Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

In a study published by the Content Marketing Institute last month, 70% of B2B marketers stated they will produce more original content in 2017 than they did in 2016, and 39% plan to increase their content marketing spending over the next year.

Meanwhile, user-generated content is also expected to explode. The global Internet population grew 62%, from 2.1 billion to 3.4 billion, in just the last four years.

All this means that the amount of content online, including visual content, will only increase exponentially with time–not decrease.

So, with so much noise out there, how can can you still create unique visual content that stands out?....

...So even if you don’t “do” Pinterest or Instagram, your content needs to have some kind of visual element if it’s going to rack up likes and shares. This is, of course, great news if you’re naturally creative with visuals… 

But if you’re like me, it means you’re likely to be stuck with stock photography. As Seinfeld would say, “not that there’s anything wrong with that,” but when you pull up “happy-woman-at-computer.jpg” for the umpteetnth time, you start looking around for something with a little more pizazz.

Enter the meme. If you’ve never heard of memes (pronounced meemz), I guarantee you’ve seen at least one. They’re those funny images you see all over Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere on the inter-tubes with different messaging embedded. One of my favorites is the Boromir ”One Does Not Simply …” image from Lord of the Rings that I’ve included above. Look familiar?

The good news is that you don’t need Photoshop to create and share your very own memes—just an Internet connection. There are several (free) meme creation websites out there; I’m partial to memegenerator.net, which is super-easy to use...