Alan Draper
Welcome back to Red Rocket Media’s Social Island and part two of my comedy and social media interviews (click here for part 1). This week we’re talking about self-promotion, crowd sourcing interactions, animals in hats and the death of Hugo Chavez.
Who’s that on the horizon?
As I scour the beach for today’s bar quota of coconuts, rum and sparkly cocktail umbrellas, I hear a distant humming sound coming from the horizon – why, it’s the first of my guests, Twitter’s very own joke machine, award winning stand-up comic Stephen Grant. Swooping down in his private charter helicopter is one of the UK’s hardest working and most respected comedians who is no stranger to the world of social media comedy.
Before Stephen has taken the first sip of his rum/coconut/sparkly umbrella garnished drink, the sound of horses can be heard. Who turns up to a desert island on a horse?! Squinting in the midday sun the figure of stand-up comic, comedy writer and blogger extraordinaire, Tiernan Douieb comes into view…skipping along the beach, banging two coconuts together.
Welcome to Social Island chaps...
Tiernan Douieb
Stephen Grant
So, which social media platforms are you fans of?
Stephen Grant:
Twitter and Facebook for me. I probably spend more time on the former though. I have a MySpace account which I last updated when I last went to the gym (2005).
Tiernan Douieb:
Twitter. Always Twitter. I find Twitter fun and, although I often spend far too much time feeling stressed as to what to tweet, generally un-pressured. I think you can do a lot with 140 characters and even if I didn’t tweet myself (which I could never imagine happening) I’d enjoy just reading other links and thoughts from others. It’s best for news and often the source for articles, commentary, or weird pics of animals in hats that I would never know about otherwise. I’m not sure my life is richer for them. I just would never know about them otherwise.
Primarily, what do you use social media for?
Tiernan Douieb:
Procrastinating mainly. Other than that I use it to test gags out and self-promote things I’m doing, writing, and generally wasting time with in other ways. It’s also very useful for meeting people and making contacts with people I may not get the chance to meet in the real world.
Stephen Grant:
I use it the same as everyone else – connecting, gossiping, short communications, but more so for jokes, ideas, and a small amount of promotion and marketing. Not much though as that puts people off.
Do you consider social media a good way of sourcing new material?
Tiernan Douieb:
Yep often. Just recently I asked people on Twitter to tell me great questions their kids have asked. I’m going to use most of the responses I got for a new kids show I’m doing at the Udderbelly Southbank in June. But also, as I mentioned before, I read a lot of articles people put up and use them as research for points I want to make in stand-up and, just occasionally, I might use something someone’s tweeted at me as part of gags. A recent example would be when an NRA member called me a ‘leftie commie a*shole just like Hitler’. That’s now very often in my set. Well, adult sets anyway. It certainly won’t be in the kids show in June.
Stephen Grant:
Specifically no. I wouldn’t use it to source material. The ideas tend to come from elsewhere – news, general observations, conversations in real life – what social media allows me to do is form those ideas into actual material. Once I know that it’s funny, it comes off social media again and back into the writing room.
Do you think social media has helped your career?
Tiernan Douieb:
Yep. I think it helps build up a following that now, especially with the touring circuit so focused on TV comics, I might not have been able to get otherwise. It works too. Tweeting where I’m gigging or if I’m doing shows definitely helps sell a few tickets here and there which is great to be able to do.
Stephen Grant:
Yes, though not to the extent that it has those people for whom their number of followers are almost an army. I do get people coming up to me after gigs saying they follow me on Twitter so that’s got to show it has some effect.
What would you consider your greatest success when it comes to social media?
Stephen Grant:
The best joke was one I did during the strikes about having a Twitter strike. This one got over 3000 RT’s: “Shall we have a Twitter strike as well? Just harnessing the momentum? “What do we want?” “More than 140 characters” “When do we want it?””
However, it didn’t get me many followers. The one that got me the most followers was an article I wrote on Storify.
Here’s Stephen’s tale of what happened when a Twitter Joke he wrote went beyond viral.
Tiernan Douieb:
Back in 2009, I ran the world’s first ever Twitter Comedy Club – a live stand-up gig that I hosted from my home and comics tweeted their sets in. That was a good boost. Most RTs and followers come from political gags I make rather than silly ones, or from the first Partly Political Broadcast myself and Ben Hilton (@mrbenhilton) made. There doesn’t seem to be any correct formula to it. Sometimes the right people see it and RT it. Sometimes you can have the best joke or comment in the world and it just disappears into timeline oblivion…then you save it and tweet it later when no one’s looking. Ahem.
Stephen Grant:
It’s interesting, but if you write more expressively and in depth people are more likely to follow you. In my experience you have to be super-efficient in your joke writing – and ONLY write jokes – if you want the number of followers to constantly increase. @SixthFormPoet and @AdamHess1 are good examples of this.
Who are your favourite Twitter accounts at the moment?
Tiernan Douieb:
Hmm, tough question, I could write you a three page list to be honest. If you see someone’s tweeted something that interests you or makes you laugh, just follow them. I never understand people that ‘don’t want to follow too many tweeters’. What’s the point in doing that? This is, of course, coming from a man who follows over 2000 people so consequently never gets anything done.
Stephen Grant:
There are so, so many… but currently? I really find @OhLookBirdies an excellent pun writer, and considering English is his second language, that’s impressive. Overall though, I think @MooseAllain is a fabulous twitterer – accessible and with just few enough followers that he will reply to most people. And he’s a lovely, lovely bloke.
Cheers guys!
Thank you taking the time out to come and visit me here on Red Rocket Media’s Social Island. (Click here to follow @StephencGrant & @TiernanDouieb on Twitter and here Stephen Grant & Tiernan Douieb on Facebook)
Takeaways
Both Stephen and Tiernan talked about keeping the content you produce true to your own brand. Jokes obviously make up a large part of the social output comedians write, but this is also mixed in with a proportion of self-promotional material. Self-promotion isn’t all bad if it’s done in moderation with your audience in mind and it does produce results.
Finally, talk to your followers – ask questions, coax opinions and involve them in your conversations, it is called social media after all.
Coming up in part 3…
Join me for the final episode of Social Island: Interviews, when I’ll be talking to Maff Brown, Zoe Lyons and Carl Donnelly.
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This article was written for Business 2 Community by Alan Draper.
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