New Media Occupation of the Near Future: Meme Jumper

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iPhone. Bacn. Chocolate Rain. LOLcats. Copybot. Bum Rush the Charts. Lonelygirl15. What do all these have to do with each other?

They’re all “viral” memes – high speed, high attention, sticky microcontent that spread like wildfire in various online communities. Just a mere mention of them on a blog can, if caught early enough, drive a tremendous amount of traffic to a blog, podcast, or web site, simply by virtue of obtaining good placement in early search results.

Right now, it’s kind of a free-for-all in online memes. Things appear and disappear like so many flashes in the pan, but if you can time the meme market just right, you can ride the waves of attention like a surfer, as Justin Kownacki pointed out about the city of Pittsburgh and its two recent hits.

How, though, do you make use of this? Enter a career of the near future: meme jumper. Working in concert with a Community Developer, a meme jumper is the person who coordinates tying content and products into relevant memes and promotions.

Case study: Virtual Thirst, the Coke campaign conducted by Crayon New Marketing. As a contributor to Matthew Ebel‘s Second Life live album, it was no mistake that it was named Virtual Hot Wings and tied into the Virtual Thirst promotion. At the same time, we tried to add as much value as possible to Virtual Thirst by offering a tangible good to an intangible campaign.

How to be a meme jumper? Connect. Connect, connect, connect. Use tools like Twitter for near-real-time monitoring of what’s getting people’s attention. Use Yahoo Pipes to aggregate a list of URLs from the Twitterstream into a format that can be parsed, then look for the most common URLs in a 24 hour period. Technorati and Google Blog Search will keep you on top of blogged items, but check them frequently. Find a meme to latch on to that’s appropriate, then tailor your content to match the meme as best as possible, adding value to it and propagating it.

What’s the goal of a meme jumper? Build lots of short bursts of high intensity traffic to a web site to garner attention and eyeballs. It’s then up to the Community Developer and other marketing staff to convert those eyeballs into subscribers, reader, and customers.

A meme jumper is different than a brand hijacker. The latter just plugs into as many buzzwords as possible with standard link baiting strategies without adding any additional value. It’s less symbiotic and more parasitic.

How do you apply for such a job? It’s all about the track record. Start with small organizations and volunteer work – find charities to plug into that desperately need the help, and make them powerful presences online for fundraising drives. Once you’ve done a few, take your show on the road.


Comments

15 responses to “New Media Occupation of the Near Future: Meme Jumper”

  1. It strikes me that this one would be readily apparent with reasonable analytics. Meaning, someone could execute such a campaign with little “go-ahead” from the primary org, because the heavy lifting is on the linking-to-the-viral-meme side of things, not as much the main product. In YOUR case, you tied it 100% to the naming convention, which was clever. In other cases, it’s just tangential, but riding well.

    I have NO IDEA how people keep kindly mentioning PodCamp Pittsburgh (with links!!!) when they talk about bacn, but I’m thrilled to bits. (Get it? Bits? Tap Tap Tap- is this thing on?)

    So yeah. Great idea!

  2. It strikes me that this one would be readily apparent with reasonable analytics. Meaning, someone could execute such a campaign with little “go-ahead” from the primary org, because the heavy lifting is on the linking-to-the-viral-meme side of things, not as much the main product. In YOUR case, you tied it 100% to the naming convention, which was clever. In other cases, it’s just tangential, but riding well.

    I have NO IDEA how people keep kindly mentioning PodCamp Pittsburgh (with links!!!) when they talk about bacn, but I’m thrilled to bits. (Get it? Bits? Tap Tap Tap- is this thing on?)

    So yeah. Great idea!

  3. There’s definitely a fine line between jumping on and jumping in.

    Chris (Penn, in this case 🙂 ) I’ve learned a lot from watching the way you work memes in a way that is both good for you and your brand, but also valuable to others.

    For example, instead of sending yet another boring promo to Adam Curry’s DSC, your submissions were always interesting and provoked great conversation. I believe they even sparked his tinfoil hat moments.

    When PodCampNYC grew beyond all of our expectations, you didn’t just jump on the bandwagon, you contributed an amazing attendees guide that was extremely valuable for everyone who attended.

    More than just reporting on a meme, it’s important to contribute something of your own that adds value or extends the Meme further. We could all learn from your meme ninja skills!

  4. There’s definitely a fine line between jumping on and jumping in.

    Chris (Penn, in this case 🙂 ) I’ve learned a lot from watching the way you work memes in a way that is both good for you and your brand, but also valuable to others.

    For example, instead of sending yet another boring promo to Adam Curry’s DSC, your submissions were always interesting and provoked great conversation. I believe they even sparked his tinfoil hat moments.

    When PodCampNYC grew beyond all of our expectations, you didn’t just jump on the bandwagon, you contributed an amazing attendees guide that was extremely valuable for everyone who attended.

    More than just reporting on a meme, it’s important to contribute something of your own that adds value or extends the Meme further. We could all learn from your meme ninja skills!

  5. Man… I feel like I just got a peak inside the mind of a ninja. “I look forward to memeing you soon!”

  6. Man… I feel like I just got a peak inside the mind of a ninja. “I look forward to memeing you soon!”

  7. Totally agree with Eric – the good ones will add something of value, even if they are a marketer. They’ll grow it and contribute value. The bad ones will see this and just look at how they can exploit it.

  8. Totally agree with Eric – the good ones will add something of value, even if they are a marketer. They’ll grow it and contribute value. The bad ones will see this and just look at how they can exploit it.

  9. […] Christopher S. Penn » Blog Archive » New Media Occupation of the Near Future: Meme Jumper Smart idea from Christopher S. Penn (tags: ChristopherPenn NewMedia Memes) […]

  10. […] Christopher S. Penn » Blog Archive » New Media Occupation of the Near Future: Meme Jumper Leveraging the popular memes to drive traffic to your sites – and then do something with it. Social Media spreads ideas far and wide and at speeds faster than ever before (look at bacn). Can they be used by a savvy marketing team in a relevant way? (tags: meme Marketing socialnetworking) Tags:Share This […]

  11. This made me smile. For ages now, I’ve told folks with whom I’m intimate what my personal vocation is, and your blog article has inspired me to come out of the closet…

    I am a memetic bard. In every culture there is a bardic tradition, some role that is there to reinterpret the old wine in new skins, to make the new acceptable, and to make sure that the ideas that need to pervade the culture travel on wings.

    Traditionally this has more to do with religion and politics, but as McLuhan says, the medium is the message — to work with new media effectively we must become riders of the ether, and memetic bards.

    See, and you thought I was just a marketing and business strategy consultant for the converging areas of virtual worlds, gaming and social networking. Too long a title anyway…

    Memetic bard. Probably CEO is better on the business card though…

  12. This made me smile. For ages now, I’ve told folks with whom I’m intimate what my personal vocation is, and your blog article has inspired me to come out of the closet…

    I am a memetic bard. In every culture there is a bardic tradition, some role that is there to reinterpret the old wine in new skins, to make the new acceptable, and to make sure that the ideas that need to pervade the culture travel on wings.

    Traditionally this has more to do with religion and politics, but as McLuhan says, the medium is the message — to work with new media effectively we must become riders of the ether, and memetic bards.

    See, and you thought I was just a marketing and business strategy consultant for the converging areas of virtual worlds, gaming and social networking. Too long a title anyway…

    Memetic bard. Probably CEO is better on the business card though…

  13. […] Christopher S. Penn – New Media Occupation of the Near Future: Meme Jumper Not even going to ask it. (tags: memetics work theadvertisedlife socilamedia hype hybe) […]

  14. Being a meme is not for me… I can’t stand twitter, I don’t understand it’s appeal.

  15. Being a meme is not for me… I can’t stand twitter, I don’t understand it’s appeal.

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