Blog Exercises: The Daily Social Meme

Did you know that there are specific memes for each day of the week in the blogosphere and social web? Today is your chance to play around with some of these themed days of the week in this blog exercise.

A themed day, or meme, is a tradition of sorts. It involves publishing and sharing a specific type of content or subject matter on the web appropriate to the day of the week. The definition states it is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture, and the web is one big culture made for spreading memes.

Over the years there have been a variety of week day memes. Here is a list of the most popular and current memes.

• Sunday: Currently “Punday” is gaining ground but other Sunday memes include Sunday Seven (7 links, unrelated questions or topics, or 7 tips).
• Monday: Movie Monday is gaining popularity, a chance for bloggers to review a movie or showcase their favorite movie. Others included “Monday Mingle,” “Meet Me Monday,” and “Monday’s Mood.”
• Tuesday: “Tackle It Tuesday” and “TMI Tuesday” are the most popular memes for Tuesdays. Others include “Top Ten Tuesday,” “Tasty Tuesday,” “Thumbs Up Tuesday,” “Teaser Tuesday,” and “Take Three” for three tips, links, or random thoughts.
• Wednesday: Started many years ago, Wordless Wednesday is the most popular meme for this day of the week. Bloggers publish a photograph or graphic and allow the readers to have their say about how the image moves them. Other memes include “What’s Up Wednesday” to bring your readers up-to-date on your life and work (inviting them to do the same), “Welcome Wednesday,” “Wish List Wednesday,” and “Weekly Book Blog Hop” or “Weekly Book” to write about a book you were reading or recommended.
• Thursday: Thursday memes include “Think Back Thursday,” “Travel Thursday,” “Thursday Thoughts,” and the most popular, “Thankful Thursday.”
• Friday: “Follow Friday” is a social web meme created on Twitter where users #ff their favorites to their followers encouraging them to follow these folks and thank them for their tweets and hard work. Unfortunately, it was abused and grew tiresome as it didn’t add to the conversation just mention-spammed a lot of people in one tweet, but many continue it on their blogs and social networks as a “Feature and Follow Friday” meme to say thank you and encourage others to visit favorite bloggers on the web. “Photo Friday” or “Foto Friday” is popular, as is “Fill-in Friday” inviting people to fill in the blank, “Friday Five” for five topics, points, links, etc., “Friday Fling,” and “TGIF” for Thank God It’s Friday topics.
• Saturday: Caturday is the sure-fire winner with people sharing funny cat pictures and videos across blogs and social networks, flooding the Inter-waves will LOLCats. Past popular memes for Saturday included “Sunny Saturday” and “Saturday Struggles.”

These are the most popular across the web, trackable by hashtags on social networks. You can create your own meme weekly schedule as well, self-assignments for one or more days of each week.

Heart at Home created a weekly meme list for her site as well as for other similar bloggers. The list includes Super Simple Spiritual Sunday, Sunday Seven, Marriage Monday, Tackle It Tuesday, Works for Me Wednesday, and Thankful Thursday.

The Daily Meme offers a wide range of suggestions for week day memes with categories by day of the week such as Sunday Memes, Monday Memes, Friday Memes, and so on, helping you to discover a wide range of memes to experiment with on your own.

Memes were initially exciting and fun to share, but people wore them out. This doesn’t mean they stopped, but some had to step back from their meme addition to recover. I found that Student Spyglass did that with his June “month without memes” meme. In June 2013, the author decided to step back from memes because “my meme posts stat to feel same-y, and I don’t feel like they necessarily add anything to the blog except increased visitor numbers.”

While there is truth in that statement, memes are a great way to get started blogging and feel like you are a part of something bigger on the web.

It’s your turn to meme.

Your blog exercise today is to consider adding one or more of these daily memes to your blog.

Weekly memes require a commitment. While it is fun to participate in one or more of the global memes such as Caturday, if you create your own and announce it to your readers, you’ve just made a contract. A commitment to publish on a regular schedule means sticking to your editorial calendar.

Many memes are visual, using graphics to catch the eye and encourage viral sharing, however traditionally memes are words, shared thoughts, experiences, and lessons, encouraging your readers to share their story in your comment, share your post with others, or tell their story on their own sites or social networks, citing you as the inspiration.

For more information on starting your own memes, here are some resources.

• Memejacking: The Complete Guide to Creating Memes for Marketing – HubSpot
• How To Create A Meme The Easy Way With Google+ | Dustn.tv
• Internet meme – Wikipedia
• Blogging 101 – How to Start a Weekly or Monthly Blog Meme
• How to Create a Winning Meme [INFOGRAPHIC] – Mashable
• Why Would You Create a Meme? What Steps Would You Take? – About.com Internet for Beginners
• Meme Directory for the Book Bloggers! | Randomize ME
• 10 Popular Meme Generator Tools – About.com Web Trends
• How To Create A Viral Meme [Infographic] – PSFK

In a way, these blog exercises are memes, encouraging you to contribute, share, and make your own meme, so if you meme, remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.