The following is an excerpt from Michael’s book, The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank

Humor can help your brand stand out from the herd to be heard!

Business cards are small potatoes compared to the real modern-day business card — your online presence. We’ve already seen how companies are using videos to sell their workplace as great places to work, but what about your customers? What image are they left with after visiting your website? Are you conveying a customer-friendly presence that exudes warmth and a personal, human touch? Adding humor to your website can help humanize your company and soften your image, helping customers feel as though they’re are connecting with a real person and not an automated, sterile machine.

Kentucky’s Big Ass Fans features a fair amount of edgy humor on its website, which is highly appropriate for them. After all, their name is Big Ass Fans… even though the ass they speak is of a donkey.  So they embrace the controversy surrounding their name by including some of the hate mail they receive in a kudos section on their site. They have a hilarious video that pokes fun at the whole controversy. (On a side note: if you’re going to do something outrageous — like succeed the way Big Ass Fans has — you might upset some people, though perhaps you didn’t want them as customers in the first place!)

Even more conservative businesses and industries are getting into the act. Recall Integris Credit Union,  whom we met briefly in Chapter One, use their YouTube videos to help promote their brand and market their approach to phenomenal customer service. The employees come across as personable and charming, and the videos do a masterful job of straddling the line between goofy humor and professionalism.

For most companies, humor isn’t the main course being served up, it’s merely the seasoning that can help connect your customers to your brand when they cruise around your website. And as we saw with humor in advertising, they key is to be relevant.  Here’s a few simple ideas to ponder:

 A funny Top-10 list that highlights the 10 oddest requests you’ve had or the 10 most unusual ways people have used your product or service.

 A dedicated humor section where you share clean jokes or anecdotes related to your industry.

 A dedicated “Ask _______” column that answers inquiries in a very conversational and sometimes amusing manner.

 Fun before-and-after photos or videos showing your customers’ reactions to your products or services.

 A video or blog series featuring your own employees, who answer readers’ questions or offer additional tips and insights.

 A “Meet ______” section that introduces customers to the team in a fun, friendly manner.

 A “Don’t Click Here” or “Super Cool Stuff That We Only Want Our Most Valuable Customers To Know About” button that send customers to offbeat sections of your site or to a special promotional page.

 A “Day in the Life” video that shows off your company in a time-lapsed video.

 A contest or trivia section for your customers.

 A poll that asks quirky questions related to your product or service, keeping in mind that, as with employee engagement, anything that involves your customers or draws them into a conversation will increase the likelihood of true engagement.

 A customer Hall of Fame where you highlight great customer responses and special awards/rewards that you grant to your customers.

Part of any online presence includes social media. From YouTube channels to business Facebook pages, from Tumblr to Twitter, social media is the wild west of marketing, especially when you factor in how best to use humor. There are thousands of success stories and thousands of social media derailments due to humor. Some companies have had great success setting up Twitter accounts that represent their mascot or a product; others have suffered an epic Twitter backlash because an employee Tweeted an offensive comment in a lame attempt at being funny.

The annual Shorty Awards honor personalities, companies, and brands that have created highly successful social media campaigns. One finalist, Zzzquil, demonstrated just how effective a platform such as Twitter can be if done correctly. After discovering people were already talking about their product on social media — especially at night when insomnia struck — they decided to dive in with a Twitter account that focused on bringing humor and warmth to a topic that was typically handled in a sterile, medicinal way. The results: more than 16 million online impressions.

After learning that 40% of young adults admitted to using social media in the bathroom, Charmin toilet paper found tremendous success using a little potty humor on their Twitter account #Tweetfromtheseat. Their Twitter presence earned Charmin accolades from numerous media outlets, including Time Magazine, which called Charmin the “Sassiest Brand on Twitter”.

Even older, more staid organizations have found success using humor in social media. 85-year-old Delta Airlines maintained its brand image while using witty tweets to increase their followers by 50%. One of the most retweeted tweets: “Baby got back! We like big jets and we cannot lie, this 737 is ready to fly!”

Heck, even the CIA used humor in their very first Tweet in June of 2014: “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first Tweet.”

This topic really is an entire book unto itself, so let me just offer a few thoughts here:

• Humor can help your video go viral. But it needs to be congruent with your branding; it should be carefully planned and executed; it shouldn’t come across as a sales ad; and it needs to be part of a broader marketing and branding plan. So always consider the context: why are you doing the video and what are you hoping to achieve?
• You need to stay clear of jokes and keep the humor as safe as possible (unless you’re trying to be edgy and are prepared for some backlash). It’s not necessarily about being witty, it’s a conversation, a connection.
•  Social media is a reminder that no matter what you do, you can’t control the story of your brand alone — it’s a co-authorship and work in progress that includes contributions from everyone whose saying things about your company, products, and services online. Don’t fear this; embrace it.

Embracing contributions from beyond your company means that companies sometimes need to have a thick skin and be able to laugh at their own brand. For example, the NBC sitcom 30 Rock spent seven years poking fun at General Electric, NBC’s parent company. Tina Fey’s character continually mocked GE’s “Six-Sigma” productivity culture, while Alex Baldwin’s character often portrayed a GE executive that some companies might want to distance themselves from.

So were GE executives cringing every time an episode of 30 Rock aired? Hardly. Not only were they in on the joke from the beginning. Hell, they even went so far as to air a series of TV ads thanking 30 Rock for all the laughs over the years, and they created a “Favorite Moments” page on the show’s official website.

As GE and many others have proven, just because your company is in a serious business, doesn’t mean your social media presence needs to always be staid. Injecting some humor into social media is a great way to stand out from the herd, add some personality to your brand, and connect with customers at a human level.

Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame business speaker, trainer and author. He is known as one of North America’s leading authorities on workplace culture. Michael is also the author of 8 books, including The Humor Advantage, Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire, and The Jerk-Free Workplace. www.mikekerr.com