How to Increase Audience Engagement with Humor

Surprising and delighting folks is easy when you’re entertaining them with humor.

When you create funny content, it not only drives engagement, it also demonstrates to readers that you respect their time and attention. You reinforce their decision to engage with your brand, and in turn, you increase the likelihood of future audience engagement.

The impact of humor that’s thoughtfully applied across the entire customer lifecycle should be reflected in a flourishing sales pipeline, increased profitability, and a Net Promoter Score that’s higher than a Colorado tourist.

Here’s why humor works across the customer lifecycle:

Grabbing Attention Sparks Audience Engagement

Some of you might still be shocked by my above reference, but then again, here you are… still reading.

That’s because you want to see where I’m going with this – even if you hate it.

That was the point. My joke was intended to be attention-grabbing. I needed to hook you as a reader with something unexpected. But why did I take the risk with that particular joke?

For starters, I didn’t. I was referring to the altitude of Colorado’s mountainous terrain, but that’s not what you were thinking.

After all, I brand Bright Humor as ‘Professional Meets Playful’ because I write jokes that are fitting for the workplace, but sometimes humor requires a little risk. However, most people like a little risk in life (or a lot) and that’s why the New York Stock Exchange exists.

I digress.

The point is that to foster true audience engagement, we have to keep it real with the folks who are most likely to align with our purpose and buy into our value proposition – B2B marketers, I’m looking at you. TLC should have a reality show on LinkedIn where sassy marketers take B2B brands from boring to BAM! It could be called ‘Corporate-Social Responsibility’ on behalf of its humanitarian elements.

As marketers, in order to get our audiences fired up, we must light the fire within to emotionally connect with people who share our vision. So love or hate, that’s fine. Take it over indifference.

Now, in order to keep you as an attentive reader, I need to maintain your level of engagement to prevent ‘skimming content syndrome’ from striking.

I have faith in you. Do you have faith in me?

Wonderful, let’s continue.

Maintaining Audience Engagement with Humor

In the words of Jerry Seinfeld:

“This whole idea of an attention span is, I think a misnomer. People have infinite attention spans if you’re entertaining them.”

Now that’s not to say you should ramble on and on. You have to make your point succinctly, but humor more intensely drives audience engagement, allowing you to make your point more impactfully.

Sales and marketing collateral shouldn’t read like a comedy set, but sprinkling jokes and clever quips throughout your content keeps people reading. Why? It taps into one of the most scientifically effective ways of maintaining audience engagement: a variable-interval schedule of reinforcement.

Huh?

A variable-interval schedule of reinforcement means that your readers don’t know when the next clever quip is coming, but as long as you provide that reinforcement regularly enough, they’ll remain engaged with your content.

You were hoping for a joke now, weren’t you?

Converting Audience Engagement

Trust is the cornerstone of building brand authority.

By providing your company’s expertise, perspective, and approach in a novel way with humorous analogies, you offer a unique outlook, which demonstrates authentic thought leadership. If it’s a complex explanation, analogies help people to better understand your logic, while also making your logic easier to remember.

People prefer to not only work with helpful, competent individuals (and brands) that we trust, but folks that are enjoyable. We are drawn to passionate people who reinforce our beliefs or inspire us to think differently about the world.

Passion sells because passion is proof of genuine purpose.

Unfortunately, passion is often mistaken for pushiness. That’s because there are more pushy people in this world than passionate ones. When stressed to meet deadlines and targets, our messaging can too clearly reflect our self-interests and inevitably backfires, as it should.

Humor is inherently engaging because the very act of joking is an attempt to more deeply connect with another person. It’s an effective way to reward others for engaging with us and listening to us.

Additionally, we use humor to overcome objections because humor helps people to keep an open mind as we offer differing perspectives or when addressing unfavorable realities. As long as we touch upon the truth with a feather instead of a sledgehammer, all is well.

That’s why comedians can discuss dark topics without turning off audiences. Humor allows us to recognize the ugly truths of our world without becoming utterly depressed and jaded. Thank God for that.

OMG, did she just say ‘God’?!

Customer Loyalty: Tips for Long-term Audience Engagement

Customers are the fans that matter the most. Their opinions matter more than all of the prospects, leads and industry influencers combined. Why? Because they bought.

As I highlighted earlier, we must bring fire to get fire. If we are going to razzle-dazzle strangers, leads, and prospects with promises of unparalleled service, then we better commit to delivering on that promise. Then we need to over-deliver on it.

That’s how you get customers camping out for product releases and agreeing to do case studies.

You don’t need to pay big advertising bucks when people will pass along your message for free. Just think about how much money you could save by switching to humor.

Drop me a note and we can find a time to discuss your business and how you can leverage humor with Bright Humor services to maximize the ROI of your content marketing campaigns.

After all, if you’re reading this, you must be pretty engaged. Correct?

Not in a position to buy? You’re still in a position to support! Please share this article with others.

Okay, dear reader, I release you to the comments section where you can channel your undying love or complete hatred for my approach to marketing.

Say whatever you want. All that I ask is that you say it with passion.