In an effort to enhance my knowledge of social media and marketing, I participated in a viral challenge using an original meme (see below). After work-shopping the meme, I was able to promote the meme on Imgur and other social media platforms in hopes of gaining virality.
Objective
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the country have been left with no choice but to self-quarantine in their homes to prevent the spread of the virus. As a result, people have now not gone outside for an extended period of time that is only getting longer, making them long for the day that they’ll finally be able to go outside and enjoy life again, thus inspiring my meme.
The picture that I have chosen to go with my meme is an image from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” series’ opening. Nostalgia has taken over the media, with many older films and TV shows being remade and rebooted. With this image being from an older series, I figured that an older generation online would find enjoyment in the implementation of this TV show into my meme.
Upon posting this meme, which was created using the native Twitter platform, I posted it on Imgur on March 30 in hopes of receiving over 300 views on this platform by April 7.
Additionally, it was my goal by the completion of this challenge to demonstrate social media content creation and marketing techniques, as well as use social media in a professional and ethical way and in support of diversity.
My Meme
How I’m gonna look when I go outside for the first time after quarantine ends #quarantine
Analysis
In order to promote this meme and gain a maximum amount of views on it, I used online platforms such as Twitter, Tweetdeck, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr.
In using these platforms, I was able to share the link to my meme on Imgur, allowing those who follow me to interact with the link and potentially share it as well in hopes of expanding my reach.
In this campaign, I believe the aforementioned tactics were successful in helping me gain views on my meme. Even by just posting 4 times on different platforms, I was able to gain a larger amount of views than I anticipated on this post, proving just how powerful social media is when promoting.
Though there were aspects of this campaign that were successful, there were also some ways that I know I can improve in future viral campaigns. For example, in the future, I should consider using paid promotions on the social media platforms I used in order to reach people on these platforms that do not follow me, thus increasing the amount of views on my meme.
Final Engagement
When this viral campaign challenge ended after one full week of promoting my Imgur meme, my meme had earned 850 views in total. Additionally, this meme earned 21 points and 2 comments as well.
Though I have not seen any derivatives being made of my original meme, I believe this campaign was a success as I was able to earn nearly 1000 views on this post from a mere four promotional posts on multiple social media platforms. Going forward, I know that I will take what I learned from this viral challenge and use these new skills to earn even more views on the next meme that I create.