Laughter is the ultimate marketing tool. Its value has long been understood, as evidenced by early print ads, radio messages, and television commercials. Today, comedy’s greatest potential can be achieve on social media. From captioned memes to TikTok videos, humor in social media marketing brightens our days when we desperately crave distraction. In doing so, it inspires an impressive level of customer loyalty.
While anybody with a social media account is well aware of the prevalence of digital humor, consuming comedic content is far easier than creating it. Many people underestimate the skill required to make specific types of followers chuckle — and to use this response to drive customers through the sales funnel.
However, if your business manages to conquer this key marketing challenge, you’ll unlock a world of potential. Strategic humor could be all that stands in the czech republic phone number data way of building an engaged customer base.
In this guide, we explain why the combination of comedy and social media is so effective. You’ll also come away with a greater appreciation of the effort involved in crafting a chuckle-worthy social media campaign.
Pros and Cons of Using Humor in Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns
Humor can be a useful tool in a variety of social how does ai improve lead generation? media efforts, but it’s not ideal in every situation. Some cases call for a more nuanced approach, in which other emotions are evoked. On occasion, the mere attempt to make a joke could be regarded as insensitive. In other situations, the idea of humor might be uae cell number appealing but actually implementing it could prove surprisingly difficult.
Given the extensive effort that goes into comedic social media posts, it’s important to determine in advance whether this approach is actually capable of producing a decent return on investment. Keep the following pros and cons in mind as you seek the best solution for your brand:
The Benefits of Exercising Your Brand’s Funny Bone
Social media platforms that incorporate humor often see impressive social media engagement. With proper nurturing, this could translate to better metrics, including email list signups and website traffic. Here are the top benefits of using humorous social media content to connect with your audience:
Relate to your readers.
Relatability is crucial for success in today’s digital marketing sphere — especially for coveted consumers such as Millennials and members of Gen Z. Competence and quality are no longer good enough. Unfortunately, a company that produces exceptional products can still struggle to secure sales if consumers cannot identify or connect to the company’s core brand message.
Brands turn to several tactics for amping up the relatability factor, but few strategies are as effective as comedy. Jokes that shed light on common experiences make consumers feel connected to one another, and, more importantly, to the brand in question. Tongue-in-cheek observations about everyday concepts resonate best, as evidenced by the nearly universal appeal of Ellen DeGeneres.
Humorous content is more shareable.
While humor works well for a variety of marketing platforms, it’s especially suit to social media, where every like, retweet, and share counts. If comedy convinces followers to hit that share button, it will reach the broadest audience possible Humor in Social with little effort on your part.
Results from the Buffer State of Social Media 2019 Report suggest that funny content produces the best engagement. It’s even more effective when blended with inspirational elements, which followers find especially compelling. No matter the specific approach, carefully crafted humor can go well beyond your initial social media goals to produce an impressive ROI.
The Potential Downsides of Humor
Comedic content can provide a wide range of benefits, but it also involves an inherent element of risk. While the following downsides can easily be avoided, they’re still worth considering before you move forward with a humor-based approach.
Causing Unintended Offense
Given the subjective nature of humor, it can be easy for seemingly inoffensive material to upset followers. If your humor has any bite whatsoever, you can expect at least a few people to take issue with it. This could prove a huge PR issue, to the point that a single joke in poor taste could destroy years of hard work in developing a strong reputation.
Differences in Humor Style
Even if the content is inoffensive, attempts at humor won’t necessarily resonate with all users. The funniest comedians occasionally bomb, but their failure to produce laughs only results in momentary awkwardness. However, when such failures involve public social media pages, they can do a lot more damage.
Therein lies the greatest risk of comedic content: jokes that fall flat could convince followers that your brand is not nearly as relevant or relatable as it purports to be. If you struggle to determine your core audience or what makes a ‘typical’ consumer tick, humor may be too risky a proposition for the time being.
Unfortunately, the subjective nature of comedy makes it difficult to determine what, exactly, will resonate with a specific audience. Tell the wrong joke to the wrong group of followers and your brand could be in for a world of trouble. Depending on the audience, your efforts could cause eye-rolling, or worse, outrage. Both should be avoided at all costs.
Sometimes, it’s best to avoid the sheer effort of coming up with funny material for a specific audience, especially if a pay-off is not guaranteed.
Other Approaches May Be More Effective
Humor isn’t the only type of social media content capable of generating a positive response. Some brands benefit more from posting inspiring or informative messages. For example, a pharmaceutical business looking to build an air of authority may want to steer clear of humor and instead focus on data-heavy content that demonstrates the company’s trustworthy nature.
Even brands that occasionally benefit from humor may not want to use it in all situations. When addressing serious social issues, for example, businesses should shift their tone to demonstrate empathy. It’s possible to achieve this objective while infusing a humorous edge, but certainly not easy.
A goal-oriented approach is always important in social media marketing — and sometimes, the goal should not be to make followers laugh, but rather, to uplift, inspire, or inform. If humor is used at the wrong time or under a problematic set of circumstances, it can make companies seem tone-deaf or outright mean-spirited.
How Using Humor in Social Media Increases Customer Engagement
Humor’s primary benefit lies in its ability to engage customers. Comedic content serves the important purpose of telling a story, which, in turn, makes customers feel connected. The better you understand the mechanisms through which this is accomplished, the easier you’ll find it to get followers laughing — and to convince them to continue engaging with your brand.
Humor’s Impact on the Brain
We’ve long understood the power of humor, but extensive research reveals that it has an even greater impact on the brain than previously suspected. The process of interpreting a joke begins with the frontal lobe, which acts as a gatekeeper. From there, an electrical wave washes over the cerebral cortex, eventually sparking a physical response — laughter.
A hearty laugh triggers the brain’s reward center, producing a cocktail of feel-good neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. As the miracle ingredients of the commercial world, these chemicals hold the power to build deep-seated connections and drive significant purchases.
The brain quickly comes to crave anything capable of producing large volumes of dopamine. Hence, our constant attempts to enjoy humor. As soon as we deem a particular comedic source capable of delivering a strong dose of dopamine, we feel compelled to return. With social media, this means not only following funny accounts, but also voicing approval via likes, Humor in Social retweets, comments, and other forms of digital interaction.
Building an Emotional Connection
The neurotransmitters associated with humor can regulate our mood, dull the perception of pain, and create a stronger feeling of emotional connection. This emotional impact, in particular, is vital to the long-term success of humor-oriented social media efforts. Brands that manage to reach followers on an emotional level enjoy not only the immediate benefit of engaged followers but also, long-term loyalty that can prove valuable in years or even decades to come.
Countless examples point to the extent to which a hilarious campaign can continue to produce an emotional response years later. The right messages could prove outright transformative for a brand perception that’s otherwise stale or unfavorable.
Hence, the success of Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign, which deservedly earned the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial. Starring the hilarious Isaiah Mustafa, this campaign took Old Spice from outdated to relevant in an instant, all while building an emotional connection centered around a positive image of modern masculinity.
The Power of Recurring Themes
Many top campaigns rely on a mascot, silly situation, or some other type of theme to form a sense of cohesion between posts. This approach can make even a small-scale campaign feel important. If the humor lands well, future content building on the initial theme will produce impressive engagement among followers. These fans will come to look forward to thematic content — and the rush of dopamine they unknowingly receive each time your posts make them laugh.
While recurring humor can produce an impressive following, strategic timing is crucial to ensure that future content doesn’t fall flat. It’s important to monitor metrics carefully, comparing between posts to determine whether likes, comments, or other markers of engagement suffer over time.
Types of Humor to Avoid in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
The wrong jokes can quickly destroy your otherwise carefully cultivated social media presence. Certain types of humor should be sidestepped whenever possible. Others require a careful weighing of risks and benefits.
As you search for the perfect punchline for your next social media campaign, be sure to avoid the issues seen in these problematic types of marketing messages: