Very few people can write funny stuff. If you are one of those who has a natural tendency for humour, then that’s a wonderful trait. It will give you an added advantage when you do content marketing.

Lowering Defenses

Some people are born with a great sense of humour; they have it in their genes. Good humour makes people lower their defences. They become more receptive to your message while they have a hearty laugh. Many companies have realised the importance of humour and are incorporating it into their brand marketing and Digital media strategies. People are usually exposed to lots of blaring and self-aggrandising ads. This constant exposure to ads makes them closed and unreceptive. Well timed humour breaks down all these defensive barriers to pieces, and that’s just for starters.

Connect with Audience

When you share good humour, it humanises your brand. You look human when you display such emotions, rather than being just another faceless brand.

People are more receptive to messages blended with humour. Having your brand message wrapped with undiluted humour will never fail to connect with the audience.

Sharing

Humour has another advantage; people don’t hesitate to share it with family and friends. They readily share it across social media channels as they want to bring a smile to their near and dear ones. Thus it has more of a tendency to go viral than any other type of posting or ad.

Levelling Competition

If you are a small company, you may take on bigger competitors if you can ‘kill it’ with good humour. In fact, Dollar Shave Club is one such company which decimated competition with, “Our Blades are F*cking Great”. The above linked video is a perfect example of ‘product marketing blended with humour’.

Check out your Demographic

What you find humourous doesn’t have to make the others feel the same way. In fact, you need to be extra careful about misplaced humour. It can damage your brand name permanently. So check out your demographic and see what type of humour (if any) they enjoy or resonate with.

Align your Content around Your Brand

Make sure that your humour is in line with your brand and what it stands for. Humour should complement your brand, and not draw the audience away from it.

Keep it Simple, Not too Complex

People must be able to understand your jokes instantly. They must not rush to a nearby library and start flipping the pages of a dictionary. If your joke is too complex, people will first try to solve the “riddle”, and when they finally understand the meaning, it will be too late. Timing is thus very important for your jokes. They must be understandable and come with a bang!

You don’t need to be a stand-up comedian to make people burst out laughing. All you need to do is to put a smile on their faces, and that is not difficult. This will establish a connection between you; they will be more receptive to you and your product. Do you incorporate humour in your Facebook postings? Do let us know in the comments below.

Getting a website done, exclusively for a foreign audience is not a bad idea. However one needs plan his moves carefully, in this relatively unknown territory to stand a chance of survival. Here are some tips on how to go about it.

Knowledge about the legal Issues

If you have the knowledge of the law of the land, it can save a lot of money and time. You need to know about the below issues beforehand:

The law of that country doesn’t allow your website or product to be sold in their homeland
In countries like China, you actually need to setup a physical office in their country, to start with.
Some countries are not internet savvy and still have a long way to go.
Some states of the same country allow a product to be sold, while others do not.

Do Research on the Keywords

We need to conduct a keyword research to see, which combination of words can be used successfully in SEO and Google Ad-Words campaigns. There are many keyword research tools available online. You need to know the kind of audience you are targeting, like their age, sex, interests, profession etc. A keywords research tool may not give you the exact results. You may hire locals to do the job for you. They will have more knowledge about the country’s culture. They will have a better understanding of the common search terms used by their fellow countrymen.

Know your Competitors

You must be aware about your competitors in the foreign market. They will certainly be more challenging than your local competitors. Once you shortlist your new competitors, you can research about their market share and strategy. Find out how they have built up their current positioning. This is very useful; it will in turn help your online and offline strategy accordingly.

Localize your Site

Have a local version of the site made. You can adapt it to reflect the target country’s culture, within the confines of your company or product’s color scheme. You could use the country’s flag wherever you find it appropriate. If you are selling products to that country, then use trusted and reliable payment methods like Paypal etc. You may also opt for their localized URLs like (1) .au for Australia (2) .uk for England etc.

Checkout Local Search Engines

In South Korea, Naver is more popular with a market share of almost 50%, while Google can manage only 30% of the market share. It is more suitable for the South Korean audiences and it caters to their local needs in the best possible way. Naver contains lots of images and flashy banners; in fact it may look too cluttered to the western audiences. Similarly, Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia are revered by the local audiences. Therefore, if you are thinking in terms of Google SEO for foreign countries, think again. Check out the ways in which you can utilize the local search engine to your advantage.

It is a good idea to reach out to the customers in another country by starting a local website. As long as you are flexible and adapt your site content and design to the right audience. You will still need to compete mostly with local players. However, there are no shortcuts to success. You will learn to craft a successful path from your own mistakes and experience.

Here’s how to use Humour in Content Marketing