Funny Business With Your B2B Marketing Content

April Fools maybe a month away but that shouldn’t keep you from giving folks a good laugh. People are always looking for a bit of fun (especially when a lot has happened to change the media landscape). But despite all that, B2B marketers still struggle with the same, dreary and excessively professional content.

Where can you find someone today who reads walls of text that need scrolling down two to three times just to finish? What about a topic that doesn’t at least try to make a pop culture reference or two? It’s likely most folks prefer stuff that’s lighter to read, even if it is information that’s vital to a B2B buying decision. It won’t boost sales by tenfold but this shows that you’re human and you’re socially capable.

But simply adding humor isn’t enough. In fact, even comedians take their own business pretty seriously.

There are several elements that you need to consider before adding it in and whether your content has the right mix for the topic. You’ll also need a bit of confidence in your expertise so you can show why you have every right not to treat certain subjects too seriously.

What You Need:

• An Odd Connection – One good way to catch people’s eyes is something unexpectedly related to the topic. A pretty good example would be the recent ad for Valentine’s day that Cisco made. (A product that had practically nothing to do about Valentines still managed a funny way to tie itself.)

• Culture Friendliness - Understanding culture is very crucial in comedy. And not just about country or religion, but also the many different subcultures inspired by today’s media. Due to how open the world is and how fast media spreads, you can be surprised at the kind of culture is now taking place in today’s work force (especially when a new generation is taking over).

• A Bit of Parody – Use of popular one-liners, series, or memes are quite useful when making comical connections for your topic. Who can forget Hootsuite’s Game of Thrones infographic? Another example is the Boromir meme, used for anything so long it’s a task that one does not simply do.

What You Don’t:

• More Walls of Text – You can tell that even this blog is doing its best from that. Of course, this doesn’t mean that text itself serves no purpose. This example perfectly demonstrates one good way to use it.

• Excessive Dark Humor – This is self-explanatory. Issues like politics, race, religion have been the butt of jokes before but it’s not without treading lightly. Do it too much and people might take you more seriously and not in a good way. Don’t hesitate to discuss your content with others so that they can keep it in check.

via Business 2 Community http://ift.tt/1cUGWul