Objective:
My objective for this viral content challenge was to get 500 (or more) views of my meme on Imgur and 10 or more interactions with my various organic and promoted tweets: retweets, likes, or comments (or any combination).
The Meme:
Twitter Ads Webcard:
Are you a fan on #memes? If so check out mine!https://t.co/E7xGxBCp8x#NHsmc #Meme @FATJEW @FreeMemesKids
— Kaelyn Harris-Vincent (@Kaelyn_HV) November 7, 2018
Twitter Ads Spend:
Campaign Analysis:
What Worked: First of all, Twitter is such a large social media platform that almost any amount of money behind a tweet, put in front of the right audience, of course, is bound to get some engagement and interaction. So in that regards, what worked was simply using Twitter in the first place. Additionally, I think I was successful in the selection of my target audience. I spent a good amount of time choosing what types of users/what types of accounts would be likely to click my Twitter web card, and I decided The Fat Jewish, Free Memes Kids, and general fans of humor/comedy would be good candidates. While it’s hard to know exactly who clicked through, I think it’s fair to assume, given my understanding of memes and the surrounding culture, that people who are fans of memes are always looking for the new thing. My meme wasn’t famous or viral by any stretch, but if it was put in front of an audience that consumes this type of humor, there is a chance others would be interested. I also thought I did a good job of promoting my meme. when drafting the scheduled tweets, I tried to have a variety of promoted and organic (to my followers), as well as using different combinations of tags and hashtags to diversify my tweets. I am no Twitter Ads expert, and 8K impressions is definitely small by Twitter standards, but that amount definitely gave me a good chance to get to 500+ views on Imgur. I think my reach was small but effective.
What Didn’t Work: I think only having $5 in total was the biggest hindrance to my viral campaign. With such a small amount of money, it was completely exhausted in the first day, maybe even first few hours. With more money, I think I could have seen in more detail exactly what was working or not (audience, types of tweets, hashtag/tag usage, voice/tone, etc.). I also think I needed to be much more specific in my target audience selection. While I had the right type of audience in mind, the actual size was too large (at least I think it was) at about 112 million. I think this helped me get to 500+ views, but with a $5 budget and 112 million potential audience members, that doesn’t seem like an efficient combination. In addition to more money, I would have liked to pair that with more time to see what days or time of day was best to be tweeting/promoting. I tried to add some variety in my scheduled Tweets, but more time would have allowed me to spot trends to best promote my content. It’s simply too hard, and arguably too inconclusive, to make inferences about my campaign based on one day with $5 behind it. But hey, I still went viral…right?
I also had a goal to get 10 types of interactions on Twitter (retweets, likes, comments) but did not meet that goal. I think this was because I do not use my Twitter account that often, besides this class, and my followers frankly did not care about the meme I created. I also do not think my own follower base was the best audience to receive engagement, as many are family, friends, or random accounts.
Final Engagement:
7,709 impressions on Twitter
$0.65 per 1K impressions
665 views on Imgur
I guess this means I’m a viral meme creator now…