The initial goals for my Viral Meme Challenge are as listed below:
- Achieve a large number of views on Imgur
- Increase follower count on Twitter
- Identify relevant Twitter profiles to promote to and follow, and
- Gain social engagement momentum
Considering the above objectives, I would consider my overall campaign sufficiently successful. I am not completely satisfied with all the results, however I can definitely say that I checked-off most of my campaign goals.
My meme (shown above) received a total of 354 views on imgur, which is 254 views higher than the minimum views required, however still far off from the 500 views that I initially hoped to garner.
Does anyone else get as sad as I do when you leave your #puppy at home? #dogs #cute #puppies #dog #doglovers #NHsmc https://t.co/iH6mAvULJn
— Abigail Budiman (@AbigailBudiman) April 4, 2017
The twitter-ad directly contributed to 82 additional views of my meme on imgur, helped my Twitter profile gain 7 visits, and also earned my profile 1 new follower. These numbers demonstrate some level of success for objectives number one, two and four.
The “Impressions Graph” show a rather odd pattern to my meme’s viewing frequency. My twitter card received a little over 6,000 impressions during its first day. However on the second day and third day, that number drastically dropped to well-under 100, despite the fact that I indicated an equal daily budget of $2 for each day. I am definitely confused as to why this is the case – at least for the first two days, with an identical budget of $2, I would expect the number of impressions to be similar, however this is clearly not the case based on the graph.
Aside from the direct Twitter ad, I also attempted to boost my meme’s views by commenting or quote-tweeting relevant and related content from larger social media influencers with my meme-link. An example would be my quote-retweet of a Buzzfeed UK article, which I posted on my Twitter profile.
oh doggos… 😍 https://t.co/GsmC5eJD8W #dogs #puppies https://t.co/v3sEpmiCL6
— Abigail Budiman (@AbigailBudiman) April 8, 2017
Disappointingly, this attempt only helped me garner three extra views to my meme on imgur.
All in all, I am satisfied with the results of my campaign. Through the process, I learned many new things about social media, such as the concept of “peak hours” (periods during the day where social media activity is the highest) and also discovered the many odd hashtags that are somehow popular with pet-related content on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. I am disappointed at the fact that despite being cognizant of small factors that in theory should contribute to virality, I did not achieve it on a larger scale. Perhaps my meme’s text was too long, or perhaps the Crying Jordan face did not actually fit well with the audience that I tried to target. I also realized that I did not do any form of true “market research” for this assignment. I should’ve looked into memes and content-formats that are already popular amongst the “pet lovers” community in social media, so that I could have a better sense of what specific traits would work better. From this experience I realized that, at the core of it, what determines virality is the content of the meme itself.
Extra Note – Most Memorable Moment in Campaign
A woman on my Twitter, in reaction to my meme, told me how she actually quit her job because she developed anxiety over leaving her beloved dogs at home. I truly did not know how to properly respond to her comment, so I just gave it a “heart.”