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How to Use Emojis Without Becoming… Overemojinal
Emojis are actually deemed to be legitimate communication elements. Pictograms are, in fact, a very effective way to communicate emotions. Think about how social media posts can be awash with ☹ when someone has bad news to share. These pictograms can also convey more subtle emotions like 😐 for blank displeasure or 😉 for cheekiness.
These now-familiar characters started out as Unicode symbols which became popular alongside Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. They fill a gap when people might not have the words to express themselves. Emojis also draw people’s eyes more than regular typed words, which is ideal for marketers.
Emojis create more engagements
Tweets incorporating emojis get around 25% more engagement than ones without, so it’s important to use the right ones in the right proportions.
You need to be able to use emojis in the right way – as pictorial shorthand for emotions and ideas. Chevrolet dropped a major ball in 2015 when it released a press release composed entirely in emojis. It was ridiculed. It was also impenetrable.
How do you attract attention and convey a story with emojis without leaving people wondering what you’re on about and then hitting share just to spread the annoyance? The key is to be conservative and to know what each character currently means. If you’re selling aubergines, then, be careful…
Should you use emojis at all?
Absolutely. These cheerful little pictograms are part of our vocabulary (as it were) now. We’re still Stone Age men and women, preferring simple pictures to decoding squiggles, so a visual treat here and there can work wonders. Here’s how to get it right.
Understand and use trending emojis
Your readers and visitors will have some amount of grounding in emojis and their meanings and will be able to keep up with the subtle shifts in popularity and meaning that happen over time. Watch out for new images and new meanings to older emojis and use them in the right contexts as a spice to your content, not the main meat.
Never pick an emoji at random
You’d never send out a press release with filler content, so don’t do this with emojis. Make sure you know what the essential – and latest – meaning of a particular emoji is. You can increase your CTR by up to 25% if the right emoji is in an email header, but trash it if you’re a bit off.
Less really is more
Aim for two or three emojis every paragraph or two. A few more than this isn’t going to have any more impact and many more is going to be a turn-off. If you’re not sure whether your emoji-laced content is on point or not, ask a member of your target audience.
Use emojis to replace nouns occasionally
We don’t just have emotions, we have things, places, infographs and so on. If the office has a new pet, a well-placed 🐶 in your tweet will get everyone going. Interestingly, some social media platforms are enabling emoji searches, so it seems they really have arrived and aren’t going away.
About the author
PAUL SMITH - For over 20 years I have worked with businesses, enterprises and brands in Australia, NZ, UK and US to drive digital marketing growth using organic and paid traffic strategies. No fluff or BS, just straight-forward return on investment.
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