08/24/2026
A post goes viral. Views shoot up, comments roll in and everyone is excited.
But a week from now, will anyone remember which brand posted it?
Humor can be incredibly powerful on social media. It can interrupt the scroll, simplify a technical topic and remind people that your organization is made up of actual human beings.
But getting attention and building your brand are not always the same thing.
Research suggests humor is more reliable at capturing attention and improving how people feel about content than directly driving purchases. That does not make it ineffective, it means the joke still needs to support a larger goal.
People should remember the joke and who told it.
The best brand humor usually comes from one of four places:
Your product: A recognizable feature, use case or customer behavior.
Your industry: The jargon, frustrations and strange situations insiders understand.
Your people: The personalities, conversations and quirks within your organization.
Your audience: A specific experience that makes the right person think, “Yep, that is exactly what happens.”
When humor comes from one of these places, it does more than entertain. It helps your audience understand what you do, who you serve or what makes you different.
Before your next funny post goes live, ask:
Who is supposed to find this funny?
What truth is the joke built around?
Does it sound like your brand or like you borrowed another company’s personality?
Is your organization meaningfully connected to the idea?
What happens if someone misunderstands it?
You do not need to become a comedy account, chase every meme or put your CEO in a mascot costume.
The goal is to find your organization’s version of being human and use humor to make your message easier to notice, understand and remember.
We explore this topic more deeply in our latest article, including when to use humor, when empathy should lead, how humor can fit brand archetypes beyond the Jester and how your approach should change across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.
We hope it brings some value to your social media efforts!