Lounging on the couch after a long day at work, I scroll through social media. Scrolling,
scrolling, scrolling…nothing interesting…until I scroll once more and am faced with a meme. I stop, a smile stretching across my face. “Lol” I comment as I sit in silence. Then, I hit the share button and send it to my best friend…and it’s pretty funny so I’ll send it to my sister too…and well it’s kind of hilarious and I think my mom will get a kick out of it, so I’ll send it to her too.

Memes are one of the most instantly shareable forms of content, with viral potential and the ability to increase relatability with audiences. With memes, audience engagement is high, and the skill needed to create them is low. This makes memes an important tool for authors to add to their book promotion inventory. Memes are an ideal content form for authors who want to
connect with their readers, make them laugh, and hopefully get them interested in their book!

So, let’s get you set with everything you need to know to start on your meme-making
journey! To begin, what is a meme? In a very general sense, a meme is an image most often paired with text, typically humorous or satirical in nature, that is spread widely on social media. “Meme” is a broad term, with a wide variety of content being considered in the category. So, good news: there’s not a lot of rules as to what counts as a meme. You have so much creative freedom!

Here are a few meme examples created by Sunbury Press Publishing Assistant Katie
Cressman:

 

 

 

Now that we are on the same page with what a meme is, we need to address how to make a meme. This includes both the technical aspects and the stylistic choices that you will need to make in deciding what type of content you want to post.

Starting with the technical matters, making a meme is quite simple. It includes two main
steps:
1. Find a meme-worthy image.
2. Add text to it with your punchline.

A meme-worthy image needs to be funny, expressive, quirky, or interesting in some way
and it needs to connect to your punchline or joke. When fully in the practice of making memes, it can be helpful to create a folder of possibly meme-worthy images, even if you aren’t quite sure what the joke will be yet, but you can tell that the image has meme potential. It can help to think of movies or shows that might relate to your book and take screenshots of relevant and possibly usable scenes. You can also use existing memes as your base meme, capitalizing off trending posts to boost your own content. To add text to the image, you can use almost any photo editing tool, including tools such as Canva and Photoshop. 

Moving onto stylistic choices, as an author you need to understand your audience and stay aligned with the brand you are developing for yourself. Think of your book’s audience and think of what those readers will be interested in, relate to, and what will make them laugh. Additionally, keep the tone and style of your memes relatively consistent with your author vibe and your writing style/genre. If you are using memes to promote your book, you must think about how the style and content of that meme will reflect on your book.

Your meme content can be about specific books and stories or can be more general,
focusing on the broad topic of books and reading. When using memes for specific book
promotion, it can be effective to use the content of your book to create the content for your memes. Think about qualities and characteristics of your characters that your target audience would find funny or could relate to. What are the main focal points of your plot, setting, tropes, archetypes? Think about how aspects of your book such as these can be transferred into meme content. When making memes, keep in mind the key points of humor and relatability.

Additionally, when using memes as marketing, you can’t forget the main marketing
elements of a designed logo or using the book cover. Adding a logo or the book cover helps the audience identify you as an author and, once they start cracking up laughing at your newest meme, they have something further to investigate, whether that be your author social media pages or looking up the book online. It allows the audience to interact and engage with the post in other ways, and these ways often transcend the singular post itself and will gain you a following.

As for where to use your memes…the answer is any space in which you are virtually
interacting or engaging with readers and your audience. This can include social media pages, blogs, newsletters, etc. A good meme will catch someone’s attention, make them laugh, and will make them want to share it. AND, if you are utilizing memes as an author marketing tool and adding your book cover, a good meme can successfully promote your book and can bring new interest to your work.

So, what are you waiting for? Embark on your book promotion meme-making journey
today and your readers and audience will thank you!