I am in the process on launching two puppets on social media with Twitter, FaceBook, and weekly vlogs on YouTube.  One character is easy as he has no focus and jumps from subject to subject and will appear as a social media addict.  The other is an alien with the goal of taking over the world.  I am having problems figuring out how to word his tweets so they sound more comical.  For example, I sent this tweet:



I wasn't real happy with how it sounded, so I followed it with this video correction:



Any thoughts on how to get the silliness of the character across in 140 characters or less?

In your tweet, you introduce four topics:

Waiting
Exploring
Video logs
Takeover

You might narrow your tweets down to a single topic, which will give you more creative room. You could do a couple tweets a day this way, or just have less liklihood of running out of material as time goes by.

That makes sense, thanks!  I have a bad habit of overthinking things, so this project is testing me in many areas. 

Chris is right.

You'll have better luck if you try not to be too sophisticated, and perhaps in engaging others (ie @[username] all your bases are belong to me"). Engagement will depend on your relationship with the other person though and how cheeky you think you can be without being too off-putting. Personally, I read the tweet and first thought "what the hell is he on about?" If I saw that on my timeline I'd ignore it and probably never engage with you or look at your vids.

Not having done parody or pseudonyms on twitter, my guess is you'll get more attention by referencing current affairs. "Your puny drones are no match for my EdNaut army!" "You reached Pluto, congratulations. Meanwhile I've been here taking over your world! Bwahahaha"

If you're careful you can parody some of the tin-foil hatters out there and the stuff they believe about aliens. Heck, I'd bet a lot of people would find satire of that with a puppet to be pretty funny and worthwhile following.

Thanks Na, those are some great suggestions!  Playing around and testing things while I have no followers, not going to push it until I have things figured. 

Now I remember why I have been struggling with video.  Lighting, editing....gonna have to learn as I go.  This is what I did for Edgaaar's intro video:

Edgaaar ' s attempt to win free tickets to Houston Fan Fair.

Thanks Na, those are some great suggestions!  Playing around and testing things while I have no followers, not going to push it until I have things figured. 

You're welcome! If you need any good resources for UFO/astronomy stuff let me know and I'll PM you some. I've been reading up on aliens lately and have some good places to go to find discussion, intros, and others - of both the sceptic and believer POVs.

As for testing, it probably won't help you too much. It's like doing stand-up comedy to an empty room. Best to gather up followers and work on your material at the same time. Pay attention to what works and what doesn't, when you get the most hits to your videos, etc, and then cull/improve as needed. I found that on Twitter what works for me might not work for you or anyone else: ie. because I was doing informative text-based content, I discovered that doing a once-weekly "this is what's popular on my site now" tweet got me new viewers to old content, plus lots of retweets. That could work for you with your videos. But I never did jokes, which I'm guessing are harder to attract attention to.

My point is that posting a joke to get people to click on your video is somewhat of an awkward and difficult task. And I'd been tweeting for years before I figured out that using my stats to get people to view content worked. So having an audience to work to might be necessary for you...

Love the puppet. He is very alien looking. I agree also with Chris and Na. Definitely focus down to one topic, and also look at parodies etc.

Edgaaar is an alien, so immediately you have the entire science fiction genre as source material.

Look for characters who in the past have tried to succeed in world domination e.g. Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Dr Evil from Austin Powers, the aliens in Mars Attacks and so forth.

Try to find classic quotes from sci-fi movies and books, then crowbar them into your scripts.

Work out Edgar's background/motivation etc. You could write it down somewhere.

Is Edgar trying to trick the people of earth? or is he telling them outright of his plans to take over?

Pretend you are Edgar and write down what his plan of attack is. Is he going straight for the president? or is starting small with the mayor of a small farming village?

Look at different styles of jokes he can do: puns, slapstick, wordplay, irony, political humour, one liners, situational comedy.

Give him a couple of catch phrases. They're always funny. Repetition breeds humour (and apparently contempt).

What does Edgar like? what does he hate? make a list.

Improvise with Edgar off camera, then write down things that end up being funny. If you become Edgar he will begin to talk on his own.

The jokes will come. Just keep writing stuff on Twitter. Every few hours twitter posts become redundant. So trying new stuff is never a problem. Even trying old stuff again, because it may have been missed. Plus what's the worse that can happen? It's not like Twitter is paying us to write nonsense on their website, so they can't sack us.

You've made a great start. Just keep posting and watch Edgaaar evolve.

Thanks Gareth, a lot of great tips! :D  Working out the characters history is not a bad idea, and love the examples you gave using Salem and Dr. Evil.  Right now, he states that he rules 4 systems, has an EdNaught army (little minions that I need to create) and that he is the advance scout of the planet...before his takeover.  He is using social media thinking that people will just blindly follow him, though his journey will show that nobody takes him seriously.  Guess there is a little bit of Pinky and the Brain in his character, both of them :D  Its going to start with him being "serious" and turn into him enjoying Earth, but with a sly "I will rule you!"  

One catchphrase I came up with was "Watch me take over you."  But I'm not sure if I like it.