For your business to stand out, you need to ensure that your messages reach people through an ocean of online content. A powerful way to make that happen is to add humor to your content.
What does humor in marketing do for your business?
A study by Fractl shows that the virality of content is correlated to extremely positive emotions or complex feelings. Humor is a positive emotion, and it’s safe to assume that adding humor to your messages sparks positive emotions that lead to shares.
It also humanizes your brand and makes you more relatable, which in turn can lead to people opening up to your marketing messages.
Humor can boost your content marketing, and we’re going to look at ways that you can make it a part of your marketing strategy to help meet your business goals.
Know your audience.
When adding humor to your content marketing, it’s essential to make sure that it’s appropriate and fits your audience. You need to do research and get to know who makes up your target audience. Consider these questions when charting your humor quotient in your communication:
• What industry do you work in?
• Is your customer a business-to-business entity or the everyday consumer?
• Do ethical or medical concerns enter your business’s setup?
• What does your customer avatar look like?
When you’re able to get an understanding of your market, you’ll be able to craft the right kind of humor. There’s quite a difference between using humor in insurance and getting attention from sports fans.
With research, you’ll be able to create a content plan or set up a style guide to keep your content voice consistent.
Use humor on social media.
If there’s any platform that’s appropriate for humor, it’s social media. People are on social media to be entertained and informed in a more casual manner. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to engage your audience with humor on social media platforms.
Take on a casual and conversational tone when responding to comments or replying to business queries from your audience. It will help them feel like they’re talking to a real person.
You also have the option of using "stories" features that are available on several platforms. Here, the content is primarily in video form, and they disappear in 24 hours.
Creating fun and short videos and image content is great for the social media format. You could feature funny ways to use your product or common industry complaints in a lighthearted way. Done well, it’s a way to create audience expectations where they’re looking forward to new content regularly.
Go beyond text.
What’s awesome about online communication today is that you’re not confined to using text to share your message. You can easily add lightness and humor to your online content by using gifs, emojis, stickers and more.
It’s said that pictures are worth a thousand words. And the right little emoji can transform the meaning of your words to make it more interesting. Make it a practice to add graphics to your usual social media communication. Your audience will relate to you better, and you’ll create emotions that work in a positive way toward boosting engagement.
Let humor infuse your content marketing.
The way to connect with your audience is to create an emotional spark when they view your content. And humor can act as the flint that fires up more engagement.
Make sure that you know your audience and what suits them. Then, make the effort to communicate with them using humor in your messages. Humor will help you create a brand identity that’s memorable and interesting.
