The Meme That Started It All

     Confession time! Are you ready?…

I run a fan account for my favorite band.

Oh my goodness, so embarrassing, right? Well it gets worse. It’s not just a fan account,…it’s a MEME fan account. CRINGE! You’re probably expecting me to crawl under a rock now. Honestly, 6 months ago, that might have been what I would have done. This Instagram account was my little secret, and no one else knew about it. So why am I posting about it now? Why expose myself on the internet? In all honesty, I have learned so much about content creation, social media analytics, and marketing through this little meme account, and you’ll never believe where it’s gotten me.

For starters, I am currently studying telecommunications at Texas A&M (t-minus 2 months until graduation!), so a lot of my classes revolve around different forms of media and how to market them. Earlier this year I was taking a social media class, and our project during finals was to create a meme or graphic, post it on our social media, and then write a short report about analytics and how to target an audience. (All of the engineers and med students are probably giving me the death glare through the screen. I can already feel it.) Yes, that was my final project. We work hard sometimes, I swear.

Like most young adults with social media, I am particular about what I put on my feed, and the last thing I wanted to do was add a stupid class meme to my timeline just for a grade. Not worth the aesthetic sacrifice. After a little bit of thought, I decided to create some memes about my favorite band, The Wrecks, and in order to separate them from my main accounts, I made an entirely new one called @wrxmemeposts, planning on deleting it after the semester was over. 

With some quick editing on my phone, I produced a photo of Chandler Bing hugging The Wrecks debut album, Infinitely Ordinary. I had so much fun making it that I ended up making several, posting them all on the secret meme account. Within the first few days, new followers began trickling in, and within the first week, each member of the band followed me, including the band’s official Instagram account. I was shocked. I now had their attention. They were watching, so naturally, I had to keep creating content.

One thing you should know about me is that I never do anything halfway. If I’m going to do something, I’m doing it right, so over the next month or so, I began tailoring my memes to promote the band’s new album, merch drops, and their upcoming tour in a fun and creative way. I was having a blast. The boys began reposting my content, which drew more and more people to my page. 

Around the time when tour began, various members of The Wrecks’ crew began following me as well as the members of the opening band. All of a sudden, I realized I had a fairly large following to keep up with. If I wanted to keep this account successful, I needed to post consistently, and I began going through the analytics of my account, figuring out the best days and times to post as well as what type of content received the best responses. I started designing story templates that fans could fill out and post on their story. I edited silly videos and posted polls, which the band members interacted with as well.

As the tour picked up, so did the traffic on the @wrxmemeposts page. Suddenly, I was getting DMs from fans daily, asking questions about the show’s setlist, tips on when to show up, how to find parking and even what to wear. As a frequent concert goer, I enjoyed giving out my tips and tricks and being the source of all things related to The Wrecks tour. Then, people began sending me their own photos and videos, hoping to contribute content to my page. Anytime I used content from my followers, I would make sure they received full credit in order to create trust and a reliable reputation for myself. As silly as it sounds, I wanted my meme account to be professional. I wanted people to take it seriously. If I was going to keep the meme account going, it was going to be the best meme account anyone has ever seen! (The amount of memes I have created and deleted because I didn’t find them funny is insane. I’m pretty sure I post one out of every four memes I create.)

Now as I said before, I had no intention of telling anyone about @wrxmemeposts. Three months in, the only person who knew about it was my younger brother, and I told him he wasn’t allowed to follow it. However, on the day of their show in Austin, I decided to finally reveal myself with the hope that I might be able to meet the band. As me and my two friends got ready for the show, I explained everything about @wrxmemeposts to them, and although they thought it was fun, they told me not to tell anyone that I was behind it. I decided to post a selfie anyway, just to see what would happen.

 I could write an entire blog post about everything that happened that night, but I’ll sum up the most important part. The show was at Antone’s in Downtown Austin,  which is a wonderfully small venue–one of my favorites! After the show, the band was cleaning up the stage, and the venue staff asked everyone to wait outside. At this point, my friends were tired, and it felt as though my window for meeting the band was closing fast, so of course, I did what any ENFJ Sagittarius would do…I walked back into the venue, right past security who didn’t try to stop me. (I guess I walked with enough purpose for him not to question it.)

I went up to Nick Anderson, who was packing up gear on the stage, and said something along the lines of, “Hey Nick, I know you’re super busy, but my friends are wanting to leave, and I wanted to talk to you first…I’m the meme girl.”

     There I said it. I’m the meme girl. 

Nick was so excited, dropping what he was doing to give me a hug and introduce me to the rest of the crew. Me and my friends sat in the venue for a while, talking to the band and Sophia, the photographer. Nick told me that the band thought that someone on their team had hired the person behind @wrxmemeposts because everything I was posting was so “carefully curated” towards everything they were being told to promote.

It was so encouraging to me, because not only did the band enjoy the content, they saw what I was trying to do. They were able to see my strategy and thought behind each post, and it worked exactly how I had hoped it would. As simple as the interaction was, it was one of those “aha” moments where I was able to reflect on all of my passions and skill sets and realize they could go together.

Fast forward to today. I have learned so much about pursuing the things that I love despite what others might think. Music and media have always been huge passions of mine, and I have been working hard to continue to incorporate those things into my life as I grow as an entrepreneur. This is why I am starting this blog–to share with all of you the joy of live music! I want to help you discover new bands, try out festivals, learn tips and tricks, and so much more. I also want to give you behind the scenes glimpses of the shows I go to by showcasing my concert photography/videography.

Thank you for joining me, and I’ll talk to you soon!

— Your Local Concert Buddy

P.S. I am still active on @wrxmemeposts, so if you would like to keep up with The Wrecks Back and Better Than Ever Tour, which starts in a few short days, go follow along!