What is a meme?

In my last post a few days ago, I mentioned that a meme is an option for including in your post. Or, it can be your post if you find one or create one that is snappy enough.

What is a meme?

Most of us have seen these images around the ‘net. We pass them along to our friends on Facebook or Twitter. We forward the best of them to our favorite people through email.

If you didn’t know what they were, don’t feel bad – I only just learned this year that these “picture thingies that have snappy sayings” (this is what I used to call them) were actually called memes.

How can you use them on your blog?

There are different strategies on ways you can include memes in your blog.

• Include them in the post. I did that in this post – I uploaded it as an image and used that for my post image.
• Meme as a post. Since this blog is about internet marketing, if I created an internet marketing related meme, I could upload it into a single post. Some of them are so cute, effective, profound, etc they need no explanation.
• Be creative. In general, you can use memes to give your website character. Be creative!

What are the rules for using memes?

Generally, it seems pretty socially acceptable to share memes that you see and like. In fact, many of the creators hope that their meme will go viral. Look what happened to Grumpy Cat – now this cute house cat is a household name and a business all because these memes were shared by others.

However, it is important to note that not all memes are shareable. They are generally not in the public domain – although some are listed as a creative commons license. It is highly unlikely that a meme-creator would ever sue (at least, I don’t think it’s happened yet) but you really never know.

My advice is to make sure it’s okay to share that particular meme. Or, you can make your own – as I did – before sharing it on your blog.

This video offers a very nice explanation on what memes are and also how to create your own. I used the info in the video to make my first meme – I included it as an image in this post.