If you’ve been around the blogosphere lately, you’ve seen people posting a meme (pronounced ‘theme’) on their blogs, but what exactly a meme is can vary.

According to Chris Garrett of chrisg.com: “For bloggers Memes have become synonymous with internet quizzes, surveys, and novelties that people link to and pass around on their blogs, forums and via email, things like the ‘which superhero are you most like’ test… “

There are other types though, designed specificially to build links between blogs, which can help with Google pagerank and your technorati ‘authority’ score (which is based entirely on the number of websites that link to you.) like Mack’s at the Viral Garden.

Pariah Scott Burke of iampariah.com provides a list of memes that fall into the above category, but are also designed to provide content for personal bloggers by giving them a predetermined topic to blog about (took me a second to find it in his article.. go to the bottom and click on the word ’sidebar’ or ‘popup window’ to see the list). Some popular memes correspond with a certain day of the week, for example the Manic Monday Meme .

Now… should you do it?

In the case of the first type I described, the ‘What type of superhero are you like’ is mostly associated with the teen (and younger) blogging crowd and places like myspace. If your blog is for you and a small group of friends, this can be amusing, and would be fine. However if you’re trying to attract a larger audience to a personal blog in the wider world of blogging, I’d avoid them, for the simple reason that such information isn’t interesting to strangers.

Linkbuilding memes can indeed be effective for improving your technorati score, and as long as such posts don’t overwhelm the other valuable content of your blog. In fact, if the sole purpose is linkbuilding, then consider inserting your meme post just before you post something else, that way it won’t cloud up that valuable ‘latest post’ spot on your blog.

Memes designed to get a lot of people posting on a similar theme can be a great way to build content in your blog, but keep this in mind: Make sure the meme fits with your theme! For example, if you’re a humor blogger, and you want to answer the ‘why do I blog’ meme, make your answers FUNNY! This shouldn’t really need to be said, but there is a tendency of some bloggers to like to talk about themselves, what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, without paying attention to the needs/wants of the audience.

Lastly, a meme can be fun, but don’t overdo them. I went to a blog recently and 4 out of 5 of his last posts were memes. Use them if you like them, but a blog with too many can seem like it’s all filler and no substance.

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