For my class Viral Content Challenge, I decided to create a meme using a character from my favorite TV show, Game of Thrones. I took the infamous image of King Joffrey being poisoned, which I’ve already seen as a meme, and put a fresh spin on it with content I hadn’t seen meme’d yet — the disgusting feeling of stepping in a puddle while wearing socks. With the use of colloquial meme language (the ones I see the most on social media use abbreviations like “u” and “TFW”), I used Joffrey’s horrified facial expression to my advantage and overlaid the text. The result is a classic reaction meme:
Once I made the meme, I came up with a social media marketing plan to try and make it go viral. My objectives were as follows:
Objectives
- At least over 500 views on Imgur, over 1000 would be ideal
- At least least 5 favorites and 100 impressions per tweet
- At least 100 likes on Instagram and Facebook
- Make the most of a $5 Twitter ad to maximize engagement over the seven day period
I then created a schedule of posts on Twitter and Facebook that would help to promote my meme, and therefore gain engagement that would fulfill my objectives. From posting in various niche groups on Facebook (such as my Kappa Alpha Theta group and Equal Time Staff group) to using lots of GIFs in my tweets to draw in views, I tried to use a diverse strategy in order to target a wide audience. One of the ways that I went about this strategy was via a Twitter Webcard, which linked to my meme on Imgur:
Twitter Webcard
In the Game of Thrones, you either win, or get your socks wet #NHsmc #GOT7https://t.co/rtMH1cAQmO
— Bridget Hallinan (@bridgethallinan) April 6, 2017
I then promoted this Webcard with Twitter Ads, using a $5 budget over three days to share my meme to niche users — keywords such as “game of thrones” and “GOT7” were used to target them. The campaign garnered 572 impressions overall, with a peak of 274 on Friday, the 7th.
Twitter Ad Snapshot and Total Engagement
Conclusion: What Worked and What Didn’t
Overall, I considered this marketing campaign to be a huge success, considering that I far surpassed my own view count goal, 500 views, at a total of 1,611 Imgur views. However, some of my strategies definitely worked better than others. I first posted the meme on Imgur midday on Monday, and by the next morning, it had only garnered 40 views. This is when I kicked my plan into action — I re-shared the meme on Imgur with new tags, posted it on my Tumblr, Twitter, and in the aforementioned niche Facebook groups. By the end of the day, it had already topped 500.
Twitter was definitely the most helpful tool in achieving virality. I experimented between tweeting at 11 am versus 9 pm, and using the Imgur link with gifs versus using the Webcard. The Webcard definitely got the most total impressions, given the ad campaign, and the tweets sent at night also got more views than the ones sent in the morning. Though I think Twitter is responsible for most of my engagement, the ad campaign itself didn’t get much engagement — only 87 total. I used a wide variety of keywords, focusing on trending Game of Thrones Twitter hashtags (especially capitalizing on the ones that reference the new season), and gave it from Wednesday to Friday to be promoted. I’m assuming my low budget was the reason for lower engagement, coupled with maybe needing more keywords or focusing on specific users to target instead. But overall, my campaign received 572 impressions, and even tweets outside the ad campaign received over 100 impressions each, which was a goal in my objectives.
Facebook ended up being a much less lucrative promotion option than I thought. I thought I could at least get 50 likes on posts from my profile, but they only ended up getting one or two likes each. I had slightly more success with posts in my sorority group, which got 6 likes, 163 views, and a comment. Funnily enough, the post at 2:45 did much better than the 9:00 posts, so I learned that Facebook is a much more midday-oriented platform in terms of engagement. As for Instagram, I chose to not post on it after all, as the week of the challenge my posts weren’t getting nearly as many likes/views as they normally do, so I chose to focus more on Twitter and Facebook. However, considering that Facebook flopped a bit for me, perhaps trying Instagram instead would have been smarter.
This campaign exercise was extremely beneficial to me, as it showed me which platforms I have the most influence on, and how to take advantage of that through marketing and analytics tools — I know this will be extremely beneficial in my future career. In terms of my objectives, though I didn’t perform with likes on Facebook or favorites on Twitter, I surpassed my goals with Imgur views and Twitter impressions. Next time I run a campaign like this, I’ll be more conscious of when I’m posting on specific platforms, using better keywords and targeting more specific users.