11 musts for creating outstanding social media memes

Your online audiences don’t want a barrage of self-promotional twaddle. Instead, mix things up a bit with lighthearted text emblazoned over a striking image. Here are the keys to success.

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Social media users love memes.

These attention-grabbing images, augmented by a few humorous or clever words, tend to garner high engagement and can spread quickly on social media.

Many brand managers have noticed their popularity. Memes can humanize a brand, concisely summarize a complex idea, and dramatically boost reach and brand awareness. They’re also relatively easy to create. PR and marketing pros can create memes with basic graphic design skills and Photoshop or less expensive image-editing tools.

Sometimes, though, brand managers try to jump on the meme bandwagon—and miss by a mile. A poorly conceived or badly executed meme can embarrass an organization and even offend its audience.

[RELATED: Make sure your team is up to date on the latest skills, strategies and practices. Learn more about Ragan Training.]

PR pros and marketers can avoid such disasters by following these recommendations: 

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