and fresh, new content at that,) having some quick, easy-to-create types of content at your disposal is a marketer’s dream come true.
How Can I Create A Meme
Creating a meme is as simple as taking a popular image and brainstorming relevant, humorous text to impose over it. Memes typically use Impact font in white, bold, and all caps, with a black stroke. If you don’t have Photoshop, there are several websites like memeful.com that will allow you to effortlessly create your own memes using a selection of the most popular image macros.
If there’s one thing you want to avoid, it’s a memejacking fail caused by a lack of understanding for the core components of the meme. Each meme has a theme or an outline that you’ll want to preserve when creating your own branded version of the meme. In order to help you create your own memes, we’ve outlined 18 of the top memes and how to correctly use them below.
1) Futurama Fry
Being that we’re huge fans of Futurama at the office, this happens to be one of our favorite memes. Futurama Fry is a screenshot of Fry with his eyes squinted taken from an episode of Futurama. The captions follow the formula, “Not sure if (x) or just (y).”
2) Bad Luck Brian
The image for the Bad Luck Brian meme series was taken from an elementary school year book and posted online. The top caption of the meme typically outlines a scenario while the bottom line gives the bad luck that follows.
3) Skeptical Baby
The photo for Skeptical Baby was taken by North Carolina family photographer, Jarod Knoten. The image macro features a baby with a raised eyebrow and a caption that typically begins with, “You mean to tell me…” While this meme series originally focused on describing various realizations acquired upon entering preadolescence, it can really be used to highlight any type of skepticism, including skepticism consumers might have about your brand.
4) One Does Not Simply
The phrase “One does not simply walk into Mordor.” originated from Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. In the scene being referenced, the Council of Elrond reveals that an evil ring must be destroyed by being thrown into the fires of a volcano within Mordor. Upon revelation, Boromir points out the difficulty of the task. Likewise, One Does Not Simply memes highlight the unexpected difficulty of various daily tasks.
5) I Don’t Always
This is a meme that hasn’t been jacked by marketers, but rather stemmed out of a marketing campaign. I Don’t Always memes originated from The Most Interesting Man In The World ads for Dos Equis beer. The captions follow the phrasal template, “I don’t always (x), but when I do I (y).”
6) First World Problems
First World Problem memes highlight frustrations and complaints only experienced by privileged individuals in first world countries. The memes typically feature a stock photo of a girl crying along with a first world problem.
7) Condescending Wonka
Condescending Wonka is an image macro taken from the 1971 musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. As the name of the meme suggests, the captions can be characterized as patronizing and sarcastic.
8) Imminent Ned
If you’ve watched HBO’s series Game of Thrones, then you’re familiar with Eddard “Ned” Stark. Imminent Ned’s caption template, “Brace yourselves, (x) is coming.” can be used to forewarn or proclaim to your followers the impending arrival of a highly anticipated event or product.
9) That Would Be Great
We’ve all seen the 1999 comedy film, Office Space (If you haven’t then shame on you.) That Would Be Great memes feature the character Bill Lumbergh. The captions for the image mimic Lumbergh’s non-confrontational form of speech making requests ending with, “That’d be great.”
10) Success Kid
Success Kid was taken from a photo of a child at the beach clutching sand. The child has been used in image macros to describe a situation that results in either success or frustration.
In 2o12, British media company Virgin Media ran billboards featuring Success Kid and the feeling of success attributed to switching providers to Virgin Media.
11) Y U No?
Y U No Guy is an image macro series with SMS lingo and carefree grammar that calls attention to a particular subject or issue. The unique facial expression worn by the stick figure has been traced back to Japanese anime series, Gantz. The original face can be seen in the comic below.
Unlike many memes which are very specific in use, Y U NO Guy is a versatile meme that’s easy to adapt to your own brand.
12) Grumpy Cat
Grumpy Cat is the nickname given to Tardar Sauce, a snowshoe cat that rose to online fame after pictures of her annoyed facial expressions were posted to Reddit. Grumpy Cat memes are accompanied with things that make people grumpy or unhappy (like Mondays.)
In 2013, American pet food company Nestle Purina announced Grumpy Cat would be the official ‘spokescat’ for their Friskies cat food brand. Grumpy Cat appeared at the annual Friskies Cat Video Contest Awards and was given a lifetime achievement award.
13) Conspiracy Keanu
Conspiracy Keanu is an advice animal image macro featuring a screenshot of Keanu Reeves from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure wearing a frightened expression on his face. The images are typically paired with paranoid conjectures and absurdly philosophical questions that are sometimes similar in nature to the Philosoraptor series.
14) Philosoraptor
What if a philosopher and a velociraptor were combined into one being? The result would be a Philosoraptor, who sits deeply immersed in metaphysical inquiries. Philosoraptor memes challenge readers with deep, existential, and paleolithic questions. Do you have a deep question you’ve been dying to ask your social community? Ask it with a Philosoraptor meme!
15) Confession Bear
Confession Bear is an animal advice macro series featuring a sad looking Malayan sun bear leaning up against a log. The images are typically captioned with confessions of taboo behaviors or controversial opinions (Like a love for Nickleback) that are often kept secret for fear of being ostracized.
16) Schrute Facts
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you’ve seen at least one episode of the work place comedy series, The Office. Schrute Facts is a macro series inspired by the character Dwight Schrute from The Office. Dwight is a character well known for being a know-it-all rationalist and survivalist with poor social skills. In the show, Dwight often corrects others’ statements by deeming them false and rebutting with real-life facts. Similarly, Schrute Facts memes take a statement and correct them with ‘facts’.
17) Joseph Ducreux
Joseph Ducreux was an eighteenth century French artist known for his unorthodox style of portrait painting. His eccentric self portrait has inspired a series of exploitable macros featuring old English reinterpretations of popular rap lyrics. For instance, the meme above is a reinterpretation of the saying, “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” If you don’t happen to know any rap lyrics you could use this meme to turn just about anything into an old English phrase. Does your company have a slogan or mission statement? Why not transform that into a Joseph Ducreux meme?
18) Forever Alone
Forever Alone is part of the rage comics series and is considered the first major rage comic spin-off character to be created after the original Rage Guy. The Forever Alone face is used in scenarios in which a person might find themselves…well, forever alone.
The marketing geniuses at Sony Mobile Communications (formerly Sony Ericsson) used Forever Alone Guy in advertisements for their Xperiathon campaign, which was dubbed, “The Loneliest Marathon In The World.”
A Word Of Caution
Memes often burn out as fast as they gain popularity and you don’t want to be the uncool brand that came to the party late. Before using a meme you’ll want to perform a quick Google search to find out if it’s still relevant and in use. You’ll also want to make sure you fully understand the theme associated with the meme, as many memes are associated with risque or off color jokes. We can’t stress enough the importance of fully understanding a meme in order to prevent a meme fail that could seriously damage your brand image.
The best approach is to simply keep on top of internet trends and culture. Listen through your social media news feeds and try to search out memes that appear to be gaining in popularity. Once you’ve found a meme that’s either on the verge of virality or has just become viral, find a way to put your own brand spin on it and post it to your social channels. Some brands are actually going above and beyond and creating their own memes.
Ikea Singapore created the Shelf Help Guru who answers interior decorating questions on the brands Facebook page. Protein Bar likes to take screenshots from popular movies like the Titanic and the Lion King and insert their healthy fast food meals into them with a hilarious caption.
Above all, the key to creating a successful marketing meme is comedy. The most engaging and shareable memes are funny. Do you have a favorite meme? Feel free to share it in the comments below! We could always use a good laugh.
Trying to build your network on LinkedIn but wary about reaching out to someone you don’t personally know? Think of it this way: when you go to a networking event, are you only going to talk to the people you came with, or should you branch out and introduce yourself to new faces? Thought so. Now that you’re convinced, tackle networking with these 5 tips for connecting with strangers on LinkedIn:
Personalize the pitch.
No matter what you do, never send the generic LinkedIn invitation to connect to someone you don’t personally know. Even if you briefly met this person at a networking event weeks ago, chances are, they probably forgot about you after taking your business card. Don’t put them in the awkward and uncomfortable situation of figuring out if they know you or not. Make it clear by personalizing your message, and including information on when you two met.
Get to the point.
After you introduce yourself in a personalized opening paragraph, don’t waste any more time getting down to the point. Are you on a job search and interested in a position in this contact’s company? Or maybe looking for a mentor to guide you through the industry? Whatever the purpose of your invitation to connect is, be straightforward and state your intentions upfront. If possible, try to include how the relationship could benefit the both of you, instead of making it seem like a one-sided connection.
Point out commonalities.
People will be more likely to accept your invitation to connect if they can find some common ground with you. Don’t make your potential new contact go on a hunt for it, point it out in your message. Did you both work at the same company in the past? Do you share a few connections? Establish this early on so the new contact is more compelled to continue reading your message. Start with something like, “I noticed you have worked with XYZ, I’ve been a client of theirs for years!” Making this common bond early on allows your potential new contact to see you as more than just another name on LinkedIn.
End with a call to action.
Now that you’ve stated who you are and what the purpose of connecting is, what do you want your new contact to do after he or she accepts the invitation? What are the next steps of your relationship, if any? End your message with a call to action. Do you want to set up a time to discuss career or business opportunities? Suggest possible times at the end of your message. Would you just like to stay connected on LinkedIn and nothing else? Add a note about how you look forward to any opportunities that may arise in the future for you two to work together.
Update your profile.
Many people decide whether or not to accept your invitation to connect based on your profile, so keep it as updated as possible before sending messages to new contacts. A profile with no picture, few connections, or very little information in the work history section could seem like spam to others, so make sure everything is filled out and complete. Remember, your potential new contact is scanning your profile to see how the relationship could benefit him or her, so list out every bit of information that could catch his or her eye, from that internship you completed in college to the time you volunteered for Habitat for Humanities.
