9 Skills Comedians Can Teach Us About Blogging

by Robb Sutton

I am convinced that being a stand-up comedian has to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet. Every night, you get up in front of an audience just hoping, wishing and praying that they will laugh at what you have to say. Laughter can not be faked…you either get up there and blow the crowd away or hug your lonely mic as crickets are chirping off in the distance. So what do the greats…Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Jerry Seinfeld…all have in common that we can apply to blogging and connecting with our audiences?

9 Skills Comedians Can Teach Us About Blogging

  1. Connect With Your Audience – In the Comedy for Dummies handbook, connecting with your audience should be chapter 1. A comedian is nothing if he does not connect with his audience and you are nothing as a blogger if you do not connect with yours. Comedians get instant feedback on where they are with their audience. If they are not connecting…no one is listening. One of the great ways that comedians connect with their audiences is by sharing personal experiences that may have appeared in the life of their listeners. As a blogger, you need to connect with your audience and continue to stay at that level.
  2. Have Personality – When was the last time you laughed at a comedian that had zero personality? Most of the greats have very outgoing personalities on stage even if that is not how they are in real life. It isn’t fake…it is just their stage presence that attracts people to come laugh with them. When you draft up articles on your blog, are you bringing your personality into the content? Or are you just putting up boring mini-research projects. If you really want to connect with people, you need to bring in your personality.
  3. Be Controversial – Controversial subjects are often hot topics with comedians, but the reason they are successful with these controversial topics is because they have a defined opinion that other people can either love or hate. As a blogger, you need to cover issues in your niche and have a defined opinion. If you are playing the middle ground…that is boring (and not funny at all if you are a comedian).
  4. Touch On Subjects That Apply To Larges Groups – If only one person in the crowd thinks something is funny…a comedian is not going to last very long on stage. Comedians tend to stick to subjects that will apply to large audiences so they can get as many laughs out of the crowd as possible. If you are looking to have a large following/subscriber list on your blog, you need to be addressing topics that a lot of people will want to read.
  5. Interlink Your Content – When I watch really successful comedians, there is one thing that they all do really well. They interlink their content throughout the stand-up routine. You will often here them refer back to previous topics, repeat a funny catch phrase and re-visit subjects that get a large amount of laughs. In your blogging, you need to link back to older content in your articles to expose newer readers to more of your content that is relevant to want they are reading at the moment. You can do this with plugins for the end of an article and by linking to older, relevant content within the article itself. Not only is this good for search engine spiders, but it provides relevant content to readers and gets them to dive deeper into your blog.
  6. Diversify – Once a comedian starts to see a certain level of success, they do not just stop at stand-up. They get into movies, books, videos and sometimes even toys! They use the reputation they have built through their stand-up to diversify and grow. Are you just putting up article after article wondering how you can make more money or get more subscribers? Maybe you need to look into creating an informational product, starting a forum or a membership site! Anything to get your name out there more and increase your credibility in your niche. Successful bloggers and comedians do not just stop at their beginning point…they continue to evolve.
  7. Stick With It Through The Hard Times – This is probably the most important thing a comedian does that bloggers really need to listen to. Almost every successful comedian has horror stories (that they typical tell in a way that we laugh) about the beginning years trying to make it as a comedian. Almost none of them saw success right away and almost all of them made severe sacrifices to get where they are today. Many beginning bloggers have a mentality that sense it is the web…it will all come quickly. You are wrong. It takes a lot of work and a lot of writing (even when no one is reading what you have to say) to make it big as a blogger. Take this lesson from comedians and keep pushing through the rough times to really make it big.
  8. Be Unique – Successful comedians are unique. They are not copy cats of other comedians and they can not jump on stage, regurgitate someone else’s jokes and expect to make people laugh. As a blogger, you can not just redo everything another blogger has said and expect to be successful. You need a unique voice, a unique look, unique content and a unique logo to make it. If you are expecting to piggyback off of another blogger’s success…you will constantly be writing for a room of 5 and no one will be laughing.
  9. Invoke Emotion – The really great comedians in the world can make you feel every emotion in the book with one stand-up routine. They can make you laugh, cry and mad…but you still love to hear what they have to say. When you connect with your readers online, you need to bring out their emotions as it relates to your blogging topic. This is the best way to connect with your readers and bring more of your own personality into your writing.

Comedians and bloggers have a lot in common. Our #1 goal is to attract an audience that wants to listen to what we have to say. The trick is presenting that information in a way that attracts and connects. With that combo…we see success.

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7 comments

John Paul Aguiar December 2, 2009 - 9:05 am

Great post, Bottom line is be yourself and let people see the REAL you.

#9 is my fav, once your reach a reader at a emotional level, they will be a lifelong reader/friend.

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Robb Sutton December 2, 2009 - 9:29 am

Its all about creating that connection. Thanks John!

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John Paul Aguiar December 2, 2009 - 9:32 am

I agree 100%, and YW, Great Blog.

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Srinivas Rao December 2, 2009 - 10:12 am

Rob,

I wrote an entire post on personality for blogging. I think when people don’t bring personality to their blog, that’s what kills their content. Even for my review site on surfboards I ask people to tell a story to make the content more engaging.

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Alex Bethune December 2, 2009 - 2:58 pm

About number 7, (Stick with it through the hard times) I notice that all successful comedians have a burning desire to be on stage, get their message out, make people laugh, and add value to the lives of others.

My Favourite Richard Pryor quote sums this up for me: “I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, ‘I wanna grow up and be a critic'”

All successful people would rather be in game, no matter how tough it is, than to be on the sidelines watching.

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Sarge @ beginnerblogger.com December 2, 2009 - 11:55 pm

Emotion is something I feel is very powerful. If you can really connect with your audience through powerful emotions this will (more than anything else I believe) invoke action from your readers.

Nice post 🙂

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Mike December 3, 2009 - 9:23 am

There’s a lot of great points in there, but one that I should work on is being controversial. When it comes to doing the reviews, I’m very opinionated. But when I write about topics like Starbucks, I find myself more in the middle. There’s a lot of things to dislike about them, but they’re not exactly evil either, plus their lattes are pretty damn good.

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