Marketing Monday: How To Use Memes For Marketing In Minnesota
Originally Published January 2020
In this vlog and blog, we’ll explain:
- How To Decide If You Can Use A Meme For Your Business
- Where To Find Memes For Marketing
- How To Make Memes For Marketing
Also, be sure to check out our YouTube video on the subject if you prefer to watch rather than read.
How To Decide If You Can Use Memes For Business
Memes are fun. Cats, movie stills, all that stuff. It’s fun to send them to friends, or use meme GIFs in message replies. And visual info, like a meme or video, tends to be shared about 40 times more often than straight text.
But, can you use them on your business social media page or in a blog? The short answer is: It Depends. While you should always consult your own attorney when dealing with copyright issues and your business, every use of a meme needs to be judged on its own merits.
So how do you decide if you can use a meme for your business? As a general rule, copyright won’t affect you if you’re using just a small part of an original work. If you’re using an entire still image a photographer took, obviously that’s 100% their work. If the photo feature’s an individual’s face, you may also face repercussions from that person.
However, adding text can be considered “transforming” the work, which could fall under fair use. You may be better off playing it safe though.
In another situation, if you’re using a movie still, which is a split-scond of a two-hour long movie, and one line of text out of the entire script, that’s much less of an issue.
Where To Find Memes For Marketing
Now, where do you find memes for marketing? One of the quickest ways to find pre-made memes is to head over to imgur.com/memegen or another meme generating site. These usually have a watermark on them, but they tend to be where unskilled people – like me – make their memes.
Skilled Photoshoppers like Kelsey can make their own memes!
Another great place to search for memes or GIFs by category would be reddit.com. Multiple communities exist there where you can mine memes, like r/HighQualityGIFs, r/memeeconomy, r/starterpacks, r/dankmemes, and more depending on your industry and focus.
Google’s image search can also be a resource.
How To Make Memes For Marketing
So, how do you make your own memes for marketing?
I’d heavily consider using Photoshop or the free app Photopea if you have the skills to make your own memes.
If not, head to imgur.com/memegen. There, you can choose from nearly every meme format in existence, add your own text, and see examples of previous memes so you know how to properly use the meme if you haven’t seen it before.
Next week is our break, we make videos three weeks in a row, then break for one week to recharge and keep it fresh for ya. So see you in two weeks. Thanks for watching.
Check out our other Marketing Monday videos in our YouTube playlist to help you learn how to develop your website and handle digital marketing for your company.
Cohlab
Cohlab