Here's a blog post that appeared in The Content Standard, an online resource on content marketing and search engine optimization. The post went viral.

HADOKEN PHOTOS ARE JUMPING ON THE INTERNET 

If you don’t know what the hadoken meme is, you should probably ask yourself where you’ve been the past week. Social media trends spread like wildfire, and national borders don’t stop them. Witness the current viral photo craze in which people pose as superheroes hurling imaginary balls of energy to push back their attackers. The name comes from Street Fighter, the popular Japanese arcade game launched in 1987. In the game, ninja-types use a martial arts-style attack called a hadoken or hadouken. The term translates to “surge fist” or “wave motion fist.”

The first hadoken meme photo was reportedly made by Japanese middle-school girls and has now gone viral. Ninja wannabes everywhere are staging their own hadoken photos. Some savvy businesses, like phone company Grasshopper, are also getting in on the act to get some fun exposure.

Trends like this move quickly, so content marketers need to be on their toes if they want to catch the wave. Businesses can partake in the fun to show they have a hip sense of humor as they get search hits and gain exposure for their products.

Making a parody or copying a meme can generate a huge audience instantly. Few people outside the University of Georgia necessarily gave much thought to its men’s swim team until they posted a video of themselves doing the Harlem Shuffle (one of 2012’s most popular memes, up there with “Gangnam Style”) on the Internet. They got 36 million views.

But be careful. While this hadoken meme seems fun and harmless, brands should think twice before aligning themselves with a meme, because they may lose control of the meaning of that meme. Branding involves attaching ideas to a company’s identity, but memes are ideas that are like viruses. They’re constantly replicating and mutating. The meaning that’s attached may not be what the brand originally intended.

The meme may be off-message, as well. For example, Frontier Air may not be too happy that the FAA is investigating them after a flight attendant allegedly gave permission for passengers to do the Harlem Shuffle mid-flight. The video went viral on YouTube, and the attention — and possible fines — probably won’t benefit the airline or its brand reputation.