LOL, ROFL, HAHA. These are some of the reactions you might see on your social media networks when injecting humor into your tweets, posts and/or photos. The level of engagement that humor can bring you is incredible. You can even win awards for causing a chuckle or two on social. The Shorty Awards, which honors the best in social media, recognizes people and organizations producing real-time short content across the social web. One of their “best of” categories? Humor. But how should you handle humor with regards to your business social media efforts?

Some may be intimidated at the thought of sharing humor on their business social channels so we’ve compiled 5 tips that’ll get the giggles flowing and fans interacting like never before.

1. Use YouTube to find humor.
YouTube is a terrific place to find humorous videos to share with your audience. When the laugh-inducing “Ship My Pants” Kmart commercial was released on YouTube, several organizations including Time Magazine, Daily Finance, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and even ourselves, wrote quick posts including commentary, embedded the video, and shared it on Facebook or Twitter. We wrote a blog post, pushed it to our social networks, which then drove even more traffic to our blog. The key is to get it out fast to leverage the buzz. Perusing the main page of YouTube, as well as the “Popular” category can be a huge help in getting your humor train started.

2. Jump on the viral bandwagon.
Back in February of this year, the Harlem Shake video meme went viral. Multiple companies, organizations and people jumped on the meme bandwagon joining in on the fun. Notable performances include the staff of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a squadron of the Norwegian Army, Facebook and Google employees, the staff of The Daily Show, University of Georgia swim team (whose video received at more than 37 million views) and so on. We also pulled the VR crew together and quickly made our own version. Not only was it fun for our employees, but it also generated more than 2,500 views on our YouTube channel. Staying on top of the latest pop culture hijinks is a great way to stay relevant and generate more than a few laughs and clicks.

3. Set a day you share a cartoon or funny picture.
Consistency is ideal for any social media strategy, and humor isn’t any different. Dedicate one day in which you give your fans a humorous freebie. We post something funny on Fridays to end the week on a fun note. Include a hashtag such as #FridayFunny on your Facebook Page and/or Twitter account so people can easily find all the humorous content you or others have shared. Here’s the funny we shared last Friday.

Try to find humor that will relate to a wide audience and not only bring a smile to your existing fan base, but also exposes your social accounts to a whole new audience.

4. Start or join a great meme.
You’ve probably seen a lot of memes even if you have no idea what they are. A meme is an “idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” according to Wikipedia. You mainly see them in the form of funny photos with sayings on them. You may be familiar with various popular memes such as Grumpy Cat, First World Problems, Forever Alone, Haters Gonna Hate, and more. Several companies share and include memes into their marketing mix, such as blog posts (like we did here in our content marketing example), in advertisements and on social. Want more info on how to join the viral meme craze? Read our post, “Hey Girl, Wanna Go Viral? Learn from Memes.”

5. Share humor that your target audience can relate to.
We’re a marketing company and we help small businesses market their products and services. We know our particular audience is fairly familiar with marketing and will get a kick out of anything with some marketing humor. A fab place to start is always Dilbert.

This not only gets a chuckle out of our audience, but it helps build a tighter bond because we’re speaking the same humorous language.

The folks at Grammarly post content on a regular basis tapping into their large base of fans and followers that can relate to funny posts about typos, bad grammar and the like. They also encourage their fans to get in on the act and share post on the Grammarly wall. Here’s a recent example – Check out the wicked engagement it got with over 6K likes and over 2,500 comments!

BR Cohn is a winery in Glen Ellen, CA. They’ve created an Uncorked! board on Pinterest where they share wine-related humor. And Pinterest is a good match for the visual nature of fun-filled posts.

So there you have it, 5 quick and easy tips to get your audience smiling, laughing and engaging with your content. Use these tips to engage with your followers and fans on a level that can make your brand more human and more approachable. We’d love to hear your ideas on what funny things make your audience laugh.

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