Is it relevant? Vaguely barely relevant? Are visitors type of people who may at one time or another circle round your sales/click funnel? Or are they rubber neckers, likely never to convert?

I think if the traffic is relevant and at some time might circle your conversion funnel then the sites linking to you may also be relevant and the links useful. If not then maybe not so useful.

Will it change what your site is known for? I don't think so. But it could pop up in your site name search six pack.

All very good points MB. I would say very relevant to the industry, not so much for sales.

What I'm hoping is that links to this section will build authority for the site as a whole without changing the overall perception of the site.

Did you add calls to action at the end of your post? Is the post helpful?

No matter the source of traffic (Google, Facebook, links and so on), if the content gives interested users a solution, they will come back and start to see you as an authority in the field.

I would suggest you create more "link bait" content than just post--- for example, a free booklet your visitors can download, a chart, a case study, a newsletter. Anything that can fidelize them.

If the link bait is useful, even if just humor, and the next click from the visitor is to another page on your site, then that's good. But it does need to be something obvious like "how to murder a widget" (think donuts), describe the methods (dunking, coating in chocolate, etc.) and add a few funny pics to go with it. You've got a great gag page for a food service site (this is an example).

One site I know of uses that kind of humor to attract potential buyers of his widgets... but he carries that kind of humor onto every one of his pages... and it does make him stand out.

If you had a choice, would you prefer attracting links and traffic to useful content/downloads/tutorials or would your preference be humor?

Woody Allen quipped that sex without love was meaningless but as far as meaningless experiences go, it was pretty good. Perhaps the same could be applied to bulk inbound links from irrelevant sites linking to a site for humor?