The fastest way to lose the attention of your potential clients and followers on your blog and social media? Be boring. People don’t re-tweet and share boring.
There are a lot of ways to be engaging, and they don’t all involve being funny. But if you really want people to become invested in your company and brand, regardless of what you’re selling, humor is important.
It sells. Think about the best commercial you’ve ever seen. Chances are, it’s funny.
Why Humor Works
The essence of good humor is that it’s relatable.
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Then there is the element of surprise:
Sometimes something absurdly relatable:
And sometimes it’s just funny (and relatable):
When people see themselves in what you produce, they’re likely to come back for more. This is why a conversational, sometimes humorous tone can be found all over, from blogs to social media to mass media.
It used to be you could find a recipe online with a quick search, print it out, and that would be it. Now, the time you save not having to print it out is spent reading through a long, anecdotal, funny story that leads into the recipe.
Why do food bloggers do this? Because I can find a recipe on millions of different sites. The engaging intro allows you to get to know the blogger, and if I relate to them, I’m likely to explore their blog and come back again.
Really, all blogs are one of millions, no matter what you offer. Relatability is a way to make your business memorable, and that makes you stand out from the crowd.
How to Use Humor for Your Business
So, you’re not a natural-born comic. You could hire funny social media experts and copywriters, but you can create a welcoming, funny brand yourself, even if you’re not a comedic genius. A few tips:
- Avoid jokey jokes for the most part — If you start a blog with something like “two guys walked into a bar,” it had better be a really funny joke.
- Utilize memes. Sites like memes.com offer a constant stream of funny graphics that can be shared for free.
- Follow comic sites. Most people get their news online, but still enjoy a morning comic. Sites like Unearthed offer timely, sharable comics for social media — remember, never download a comic and upload it to social media, always share directly from the site!
- Utilize Pinterest to find funnies, using search terms like “[your industry] humor.” You’ll never be at a loss for a quick sharable funny graphic. (Be sure to share funnies found on Pinterest from the source site).
- Stay away from political humor, unless you’re prepared to lose followers over it. The humor connected to our business should be funny, but neutral.
- Know your audience. If your readers or followers are into nature, don’t share a lot of tech humor. It’s not that those two things don’t both appeal to a lot of people, it’s just that it can make you look unfocused.
- Share or retweet funny stuff from your followers — not only does it give you funny content, it’s good social networking.
- Try Vine for funny content that won’t require time to watch.
- Or try Youtube, but keep the funny videos short. Even a 3-5 minute video is too long for pure fun.
- Try to stay current. The internet is so fast-paced that what’s fresh and funny one day can be stale the next. If you’re sharing memes or viral videos, avoid anything older than a week or two unless it has very few shares.
- Be careful! Jokes gone wrong can be the downfall of a company. If you have any doubt, don’t post it.
Humor is best done in (more or less) real time. Tools like Hootsuite are terrific for organizing and scheduling things like Facebook updates, but when it comes to being funny, it’s best not to plan too far ahead.
There are a few reasons for this: First, that gem you’ve come across will pack a bigger punch if most of your followers are seeing it from you first.
Especially when it’s industry humor, if your competitors post it on Monday and you post it on Friday, you’ll look stale — especially since there’s a good chance that you share followers.
Another reason is that the overall mood can change, and it’s not always a good time for jokes. If some major bad news hits and you auto-post something silly, it can be taken as insensitive.
Finally, if you’re dealing with the internet, your business needs to be current. Last week’s viral video won’t cut it. Even avoiding things like politics and pop culture news, gags get old fast.
One way to avoid being stale, aside from posting humorous content as it happens, is to create your own funny posts. The important thing here is to be original (again, stay away from old jokes).
Irony and observational humor can do very well on social media, so if you find yourself making a funny observation at work, consider tweeting it (as long as it’s not mean-spirited, of course).
But if you’re comfortable with humor, you’re probably already doing that.
Use humor well, and you could find yourself being someone’s (hopefully a lot of someones’) favorite blog, site, or Twitter feed. Who are they going to get advice, products, and/or instruction from, given the choice?
The dull company that always plays it straight, or the company they can relate to, that makes them laugh? All things being equal, the relatable company will have the edge.
Do you use humor in your marketing? How do you balance humor and professionalism in your everyday business dealings? Let us know in the comments!
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