Funny? Funny how?
Watched a MasterClass video with the poet Billy Collins about reading and writing poetry.
He made the point that it’s easy for anybody to pretend to be serious but impossible to pretend to be funny. You are either funny or you aren’t.
Got me thinking about how so much B2B content could do with more humour and personality. Is your audience really so serious?
It’s easy to pretend to be serious with a stern face and half-baked ‘thought leadership’, but it’s much more difficult to put yourself out there with some personality and a sense of humour.
I think the world needs more of it. What an opportunity.
Collins highlighted that Chaucer and Shakespeare loved to throw in jokes all over the place, and then the romantic poets came along and tried to bring that to a close.
Keats and Wordsworth are great poets. But I would probably rather have a chat, and a couple of drinks, with Chaucer or Shakespeare. When technology allows, of course.
There’s a whole world of B2B content where jokes and puns are frowned upon. You may feel the need to be serious to get your content signed off. Yes, humour has its place, but why not expand it where we can?
And the punchline? Well, just watch this post gain hardly any traction and imagine my expression as I realise where I’ve been going wrong.