The internet controls a lot of things nowadays, but most importantly, it controls relevance. Internet vitality not only implies a lot about who are and what you do, but it also says a lot about how relevant you are in the world— or at least the virtual world.
So, when it came to brainstorming an original meme, which is when the real struggle began, I had to calculate and consider many things such as whether or not it will inflict positive emotion or inspire awe in the audience, and make them laugh. It was also important for me to ensure that my content did not seem like it was click bait, and was something actually worth their clicking.
In terms of the marketing plan, it was difficult to predict people’s behavior, because I planned everything out with the best case scenario in mind, of course, but things didn’t exactly go as I had hoped.
Ultimately, the objective of my campaign, was to reach a wide audience and range of college students of different locations, demographics and backgrounds through how relatable the meme is, and unite a large group of people despite the differences. Particularly, I came up with this meme because it was actually something that I was going through, and find myself consistently facing throughout the year. Procrastination is unfortunately a common denominator when it comes to college students nowadays, and although it’s counterproductive and adverse, there is some humor in it, as well.
What worked?
The fact that I come from an international background, and currently attend university in the United States definitely contributed positively to the widespread impact the campaign had. I had friends commenting and messaging me from home giving me feedback, as well as my peers from Syracuse University so that goal was reached. Also, the minimum goal of 100 views of Imgur was reached, and the meme probably would’ve even reached the 500 views goal had it been posted and promoted on Facebook earlier, and if I correctly imbedded the meme link on Imgur, but that will be discussed later on. The hashtags inputted in the Tweets also assisted as even though the Tweet itself did not receive that many likes or retweets, I was able gain many clicks and views on my content, and also gained many followers who were college students themselves. The hashtags on the actual Imgur platform helped a lot as well, as the vast majority of the views came from that community.
What didn’t work?
Right off the bat, I realized that Instagram was an inappropriate platform to use for this campaign in particular, as there was no direct way for my Instagram audience to link out to the meme on Imgur, therefore there will be no way for me to document the number of views. So, I had to alter my plan and change my secondary outlet to Facebook, which I have over 1000 friends from both Syracuse, NY and Cairo, Egypt, my hometown. However, this led to another issue I faced, which is the fact that my friends on Facebook thought that I had been hacked. As of late, I’ve been the most active on Snapchat and Instagram in terms of my social media and have slightly neglecting been neglecting Facebook. So, when I came back with a random post with a link that leads to an external source, a couple of my family members inboxed me asking what the link was, if it had a virus, and if I even meant to post it at all. Twitter, on the other hand, I wasn’t active on at all until I enrolled in COM 427, so my following is still growing. Therefore, both of those factors might have hindered my view count a little bit, even though I always accompanied the link with engaging and lighthearted captions. Upon beginning the implementation of my plan, I also realized that I didn’t put much thought into the times in which I would be posting the meme, and that those had to be strategic as well because, if no one’s online when I post it, then it won’t be seen. In terms of setting goals for expected likes and retweets, I definitely overestimated, since every post, except the ones on Facebook which actually received quite a few, got little to none at all. Finally, the biggest difficulty came when I had to incorporate the Twitter Ad, and since I was inexperienced with using the website and paying for a Tweet for promotional purposes, I accidentally payed $10 instead of the $5 limit. Thankfully, I was able to pause the campaign right at $5.33, but despite that, I embedded the wrong link into the Tweet, so the clicks on the Tweet didn’t even contribute to the view count of my meme on Imgur. As hectic as this may seem, everything else ran pretty smoothly, as the meme ended up getting about 407 views on Imgur.
The sad, unfortunate truth… #CollegeStudentsbeLike #Thetruggle #NHsmc https://t.co/9uSi0GoUc8
— né-dáh (@NadaSherdy) April 6, 2017
Conclusion
Overall, developing this meme and accompanying marketing campaign was truly testing and challenged me when it came to my social media skills. Now that I understand the logistics of it all, I can plan effectively, think ahead, and learn from my mishaps so that I can smoothly campaign any content by combining Twitter Ads, Tweetdeck, Imgur, and any other social media platform.