Jul 7

Written by:
2010/07/07 10:09 AM 

A great majority of blogs out there today are of a serious nature. There is nothing wrong with that. But amongst all the seriousness we need a place to smile, laugh and have fun. Take some time to invest in some humour for your blog.

Humour is a very effective tool to attract the reading crowd. It can also make them come back for more. A smile a day keeps the doctor away. In fact it is well known that it takes less muscles and effort to smile than to frown.

Know your niche and audience

When you know your niche well you will get to know all the humour that surrounds it. We humans have a strange capability to use humour to cope, understand, and learn.

Use humour well. By that I mean apply it to your blog and topic. Don’t just include a joke because it’s funny, find a joke, cartoon, picture that will enforce a particular point, or highlight your subject.

As an example, take a look at my recent post. There I have a cartoon like picture which is central to my blog niche as well as to the topic at hand. The topic was, are you pressurised into writing a blog post every day. Take a look at the picture and tell me what you think.

You can also look at South Africa Had The First Wireless Network, and Technology Advancements.

Choosing the right words

You can embed a sense of humour right into your blog posts by choosing the right words. Use simple language. As an example, instead of using huge use humongous. The word ‘humongous’ has a sense of humour to it.

Play around with words and or symbols. For example Microsoft is often referred to as MS. Substituting the $ for the S signifies that Microsoft is expensive and also makes fun of them. As in M$.

Another example of a pun is the incident of Tiger Woods. You will understand when you read it. “A lion would not cheat, but a Tiger would”

Use cartoons and images

A picture paints a thousand words. Learn how to use cartoons and pictures effectively. You can use cartoons within your posts, or as I do often, choose a particular day of the week and just post a cartoon as your daily blog post. I often choose Fridays to cheer people up for the coming weekend.

Remember the release of the iPad, well I did a post with a few humorous pictures. Take a look to understand what I mean. iPad Humour, there are some real funny ones there.

I also do my own cartoons. I use Toondoo, which gives you a lot of tools and resources to create and publish your own cartoons. Try them out.

Check out my Cartoons Page for more cartoons. Some by me, some by others.

Make fun of someone

A word of caution. Be careful be very ,very careful. Some people do not like to be made fun at.

You can make fun of yourself, or a friend or close family. Someone who does not mind being made the object of a joke.

Often celebrities put themselves into situations where they become a free for all for jokes. They often make mistakes which is great food for humour posts and bloopers etc.

Make sure that your candidate is somehow connected to your niche and target audience. Take a look at my stab at the Famous Blogger Darren Rowse From Problogger.   Or take a look at how I used the FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup, the Vuvuzela and John Chow in a cartoon. The Golden Trumpet summons 1000’s of readers to your blog.

What not to do

As I said be careful when using humour. If done incorrectly it can come back and bite you

• Don’t over do it. Moderation is key.
• Do not hurt anyone’s sentiments or feelings. Don't make jokes about people's skin colours, ethnicity, sexual orientation, height, weight, religion etc.
• Do not explain the joke, when you throw in a punch line.
• Do not make fun of your target audience.
• Do not use over-familiar jokes. The readers will tend to get bored
• Do not use unrelated humour. Just because its funny does not mean it will work.

Conclusion

We all need some laughter in our life. What are some of the best blog humours you've seen? Do you use humour in your blog, if so how often?

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