The Top Mistakes Every Comedian Makes on Social Media

Sharing the most common errors that have nothing to do with their actual output.

Happy May, everyone!

It’s been so great meeting many of you at SXSW, Moontower Comedy Festival, Netflix is a Joke Fest, and the recent Stamptown shows in New York, Austin, and Los Angeles.

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Today I want to talk through a few ways to improve a public-facing social media presence that have nothing to do with the account’s actual output. This not only applies to comedians, but to influencers, athletes, brands, and startups, too.

Regardless of what you post, consider that each individual social media channel (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) sits at the top level of a funnel designed to guide your digital audience downstream towards a specific series of actions:

That action might be to buy tickets to your upcoming tour, or to watch your newest hour-long special, or to subscribe to your mailing list, or to listen to your podcast.

But more often than not, the funnel is leaky.

Instead, comedians tend to pinball their online audience back and forth between their various, undifferentiated digital platforms at the top level of the funnel.

Rather than all pointing towards the same action, their Instagram bio links to their YouTube channel. Their YouTube videos embed their inactive Twitter account in each video description. Their Twitter bio plugs their abandoned podcast from 2021.

None of it is optimized for conversion, and so there’s a ton of friction between their growing social media presence and half-filled seats at their live shows.

Today, I will offer some pointers on plugging the leaky funnel.

Consistency in Branding:

What’s the best case scenario after doing a set on someone else’s lineup show?

Unless Mitzi Shore or Ted Sarandos is in the crowd, it’s probably to get some of their audience to become your audience. The clearest way someone can indicate they’d be interested in doing so is by following you online.

At the risk of recommending frequently Googling yourself, consider their journey.

How are they searching for you, and where?

Do they go to the host of the show’s Instagram page and find you from there?

Do they simply type your name into their web browser and sift through the results?

Do your profiles even show up in the top results for your own name?

I can’t tell you how many comedians I’ve met with where they don’t. Sometimes they don’t even appear when you search their own name within Instagram or TikTok!

This is where a consistency in branding (handles, bios, profile pictures) is crucial.

Back when we all watched cable TV everyday, if you saw in the cable guide that an episode of Family Guy was on next, you generally knew what to expect.

Whether you watched it on Fox, TBS, or Adult Swim, the show was always titled Family Guy. It always started with the same theme song, and had the same core characters. The show description was standardized in the little “Info” bit, and was drafted in a compelling way that clearly communicated to people who hadn’t yet watched an episode before what they could expect.

This is not all that different in 2024.

Only today, Fox, TBS, and Adult Swim are now YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

Just like an episode of Family Guy, assume your content is completely undifferentiated regardless of where it airs. Any sweeping generalizations made about these platforms’ users should be ignored. There are over a billion monthly active users on each of them, it’s absurd to think only one of them is “for kids”, or, “for boomers”.

But part of that means not calling your “show” @Family_Guy_Comedy_Show on one platform and @FamilyGuyHaHa on another, with differing profile pictures that show Peter Griffin holding a microphone on stage in the former, but donning a suit in the latter.

Uninspired Bio:

Everything about your profile should communicate to a complete stranger that this is the page of someone who, if I follow them, I can expect to laugh at / be entertained by.

All too often, comedian bios will simply list the podcast they are “1/2 of'", tag some random competition they were a finalist for in 2019, word vomit a series of “as seen on”s, or tag their credit handles (think @fallon @jfl @comedycentral, etc.¹). Unfortunately, these mean nothing to the average person scrolling through their feed who happened to stumble across your page, at least in the context of deciding whether or not to follow you. Think about who your audience is, and how what you type in your bio might appeal to your ideal superfan.

Ineffective Link in Bio:

• Almost always a LinkTree or similar service (Beacons.ai, Komi, etc.)

• I’ve written at length about my skepticism of these sorts of sites. They are tedious to maintain, always outdated, and tend to have depressingly low engagement.

• Instead, I recommend my clients funnel each digital channel towards the same, analog action. Whether that’s buying tickets to your upcoming live show, joining your mailing list, or linking to your recent special across all platforms.

• Make it clear what you want us to do!

Instagram Story Highlights:

• Almost always last updated in 2021. It’s important to remember that Story Highlights were introduced prior to the existence/proliferation of Reels. They are often a random assortment of proof someone does live gigs, trips they’ve been on, screenshots of tweets from 2020, and an abandoned series they made in lockdown.

• Most comedians I point these out to have totally forgotten they’re on their profile. But these are the first things we see after your handle, pro pic, bio, and link in bio.

• In general, I recommend removing them entirely. The only exception would be to have one promoting upcoming shows. But this requires strong hygiene.

Pinned Reels:

1. Almost always zero. This is because even if you pin a video to your Grid feed, it doesn’t automatically pin it as a Reel. You have to manually go into the “Reels” tab and pin it again, which is a pain. Double-check that you’ve done it on both.

2. While we’re over here, many comedians have an inactive “Series” that gets top billing on their Reels feed, which was (say it with me) abandoned during Covid.

# of Posts:

• Almost always waaaaay too many.

• I like to call this the Drake Principle™.

  • Despite having 145+ million followers, Drake has 493 total posts on his personal Instagram. You should never have more total posts than Drake.

• Imagine each of your profiles exists as its own section within a giant, digital library. Make it possible for people to spend 20-30 minutes in your “section”. They are far more likely to do so if there are fewer than 2,500 books to skim through.

• For comics, about 20% of their total posts are past gig promos. You can archive them if you like, so they don’t actually get “deleted”, but no one will miss your static images promoting a random gig in Madison three separate times in 2018.

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So how did you do?

If you’re a comedian, how many of these were you guilty of?

If you’re an agent or manager, I encourage you to send this to your clients.

I’ve met with over 100 comedians around the world at this point, and I’m willing to bet yours are no different. I know this because even the comedians at the absolute top of the industry have weak or inconsistent branding.

For instance, here’s Kevin Hart’s Instagram, where he uses half of his bio to type out links to his Facebook and Twitter pages. He also has a three-part Story Highlight promoting his ‘Reality Check’ tour from 2022:

Those URLs aren’t clickable, Kevin! And what value / content am I getting over on your Facebook and Twitter that I’m not already getting on Instagram?

He’s not the only one.

Here’s the top part of Tom Segura’s Instagram:

The profile picture is a graphic design of his side profile that I haven’t seen used on any of his other major platforms. The bio copy contains no information other than “Comedian”² and a context-less tagging of his vodka brand, Por Osos. He uses a LinkTree, and has 10+ story highlights that haven’t been updated in 2+ years.

Contrast this with his TikTok, which at least uses a picture of his face, but doesn’t incorporate any link at all in the bio:

And here’s his Twitter, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the others:

Lastly, there’s his YouTube, which uses by far the best profile picture of the four, especially considering he’s actively promoting a national tour:

All four profile pictures are different, two handles are @tomsegura vs. @seguratom, 3 different URLs are used as a link in bio, and only one of them is funneling to tomsegura.com/tour, which is ultimately the primary link he should want his audience to click and take action on.

One more: Amy Schumer’s Twitter is also still promoting her 2022 Tour:

The only copy on her Faceboook “Intro” is a link to a Rachel Feinstein show that happened 5+ months ago:

And her one Instagram story highlight, aptly named “Highlights”, is a single image from December 2020:

The worst part? Her personal website is not only missing her TikTok in the outdated social media icon section at the top (just like 90% of all comedian websites I’ve looked at, by the way), but it is instead promoting…. her Google+ ??

If nothing else, hopefully this provides some comfort in knowing that comedians at all levels struggle to maintain and optimize their social media pages.

But it can’t hurt to have some guidance.

If you’re interested in learning more about how I could help you or your clients grow and mobilize your audience, feel free to throw some time on my calendar.

1. What you could do instead by the way - show us those sets! Crop them for vertical, and pin them to the top of your Grid and Reels feeds.

2. I don’t mind this by the way. But I’d make sure to select Comedian in the “Category” of the page, rather than type it out in the bio. Like how it looks on Amy Schumer’s.