Background:
The struggle to get through senior year of college is real. As a second semester senior, conflicted with feelings of not wanting to graduate and ready to start my career, I used these as inspiration for creating a meme for the Viral Content Challenge. I believe my fellow classmates and college students nationwide have felt this way at some point or another. I used trending hashtags, #SeniorYear, #WashedUp and #Senioritis, to expand my reach across various platforms.
Objective & Goals:
My main objective in creating this meme was to achieve some level of virality. More specifically, I intended to obtain a minimum of 30 engagements overall. I implemented a number of strategies that accomplished, and far surpassed, this goal.
Strategies:
First and foremost, I shared the meme to the Imgur community with appropriate tags, senior year and senioritis, to obtain views. Then, I created a Twitter Website Card. I scheduled 5 tweets that included the card throughout the challenge period from April 4 to April 11, 2016.
RT if you can relate #senioryear #senioritis #washedup #NHsmc https://t.co/wQUpDka3Ao
— Cristina Pierleoni (@cnpierleoni) April 6, 2016
Two of my scheduled tweets included tagging and direct messaging a viral Twitter account, @girlwithnojob. I hoped she would retweet the meme to her 21.4K followers. I also shared the link on my Facebook page to generate views. Finally, I launched a campaign through Twitter Advertisements that generated significant engagement. I created a $5.00 budget for 3 promoted tweets throughout the challenge.
Results & Analysis:
My initial goal stated in my marketing plan was only to obtain at least 30 engagements with the meme. Since I was able to far surpass this goal, looking back now, I should have broken down specific goals corresponding to each social media platform used. Overall, I achieved 31 retweets, 36 favorites, 5 Facebook reposts, over 700 Imgur views and 240 engagements through the promoted campaign.
I found that my Facebook friends were less likely to repost the meme compared to my Twitter followers who retweeted it. Additionally, I sent a Twitter direct message to @girlwithnojob, hoping for a retweet, and only received a favorite. I think that as I increase my following on Twitter, I will find campaigns like this to be even more successful in the future. I would run an analysis of my followers prior to the creation and promotion of a meme. I want to ensure that the content matches the profile for the majority of my followers to achieve maximum potential. I also may increase the budget for the campaign.
In my opinion, the promoted campaign was extremely successful and a major driver of online activity for my meme. Although there are things I would do differently next time, I believe I achieved my overall objective.