How Tos

I’ve heard people say you can’t learn how to be funny. I don’t actually agree with this. You can learn to be funny, but if you aren’t naturally funny, it will be a lot harder. Mostly that’s because someone who naturally likes making their friends laugh just has more practice than someone who’s never tried it. Also, as with any art form, some people are better at it than others.

Beyond that, jokes have a mechanical component that can be taught. Very generally, a joke has two parts to it, the set up and the punchline. The set up leads the listener to make an assumption about the outcome. The punchline shatters the listener’s assumption and replaces it with another equally applicable idea that matches with the set up.

I’ll use a joke I wrote as an example:
“Dating is difficult for me because I would really like to be a virgin when I settle down. That’s why I’m saving my butt for marriage.”

The set up of the joke is “Dating is difficult for me because I would really like to be a virgin when I settle down.” This statement leads listeners to believe that my goal is to live a very chaste life until I am married. The punchline,  “That’s why I’m saving my butt for marriage,” shatters this assumption because it suggests I’m not very chaste at all.

In general, the bigger the surprise on the punchline, the better. The rule of thumb is the punchline should still be something the audience can believe or substitute for their initial assumptions.

If you are new to comedy and want to work on writing, creating one liners that use this formula is a good way to start. Over time, the formula becomes less obvious, but is often still in play. Sometimes, you don’t need to include a misdirect in a joke, you can rely on common knowledge. Using another joke I wrote as an example:

“Hey feminists, 70% of a penny for your thoughts?”

This joke relies on a couple of things. First, this joke assumes the audience knows that the stereotype for feminists is that they can be uptight about being teased. You would assume you would tread lightly around people who represent this stereotype, and instead I’ve done the opposite by saying something rude. The second shattering of assumptions here is by changing an old saying “A penny for your thoughts.” People expect to hear that, and instead hear “70% of a penny for your thoughts.” The comment is also a commentary on how women are paid less than men, so at the end, it’s ironic rather than actually insulting to feminists. However, I don’t have to explain feminists or the saying “a penny for your thoughts” because the crowd is already familiar with these things, so the set up is very short… in this example it’s “Hey feminists.”

The more jokes you write and perform, the less the basic joke structure will show over time. It will become more ingrained, and with some people it disappears completely, and it seems like they are just having a funny conversation with you.

If you do use one liners in an act and tend to be more structure oriented about what you do, minimum you want 4 laughs per minute, with 5 being ideal, and anything more than that being AWESOME.

It is also important to note that this is not the only formula for telling jokes. Some things are funny because someone has good timing, or because they are familiar. Also, while most comedians strive to come up with punchlines that an audience doesn’t see coming, sometimes jokes where you can see what’s coming are funny just because of the anticipation.

Here are a few tips for getting more followers on Twitter:

1. Be interesting, entertaining, or useful. You can attract followers by providing a product or service. If you’re a comedian, always be funny. If you’re a business, provide useful tips about your industry, or interesting images from events or samples of your products. Figuring out how to be interesting, entertaining, or useful takes some exploration. If you want to use Twitter, plan to spend some free time learning what works in general, and then what works specifically for you.

2. Develop a personal brand, or a company brand. You can attract followers by being very clear about who you are and what you do. You should be able to summarize your product or service in a sentence and ideally, just a few descriptive words. The clearer you are about yourself or your business, the easier it is for somebody to decide if you’re worth following.

3. Be consistent. Post content that sticks to your goals for Twitter. If you want to be viewed as hilarious, be funny all the time. If you want people to think you’re an expert at say, hair care, then post things that demonstrate this. Try not to vary what you are doing too much, since that will confuse people. A little variety is still okay. For example, you could include a couple of personal tweets with useful tweets about your company. Or you could mention a hobby in between funny tweets.

4. Engage other people. Everyone has been in a one-sided conversation in real life where somebody just talks about him/herself the whole time. Avoid being this person on Twitter! @reply to people, follow back if you find them interesting, give them stars and retweets where appropriate. You don’t have to interact with every single person who interacts with you, but you should interact with people at some level – there’s a reason it’s called social media. Don’t be fake about it.

5. Don’t be a whiny bitch. Avoid asking people directly for retweets or follows or tweeting a link about a product or service over and over or bitching about people who don’t follow or people who unfollow. The exception is if you are hilarious/entertaining/engaging when whining. Since the number 1 rule is to be interesting, entertaining or useful, if you can whine and be any of these, whine away.

6. Write about current topics. While it’s not always easy, coming up with tweets that tie into what’s going on at the moment can get you a lot of attention.

7. Be patient. If you have under 1000 Twitter followers, it can be difficult to get your tweets the attention they may deserve. This is because at any given time, less people are likely to be viewing your tweet than people with 10,000 followers. Give it time, you will get there with a little work and more of your tweets will get attention.

8. Play hashtag games. If a hashtag is trending, and you think of something really funny or interesting or useful, you can get a lot of followers if they like what you have to say.

9. Leverage your other social networks. Ask your friends in other social networks if they will follow you on Twitter. That might be Facebook, or it could be in person at a party. Be careful not to be too pushy – not everyone is into following people on Twitter.

10. Post something every day. If you aren’t posting every day, it’s hard to get people excited about following you. While you should post every day, try not to post too much. What’s right for you will become apparent over time.11. Remember Twitter is a soft sell tool. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you do, or advertise something you think they may want to hear about. Just don’t over do it. Twitter is a community first – so be interesting and useful and entertaining FIRST and someone who suggests they buy/look at something second. 12. If you post a link or picture, be descriptive, and post stuff that doesn’t suck. “Hey, lookit my picture/link” is the gist of most picture or link posts. Nobody will want to click it, and if you post a lot of these, it gets very boring. Tell people what they are getting and why it is worth it to click. Also, post links and pictures that don’t suck. Somebody who liked one of your links or pictures is probably going to be willing to click another link or picture of yours…but not if the first time around was lame.