Content Marketing Blog mint

Content Marketing Blog

Live, Laugh, Blog

Humour in Content Marketing

"Why did the SEO expert cross the road? To get hit with traffic!"1

For years, humour has been used in literature and content to engage audiences. From Shakespeare to Einstein, many notable figures in history used humour as a means to relay complicated or niche messages.

As any marketer will attest, incorporating the basic tenets of content marketing can make your content seem dry or taxing to read. Infusing humour into your writing can keep your readers interested to read, share, and comment upon.

Laughter Is the Best Marketing

The goal of any brand marketer is to convert relevant audiences into loyal fans. With the saturation of content out there (hello, internet!), it can be tricky to stand out in the crowd without compromising your brand values or proposition. For readers, humour is an effective tool to separate the mundane from the relevant. Studies show that 75% of consumers appreciate humour in a brand’s tone and voice.2 Humour is a good way to show personality and show the authenticity of a brand.

Being funny on paper is easier said than done. As writer Brad Smith says, "we’re not all natural-born comedians," which makes the task a little more challenging.3 Luckily, there are tons of brands that have nailed the art of humorous content. You can take inspiration (and notes) from some of the following:

  • Netflix: The streaming giant is hilarious on their various, geo-specific social media accounts. Furthermore, Netflix uses their own footage to create most of their content and poke fun at themselves.
  • Merriam Webster: Along with a seemingly infinite supply of definitions, Merriam Webster frequently shares content about the origins of our favourite words. They complement their blogs with witty posts on Twitter, often relevant to pop-culture conversations of the day.

Putting Humour to Work

So why aren’t more marketers incorporating humour into their writing?

According to Marc Ensign, most marketers believe that readers aren’t looking for humour. They’re looking for information and want to read blogs that are useful.4 While that is correct, the element of investment is missing. "Your content must do more than just educate," says Ensign. "It must entertain."

He offers tips that can help make the experience of humorous writing a little less daunting. Here are a few that can make your zingers ring to the right audience:

  • Use Metaphors: Metaphors are a great way to simplify a tricky concept, while incorporating your own spin. They’re also a great way to incorporate your audience’s interests and expertise without sounding too "on the nose."
  • Isn’t It Ironic: When it comes to your industry, your audience will share the same woes that you do. Talking about those contradictions is a great way to infuse a chuckle into your work. But too much irony, and you can sound like a cynic.
  • Borrow from the Greats: There is a lot of funny content out there. Let it inspire your future posts. There’s no harm in identifying what works and applying those methods to your writing. However, if you do borrow, give credit.

Humour is an age-old method to keep people engaged with your content. It can be an important tool for content marketers, if they know how to incorporate it.

If witty, humorous content is not your cup of tea, we can help. At MintCopy, our talented team of writers incorporates wit and intelligence into the work we produce for your business.
 
Use our online form to get in touch today. Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to stay updated on the latest content marketing trends.

Share


Recent Posts

Sheetal Pinto - 3/16/2023 00:00

Content Marketing Best Practices that Garner Attention

Remember the movie, “Field of Dreams”? It made popular the phrase, “If you build it, he will come”. Shoeless Joe and other baseball legends may have magically appeared on a cornfield-turned-baseball diamond. However, when it comes to content marketing, your audience will need more than a field of dreams to attract their attention. If you’re trying to get more traffic to your website, don’t wait for your local SEO efforts to direct your audience. Give them a hand with these proven content strategies.

Sheetal Pinto - 3/2/2023 06:00

How to Use a Pillar Page to Improve your Content Quality

Consider the dictionary meaning of ‘pillar’ – “a firm, upright support for a superstructure”, also defined as “a fundamental precept”. Your content marketing campaign is your ‘superstructure’ that requires a ‘firm, upright support’. That’s the key function of content pillar pages. Without these essential supports, your ‘content superstructure’ will neither stand strong, nor will it attract the right attention.

Sheetal Pinto - 2/23/2023 06:00

Two Proven Ways to Organize Products with Similar Keywords

In business, cannibalization typically refers to a loss of sales. A company introduces a new product that displaces sales of an older, usually more outdated, product. Instead of having an increase in sales, the market growth remains stable. What does this mean in the world of SEO and content marketing? Keyword cannibalization occurs when two products have similar keywords or phrases and confuses the search engines about which page is right for which query. Instead of competing with other businesses for search traffic, you’re competing with your own web pages. Here’s why keyword cannibalization is bad for business and how you can overcome it.

Sheetal Pinto - 2/9/2023 06:00

How to Optimize your Content for a Global Audience

The global market is much smaller than it once was.  Statista reports over 5 billion internet users globally, or about 63.1% of the population. Reaching out to a broader market can help your business grow, but it’s not as simple as updating your website in a new language and simply hoping your audience finds you through search.

Sheetal Pinto - 1/26/2023 06:00

How to Build a Functional Content Marketing Funnel

Most people don’t wake up and think, “oh, today is the day I buy my new mattress,” unless they’ve researched different brands and checked pricing at different stores. Modern customers often take their time with major (and even minor) purchases. Using that information about today’s shoppers can help you design a content marketing map, or funnel, that guides the customer to your product.

Sheetal Pinto - 1/12/2023 15:49

Draw Insights from Your Competitors' Success 

According to Ahrefs, organic search drives over 53.3% of global traffic. Creating an SEO strategy is key to increasing your reach through search. As you’re setting new SEO goals for 2023, it may be useful to analyze what is working for your competitors. Also look at what they’re missing, to build that effectively into your own SEO strategy.

Sheetal Pinto - 12/15/2022 15:14

5 Proven Ways to Improve your Website Ranking

The rules of SEO can often feel elusive, as if SEO is a great big experiment in which the parameters keep changing. Search engines keep updating the algorithm. User behavior is evolving and adapting to circumstances, all the time. You don’t have any control over how pages rank, or do you? Google will never share how it determines SEO ranking. Customers change how they search and shop. We may not fully understand the complexity of search engine algorithms, but we can test different elements of a webpage to see how customers and search engines respond to your content marketing strategies. It’s called split testing.

Sheetal Pinto - 11/24/2022 16:42

Good today and gone tomorrow! That is the way of trends in the world of SEO and content marketing. What may generate interest right now can fall out of favor due to the ever-changing search engine algorithms. What can you do to ensure that you’re up to date? One useful method is to utilize Google Trends to find useful metrics that help you stay relevant. To make your way to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), it’s important to use a variety of proven methods to create quality content. Read below to learn how Google Trends can help you gain insight on popular trends, seasonality, regional demands, and your competitors.

Sheetal Pinto - 11/10/2022 06:00

Revitalize, Refine, Repurpose

The Pareto principle is also known as the 80/20 rule. About 80% of your best results will come from 20% of your efforts. When you apply that to a creative endeavour like content marketing, you might be undervaluing some of your content creative efforts. It can be expensive to create content, from scheduling videographers, photographers, models, or even having quality copywriters write a blog post. Chances are that you have some valuable content that can be recycled or repurposed with a little elbow grease.

Sheetal Pinto - 10/27/2022 06:00

How to Create Content that Ranks Higher on the SERPs

With every Google update, there’s always some concern about page rankings. The most recent update, “helpful content,” is part of Google’s ongoing efforts to make sure that users get quality content in search results. If you’ve been using SEO best practices and providing content that is relevant and useful, you shouldn’t lose page rankings. It’s always a good idea to check your content marketing strategy and make sure it aligns with Google’s algorithm updates.