April Fools' Posts From a Business Account

The post that went up at nine

It is April 1, a Monday, and somewhere a business account has just posted that it is closing for good at the end of the month. Or doubling its prices. Or launching pickle-flavoured ice cream.

The owner thinks it is obviously a joke, because the owner knows what day it is and knows the business is doing well.

The customer scrolling past at lunch on Wednesday knows neither. They see an announcement from a business they like, and some of them believe it.

What customers actually see

Facebook and Instagram do not show posts in the order they were written. A post from Monday morning can appear in someone's feed on Wednesday, with its date reduced to a small grey note nobody reads.

Shares and screenshots travel further and lose the date entirely. A screenshot of a closure notice, passed around a neighbourhood group, carries no hint of April.

And captions are cut short on a phone. If the reveal is in the fourth line, most people never reach it.

The jokes that go wrong

• A fake closure, which regulars believe and act on.
• A fake price rise, which reads exactly like a real one.
• A fake product, which somebody tries to order.
• A fake offer, which somebody turns up to claim.
• A fake staff change, announced to people who know the staff.
• A joke at a customer's expense, even an imaginary customer.

The first costs the most. Customers who believe a business is closing go elsewhere and form new habits, suppliers phone with worried questions, and the people who saw the joke rarely see the correction.

Why a business account is different

A joke from a friend is read in the context of the friend. People know their sense of humour, and they know to check the date.

A post from a business is read as an announcement, because most of what a business posts is one: new hours, a new product, a closure for the holiday.

Customers make decisions on announcements. They change a booking, buy elsewhere, or tell a neighbour, and none of that is undone by a correction they never see.

When humour works

The jokes that work from a business account share a few features. They are obviously impossible, they poke fun at the business itself, and they cost nobody anything if believed.

A hardware store announcing left-handed hammers, or a bakery unveiling a croissant the size of a car tire, fits that description. Nobody cancels anything over a giant croissant.

The reveal belongs in the post itself, in the picture or the first line of the caption, not in a reply added hours later.

And the joke should sound like the account on every other day. A playful brand can be playful today; a formal one suddenly joking reads as a mistake, or as a hacked account.

A worked example

A neighbourhood bakery once posted on April 1 that it was closing at the end of the month, with a sad photograph of the empty display case and a line about the rent.

By lunch, regulars had left condolences in the comments, a local group had shared the post, and a coffee shop that bought the bakery's bread had phoned to ask about its standing order.

The owner added April Fools to the caption that afternoon. The shared copies and the screenshots kept circulating without it for most of the week.

The bakery spent the next two weeks telling customers at the counter that it was not closing. Some regulars may simply have started buying bread elsewhere; the bakery has no way of knowing.

This year it is posting a photograph of the giant croissant, with April Fools in the first line.

Deleting or clarifying by noon

There is an old tradition that April Fools' jokes end at midday. For a business account, it makes a sensible deadline.

By noon, edit the post so the first line says it was a joke, or delete it. Reply to anyone who took it seriously, plainly and without making them feel foolish.

If it has been shared widely, post a short, clear correction and pin it to the top of the page for a few days. The people who believed the joke need it most.

The same applies on Instagram, where captions can be edited, and to a post on your Google My Business listing, which would otherwise stay there for days.

Keep it off email and the website

Email is the worst place for an April Fools' joke. Newsletters are opened over several days, often long after the first, and a forwarded email carries no context at all.

The same goes for a banner on the website. Search engines can pick it up and keep showing it after it has gone, and a visitor arriving on April 3 has no reason to suspect anything.

Who gets to post

Many business pages have several people who can post, including staff who look after the account day to day.

Agree the rule before next April arrives: anything that mentions closing, prices, offers or staff gets the owner's approval first, on April 1 or any other day.

Scheduled posts deserve a second look. A joke queued up last week goes out whether or not anyone is around to answer the replies, and the replies are where the damage gets done or undone.

The counter-case

Some businesses can do more with the day.

A comedy club, a novelty shop or a brewery known for odd beer names has an audience that expects a joke, and a good one can travel well.

Skipping the day entirely costs nothing, either. Customers do not miss a prank that never happened.

For everyone who does post, the limits stay the same: obviously impossible, about yourselves, never closures, prices or offers, and cleared up by noon.

If you posted one this morning

1. Read the post as a stranger would on Wednesday.
2. Delete it if it mentions closing or prices.
3. Move the reveal into the first line.
4. Reply to everyone who believed it.
5. Pin a correction if it was shared.
6. Check email and the website for the same joke.
7. Agree an approval rule for next year.

Step four is the one most businesses skip. The people who believed the post are often your most attentive customers, and a plain reply from the business is what keeps their trust.

Who can post on the page in the first place is covered in who owns the business Facebook page.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.