Memes are for fun; you can find the Internet loaded with memes today. Memes provide entertainment, information, knowledge & most important of all, it brings a smile to the audience's face. In today's creator-dominated world, are memes only meant for fun or can you make a full-time career in memes? Here is a detailed guide on how a meme creator made a full-time career in meme creation and meme marketing. It's a compilation of a podcast interview with one of the leading meme creators from India, Memeswalibandi aka Khusbhu Gyanchandani.
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” Danish Comedian Victor Borge accurately quoted it. The best way to connect with people is to share a bond of smiles, emotions and humour.
Are you someone who loves to make Memes but feel insecure about making a career in them?
Sometimes it happens that you might be interested in making memes and sharing humorous content but feel hesitant to do so thinking of how your friends and family will react. Isn’t that true?
No more do you have to feel hesitant about it because in the current times there are career opportunities available in meme-making and posting humorous content.
Memes are not only the source of entertainment these days. They have become a vital part of digital media as well. The majority of the content on social media is in the form of memes because they are being liked and shared by people all over the world irrespective of age constraints.
Memes do provide humour and at the same time, they have become cornerstones of marketing and branding as well. Memes have become a medium to share the latest news, entertainment and much more. These days, we could see that whether it’s the launch of a new product or a movie or any stuff, it is all coming associated with its meme trends. Consequently, there is a hype about it and reaches a wider group audience.
You’ll feel more confident about making a career in memes when you hear the story of a Memer who got a name, fame and a fabulous career opportunity out of her passion for making memes.
I am happy to share that Memeswalibandi has been our guest on the first episode of this podcast. With her humorous and witty memes, she has won the hearts of thousands of people on Instagram. Her journey from being an Engineer to a Memer to a Digital Marketer is a perfect story of following one’s passion and dreams. So here I share the conversation with Khushbu Gyanchandani, the Memeswalibandi herself.
We are aware of Memeswalibandi and her works but do tell us about Khushbu Gyanchandani. Please do throw some light on your life before Memeswalibandi came into existence.
Let me begin where this journey started. I was like Scholar Naina from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and then from the third year, I switched to Geet from Jab We Met, not in terms of finding Anshuman or Aditya but in terms of finding my own self.
I was very good at studying in school and was a merit student. My only motive was to be one of the top 5 merit students always. Books were my only best friends. I used to skip food to study social studies. So, such a merit student would incline toward science, and I took Mechanical Engineering owing to my interest in machinery. I continued to be a merit student for two years, and then in the third year, my interest started developing towards memes and social media. So, it all started from there.
As you said you were someone like Scholar Naina from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, so now I am curious to know how did a studious topper student land up in the field of making memes? How did Memeswalibandi come into the picture?
It started from nowhere. I never had a goal to be a digital influencer or a memer or something. It just started randomly. It was like I love memes so I must start making them too. There were a few meme pages on social media that I regularly followed for nearly six months. Among them was a page named Memeswalabanda and I liked the page a lot that I decided to make a similar one with the female version of the username. There I created my page with the name Memeswalibandi. It started from there and yeah in my third year of engineering, I even started bunking college to create memes because it gave me positive vibes and happiness. But yeah, no one should indeed bunk the college.
After your graduation, did you straight away make a career in memes or tried something conventional too?
I worked at Airtel as a CRO for five months. The work was so hectic. I used to go at 10 am and return by 8 pm. I felt that this job was somewhere hindering my creativity as I never had time to create memes and post on social media. Eventually, I quit the job without having any second thoughts. But somewhere back of my mind, I had an intuition that something good might come my way. And yeah. I just returned to my passion for making memes.
How did your family react when you left your job without having any backup career plan? How did you manage to convince them that you are not contented with the current work, and wanna carry on with your passion?
My family has been quite supportive of my work always. They never imposed their decisions on me. They advise me whether it’s engineering or social media career or whatever, to choose the path that gives me happiness. Initially, they didn’t know much about memes and stuff but used to be happy that their daughter is happy in life. Now they have started understanding my social media career gradually. And now whenever my family members find my meme anywhere it may be on Whatsapp status or Instagram story of their friends, they feel happy and proud. Even my relatives have all started feeling proud of my career and content on social media.
How did your decision to follow your passion benefit you, and exactly how did you bridge the gap between your passion and profession?
I quit the job and focused on my meme page. Eventually, my hard work and determination paid off. After three months of leaving the job, I got a job offer from a digital marketing company. This offer came to me as a result of my social media profile, and that’s something unbelievable. I got two more job offers and now, I am working as a Digital Marketer. So yeah, my social media profile became my resume and landed me a good job.
What are the milestones achieved in the journey of Memeswalibandi?
The first one was when I received 100 likes on my Instagram post for the very first time. I was so happy that I had thrown a vada-pav party at my place. And then milestones like 500 followers, 1000 followers, 10k where I got the swipe-up feature on my Instagram story. So the numbers kept growing, and it's 26k as of today. Hope that it would reach 100k soon. And another huge milestone I consider in my journey is that my meme page brought me a great job opportunity, so that’s something incredible for me.
So all these followers and appreciation wouldn’t have come overnight. It would have required a lot of effort for sure and whenever people speak about growing the reach of an Instagram page the few things they stress are like using a proper set of hashtags, posting at a specific time of the day, etc. So which of these Instagram marketing strategies did you deploy on your page that led to its growth?
There are certain things that a page needs to grow. As you have mentioned, hashtags and posting at a specific time of the day matter a lot, but I feel that these parameters perform differently for different Instagram pages. I have seen people using 10-20 hashtags on their posts whereas 2-3 hashtags suffice for my account. So you have to start posting and figure out what works better for you.
And one more thing that’s vital is interaction with the audience. Only when you engage with your audience, reply to the comments/DMs, they’ll stay connected to your page, like, comment and share your posts. When you engage more with them, you’ll figure out what content do they like so that you can create more of such content. In short, you have to build a virtual relationship with your audience.
How important is the consistency factor for the growth of an Instagram page? i.e. like daily posting of content is necessary or we can have beaks?
Consistency is quite an essential thing along with interaction with the audience, following the trends, creating your trend and being precise. These are a few things that I have learnt from my experiences.
As you’re now a digital marketer, please do elaborate on how important are memes in the field of marketing these days?
I would say memes play a very vital role in marketing. Most the brands are trying to utilise memes to expand their reach as teenagers, young adults and every person on social media can relate to the memes. Recently we witnessed that Binod memes became a trend on social media. Brands like Paytm came forward and utilised this trend by changing their username to Binod and playing a sport. Hence brands are all making use of memes, and moment marketing trends to increase their visibility and efficiently fit into people’s minds.
Now that you have established yourself as a proficient Memer with a considerably good social media presence, you would have got collaboration offers from brands for their promotion? So how has that experience been for you?
I have collaborated with a few brands and promoted their products. Recently I promoted two T-shirt brands, and you can check out the collaborations on my page. And a few more products that have received, but I am yet to upload the promotional content on the page. So this is again one of the best things of social media life that you get free goodies for promotions, and I am always open to such collaborations.
According to you Video memes or Picture memes perform better among the audience?
Both perform better according to me. It’s just that a post must have the shareability factor, something that is good enough to be shared with people on a large scale, something that is commonly relatable to people and then your post would perform better irrespective of its format.
How do you get those meme ideas regularly?
Meme ideas are like 24*7 around me. Right from morning till I sleep whatever I see around me, whatever happens around me, everything gives me a meme idea. I believe that content is always around us, and we ought to recognise it.
Do you face any negativity like negative comments on social media? How do you deal with such things?
Yes, I do get a lot of negative comments on social media. I tell them that if they are not happy with my content or it does not relate to you, you go ahead and create your content. You also have the liberty, to have access to social media, so go out and post what you feel is right. And most of the time, my followers reply to those negative comments on my behalf of me even before I could read them. So that shows the love and support the audience showers on me, and I feel quite blessed.
What motivates you to create memes every day?
I always love to spread smiles to people, and when they laugh at seeing my memes, that’s one of the best feelings. That positive response from the audience motivates me. If on a random day I miss posting content, I get so many DMs from my chahnewaale like ‘How are you? What happened?’ ‘Are you alright?’ ‘We miss your content.’, etc. These things keep motivating me to be consistent in the journey.
What is your message to people out there who are trying to make a career out of their passion?
I am not that big an achiever to answer this but would like to answer it just from my experience. So what worked for me is that I listened to my inner voice. I took charge of my decisions and believed that something good would come out of my passion. And the same would be my message to everyone out there.
Secondly, I would tell that every individual's journey is quite different from others in life. You can get inspiration from successful people, but at the end of the day, your execution and mindset will only pave way for your success.
It’s clear from the conversation with Memeswalibandi that memes have become an integral part of digital media these days. With consistency and creativity, you can have a great career in the field of creating memes.
So, are you still in a dilemma about whether your passion for creating memes will be beneficial or not!?
Come on, guys! Stop speculating much and board the plane of your passion and land in a beautiful career that is exclusively waiting for you.
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