Now that I’ve been posting advice on this site for several months and have built up a nice readership, it’s been really exciting for me to hear from readers who have implemented some of the things I write about in their own career and are seeing good things happen as a result.

Yesterday, I got an email from comedian Ray Harrington, who was inspired by Connected Comedy to attempt to do something creative to get audiences to remember his name and connect with him after his shows. Even though he hadn’t read my specific post on 4 Ways To Get Comedy Club Audiences To Remember Your Name, he wound up doing something exactly like I suggested in the post.

Here’s the email Ray sent me to tell me about what he’s done:

Hi Josh,

I’ve enjoyed your blog and facebook page for a while now and thought you would like this. I’m a comedian who’s starting to get to the ‘Full Time’ level and wanted to apply my marketing degree to my own career.

So many comedians will plug their website or tell people to friend them on Facebook. But when they do it on stage, people either forget or just tune out the information, like a commercial in the middle of a great show. I wanted to get people to remember my website and WANT to go to it right after the show. So I incorporated the website itself right into a bit! Now, when I close a show, I do a bit about ghost stories and haunting the internet. You can see a clip of the bit from last week here:

As you can see, the interest is built up and the call to action is part of the joke. I love seeing people pull out their phones when I ‘challenge’ them to. Here’s the website they see.

I’ve only done the bit with the website call to action once and already, the video received 200 hits from that one show. Being able to track the impact is great and I’m happy that I’m able to apply just a bit of my degree creatively… after all, I paid enough for it. lol.

Ray

I love what Ray’s doing here and think it creates a lot of opportunities for him to expand it even further. I suggested he consider adding something to the site that allows people to email Ray’s Ghost a question and then he’d be able to reply to them as his ghost (and more importantly, it would be a way to capture email addresses of people he knows had seen his show live and liked it enough to follow up after the show.)

The other thing I love about this is that it’s a perfect example of somebody exploring the idea that performing standup comedy no longer has to be just about a guy standing on stage and telling jokes into a mic. There’s now limitless opportunities to extend jokes beyond the stage, and beyond that one live moment. I encourage you to consider the possibilities and be creative about what it means to be a comedian.

Again, I thought it was really interesting to see an example of how somebody is implementing one of the things I talk about on this site and wanted to share it with you. If you’ve implemented any of my tips into your career and seen good results, please email me to tell me about it.