The term meme, used in certain contexts, is a bit of a misnomer. In purest terms, when media of any form (video, image, captioned image, animated gif, you name it) spreads quickly, throughout a large audience, and is often imitated to form derivative works, the media in question becomes a meme. You may post a simple image of a grumpy cat, for instance, and within 48 hours find that thousands of people are using that image in various forms: media that both copies the original work and extends it. One person could post a captioned image of the grumpy cat; another person could make a video of the cat; yet another person could invent grumpy carrot or grumpy sheep, which begin to take the original work in new directions.

Point being: media only becomes a meme; it is never born a meme.

The common misconception is that memes arrive only by pure chance, luck of the draw, and whilst this is true most of the time, viral marketers will infuse their media with virality in order to (in the case of memes) encourage that media to become memes. It's an involved process. It requires a strong understanding of your core audience as well as knowing your way around viral marketing. But the process is a worthwhile endeavour, and for some of the reasons you point out. The main benefit here boils down to tapping into a free workforce. To explain: when you have, as you say, 10,000 people sharing your media, what you really have is a workforce that is increasing your brand exposure, and doing so free of charge. That, really, is the main benefit of viral marketing, let alone just memes.

Question is, how can memes benefit you? Answer: primarily, it's that issue of exposure. Part of the exposure is direct. This happens when people are literally sharing your media that is connected with your social accounts, and therefore exposing your accounts to whomever sees the shared media. A basic example here would be a simple post on a Facebook page. Your meme, shared to that page, get's 10,000 shares in 48 hours, thereby exposing the link to your page to 10,000 sets of eyeballs plus all of the eyeballs connected to those eyeballs. The other part of exposure is indirect. This occurs when derivative works (that become memes in their own right) are known to originate from a source: your own initial piece of media.

How you choose to actually benefit from the exposure is a larger question that would take me weeks, if not longer to answer. A simple example brings us back to the mentioned Facebook page. You have a pinned post, say, that leads to a monetized page or blog post or entire website. People, all around Facebook, are encountering your shared meme and, in the process, seeing your FB page link. They give it a click and they arrive on your page. And what do they see first? They see your cover and then your pinned post - the post engineered to earn you money (in this case). But, as I say, plenty of ways exist to benefit. Another way is growth (hint; that's the best of the two). You use your exposure to grow your platforms. Platforms plural, since (in our FB example) you can be growing your FB page as well as your other platforms. It all boils down to how you present your business on the page where people are arriving. You might want to grow the page itself, or perhaps you want to boost followers to your IG, your Twitter, and so forth.

Big subject. Hope some of that helps, matey.

- Tom

From my experience with FB marketing, MEMES help by building FB page likes

Here's how you do it

Reverse engineer hot memes that are in your niche or are RELATED enough to your niche

Post the memes on your FB page

Post the URL of your FB page post to FB groups

Do the same on Twitter using hashtags you reverse engineered

Do this right and you'll get a lot more FB page likes

You then send content interspersed with your squeeze page materials to your FB page membership

Also, fix your FB cover so you get people to sign up to your squeeze page through a LEARN MORE button

If you need more help or a case study, just ask

Hi MM,

What is your niche?

If you are in the comedy niche, your Twitter followers will dig meme's. If you have no niche, or cover say, entrepreneurship, even if the post goes viral - add chance - your followers will see you as an entrepreneur, not a comedy or meme guy. Ditto for if you have no niche. This means, not much traffic or sales at all; you'll get 15 minutes, be more of a 1 hit wonder, unless you become a comedy guy or meme guy. But that takes months and years to establish as is the case with any niche.

You will have greater success by addressing your reader's needs and working humor into your brand, like I have, to get your meme fix.

I teach people how to blog, injecting my colorful and funny travel stories into my blogging tips. Fun way to add humor and greater pop to my blog posts plus it helps spread the word, and has also helped me get featured on Forbes, Fox News, Virgin and Entrepreneur among some other well known sites.

Ryan

Hi Ryan, thanks for the tips. I do jokes, funny stories and such because this is what I enjoy doing. Perhaps I will get better on my slides and hopefully entertain someone, but it would be nice to make a dime in the process. #fungooroo

hi, I'm interested in your FB page. can I stick around and have a look?

A meme is like a fishing lure. The more attractive it is the more people will click on it. The simplest way to use a meme to generate money would be to post your meme at FB or Twitter and have an affiliate link either embedded in the image or the affiliate URL printed on the actual image itself.