A (bad) haiku:

Summer heat wave, go!

You make me long for

days of blizzard and snowfall

Hey, at least I stuck to the 5-7-5 rule. Seriously, though, it has been way too hot. If you want to fight about it, take it up with me in the comment section.

Anyway, some of you may be wondering why I’m writing about Bad Poetry Day on our Marketing Blog. I mean, shouldn’t I be posting about the marketing industry? Shouldn’t I be doing a post on SEO analytics and maximizing your company’s marketing ROI? Well, yes and no.

Here’s some free advice. When you’re marketing your brand, I don’t care what your brand is, you need to include fun and irreverence in your plan. Some folks, especially in more “professional” or “serious” industries might hesitate at that idea. Sometimes they think it might hurt the credibility of the brand if they take to social media and talk about what’s in the pop culture zeitgeist.

I just check out #BadPoetryDay on Twitter’s live feed. It’s going nuts. People are talking about it, people are having fun with it, people are retweeting, liking and overall engaging with people talking about Bad Poetry Day.

It makes all the sense then to capitalize and what people are talking about. Let’s say your business puts out a few bad haikus on Twitter in honor of Bad Poetry Day. You’ve entered the day’s zeitgeist. Your company is now part of the conversation. Someone may share your cleverly bad haiku, like it, respond to you, follow your page. Most importantly (and this is key) it allows you to help get your message out about whatever product or service you're selling. In other words, it’s a hook.

Check out this truly mad list of social media posts from Forbes. Seriously, look at it, it’s brilliant. Let’s take idea #12 as an example:

“Photos that have nothing to do with your products or business: Instead, they convey the feeling behind your brand. For instance, how Starbucks shares photos on Instagram to associate their brand with sunshine, warmth, and good friends (not just coffee).”

It doesn’t matter how technical your industry is, we all like to have fun, and we don’t just use social media (or any media for that matter) to focus on shop talk. Not even close! I have come across a lot of great websites from the perspective of layout, SEO, and service offerings. Then I check out their blog posts or social media posts, and they are a giant bore.

Having fun at work is something Kariann talks about a lot. It’s not a cliche or a cute phrase. Having fun at work is critical. Implementing fun in your marketing campaign is top-shelf stuff.

And it's #ThrowBackThursday! Double the fun! Speaking of, here's a woman who is a poetry pro, Sheryl Crow.