The marriage of social media and content marketing has meant that many brands must rethink how their brand voice connects with their audience in the place where the audience lives and interacts. After all, those browsing social media do not wish to be advertised to — they wish to connect with real people and ideas. The conglomeration of these ideas has led to phenomena like “Brand Twitter,” where businesses personify their brand voice to connect with their audience and add humor to their content marketing campaigns.
Why Use Humor In Content Marketing?
Brand-appropriate humor is a powerful tool to connect with your audience, regardless of the age or demographic your brand is trying to reach. In a digitally driven time, humor is an easy and effective way to create engagement with your audience, and the more engaged your audience is, the more likely they are to identify with your brand and to convert.
Humor captures the attention of your audience, making them more likely to remember your brand over competitors. Humor based on real-world events, trends, or the emotions that your audience is likely to experience means that you can connect with your audience on a personal level.
Even if you don’t believe that humor is the best course of action for your brand voice (most of the time, it won’t be), practicing what your brand’s sense of humor might be is a worthwhile exercise in understanding the sensibilities and profile of your audience. Take careful consideration when crafting your brand’s humor voice.
Considerations for Finding Your Brand’s Humor Voice
Everyone knows humor when they see it, but it can be difficult to decide if humor is right for your brand or to know how to inject humor into your content marketing strategy. Luckily, humor, like all things, is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and to a certain extent, formulated.
Humor comes in various approaches. It is worth it, as a brand, to come together to define the type of humor that works best for your brand voice and your audience. Some considerations when defining your voice include:
- Flavor: Is your brand’s humor voice affirming or defeating? Positive, affirming humor may work well for general brands with wide audiences, while aggressive or deprecating humor is typically favored by niche industries or brands.
- Source: Does your humor comment on pop culture and current events, trends and memes, or is it based on family life, language and puns, or time with friends? Your brand type will help determine the appropriate humor source.
- Structure: There are various comedy structures and those struggling to understand the best way to structure a joke can practice with each structure type. There are thirteen known comedy structures, including triples, slapstick, observation, and benign retaliation, to name a few.
- Medium: Will you introduce humor into your brand voice in short, written anecdotes or in video? How effective is an image in adding humor to your brand voice?
How to Get Started Adding Humor into your Content Marketing
- Practice makes perfect: Don’t be intimidated if it feels as if humor does not come naturally. Humor, like many things, is a practiced skill. The more practice brands get with their humor voice, the easier it will be to nail down the correct tone and voice every time.
- Get a test audience appropriate to your target audience: Different cultures have different sensibilities as to what counts as humorous. Those of a specific age group, gender, people group, et cetera, are going to have varying tastes. Be sure to test your content on an appropriate audience to the one you are trying to reach. After all, we’ve all heard and seen horror stories of attempts at humor gone terribly, offensively bad. A test audience can mitigate this problem before it starts.
- Let go of the reins a little: One of the hardest things for brands to do when it comes to injecting humor into their brand voice is learning when to loosen that top button. Fear is the main reason brands do not embrace their full humorous potential. If you know your audience and trust your gut, you’ll be flabbergasted by the amount of ridiculousness you can get away with.
88% of consumers say that authenticity is important to them when deciding what brands they like and support.
Our team works can help you craft a brand voice that is authentic to your business and your audience. When you have your brand messaging strategy created with KWSM, we draw out your brand’s personality and help you nail your brand voice.
CONTACT US to learn more about creating the results you’re looking for with an effective content marketing strategy.
