How To Use Humour To Attract Audience For Your Business

They say laughter is the best medicine. It’s true. When you are laughing after seeing something funny, not only are you entertained, but you are also strengthening your immune system, boosting your mood, diminishing pain as well as protecting yourself from damaging effects of stress. Simply put, laughing makes you happy. In the social media world, stuff like memes is highly popular because it gives you the sense of “wanting more” because your soul needs it more. After all, 9gag has 50.4 millions of followers on Instagram for a reason – their entertaining sources of laughter. For this reason, businesses often use humour as one of their marketing strategies. With this in mind, we’ve got Twitter, the social media platform well-known for its purpose of providing a place for real-time commentary about what currently happens and what is trending now that includes humour remarks, critics, compliments and even sarcasm.  

That's exactly what happened during the Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. A power outage knocked out many of the lights in the stadium for more than 30 minutes. During the delay, many viewers came to social media in order to keep the conversation flowing. Of course, brands followed this too. Oreo, however, brilliantly used humour to take advantage of the social media opportunity. Maybe the best example of how Oreo successfully latched onto this trending topic to market their wares came from this cookie company’s tweet that said: "Power out? No problem." Then Oreo linked to an ad of an Oreo cookie, with the copy, "You can still dunk in the dark." By the time the lights came back on in New Orleans, the tweet had already been shared more than 12,000 times. From this experience, we can say the cookie company brilliantly made use of their social media skill at the right time, in the right place and for the right people. However, you should be careful when using humour on social media as a business because depending on how you bring humour into your business, it can either make or break your brand. In this article, I’m going to share with you the proper way to use humour to attract audience for your business social media. Keep reading to find out!

Make use of humour for pop culture events

One of the reasons why social media is so popular is that users can react to breaking news and pop culture events. Breaking news and pop culture events often lead to so many users gathering in the same place at the same time. For this reason, many brands take advantages of this and use every effort to be a part of the trending topics. The best way to do that is using humour. Why? That’s because humour is enjoyable and memorable. People remember funny things and funny things are easier to recall. Just like what Oreo did, they found a way to keep in touch with current events (it was Super Bowl event at that time). That being said, you should note that trending topics are not always about fun stuff. Sometimes it is about public tragedy, which leads us to the next point below.

Avoid using humour on public tragedy

I know we actually don’t need to tell adults how to behave in times of tragedy. However, it turns out; many businesses still make use of public tragedy for their own benefits, adding humour, no less. Kenneth Cole, one of the famous fashion designers made an inappropriate tweet about the uproar in Egypt, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.” Not long after that, he also made a tweet on Syria that sparked outrage by making fun of the Syrian conflict. With the debate over America's potential intervention in the Syrian civil war raging, he tweeted; “'Boots on the ground' or not, let's not forget about sandals, pumps and loafers. #Footwear” and that tweet, again, caused controversy that made people disappointed. Moreover, he clarified that being a bad guy on Twitter was just good for business and that he wasn’t sorry about it. In his point of view, this may have increased his sales and he even said he gained 3,000 more followers after that controversial tweet he made. However, no matter how successful a business is, if the business doesn’t hold moral values, it is not success. Success is not about how much you gain from running your business, it is about how you help and inspire people with what your business offers as well as how you give them something to remember from your brand. If you choose to address the situation, don’t make an attempt to capitalise on the moment (or even mistakenly give the appearance that you are). Therefore, instead of using humour on public tragedy, acknowledge it and be empathetic about it. Also, the only reason to reply to a tragedy is to offer comfort or aid.

Use humour to hide your sales pitch

There is another way to use humour on social media content that can also deflect attention from the fact that your posts are designed to market your product or service. It is like you are asking people to buy your product without looking like it. Perhaps the best example I can give you comes from Charmin the toilet paper company. Charmin is like that funny friend you like to have around because you know they will always have something that can make you laugh. Also, Charmin uses humour to align with the products they sell without looking like ‘selling.’

Below are some of the examples of Charmin’s funny tweets you can learn from:

“That awkward moment when you use the work bathroom and the seat is warm. #shudder #tweetfromtheseat”

The other tweet has a picture of their iconic bear holding and looking at a mobile phone while using the men’s toilet. The tweet says:

“#CharminAsks: What are your thoughts on streaming while streaming?”

The tweets above actually suggested people to use toilet papers indirectly using short but funny jokes brilliantly without having to offend people.

Social media is the best place to promote your business only if you know how to use it properly especially humour. When you are trying to deliver humour for your business social media, make the content with your audience in mind. Once you know your audience and what you should and shouldn’t include in your content, you are already on the right path.