Emojis: suitable for a company's social network publications?

Do you use emojis in your digital marketing work? For some, they fit naturally and have become an organic extension of their communication and outreach efforts. For others, they are not professionals: how can a brand be taken seriously when it tries to convey its meaning with smiling faces and hearts?

Whatever your personal view of emojis the bottom line is that they work, perhaps not for all brands, but their growing popularity means they really benefit brand communications in a variety of sectors.

Several experts describe how they have seen great increases in social engagement through the incorporation of emojis in their publications.

"Think of the large volume of words that people filter in a day, especially in the media, websites, emails and text messages. People are overwhelmed with words. We know that people process images 60,000 times faster than plain text, and emojis are a great way to harness that image power in your social publications, where space is a scarce commodity," says Larry Kim, founder of WordStream.

The central logic is quite clear, but still, many doubt whether to insert an emoji in a message representative of the brand. Well done can work, but poorly done you can become the target of "social network error hunters".

So, is it worth taking the risk and investing in the emoji trend?

Emojis, everywhere

There is no doubt that emojis have become a transcendent communication tool. Facebook introduced the “Reactions”, a set of emojis that go beyond the classic “like”. The users can use them to respond not only for the published content, but also to react to every single private message sent via Messenger.

In order to make it even more interesting, Facebook introduces special, exclusive reactions for various celebrations. Therefore, we could see a purple flower for Mother’s Day, reactions dressed up as monsters for Halloween or, as we can see in this video, replaced by Star Trek characters to celebrate the series´ 50th anniversary:

Twitter, too, seems to have taken into account the popularity of emojis by swapping their favorite star for a heart. A 2014 research showed that the emoji heart was by far the most popular on Twitter, and given the universality of the emoji, if Twitter seeks to attract more users by using a more common symbol to convey meaning, doesn't the change make sense?

Instagram also published data that reflected that almost half of all texts written on its platform contain emojis.

The facts about the rise of emojis in social networking publications are hard to ignore. It may make sense that, regardless of any previous reservations, your company will begin to consider inserting some smiling faces in its content to keep up with this global trend.

The next question is, how can I do it right?

The how and why

Like everything else, the forms and the M.O. is everything.

"Almost 80% of users access Twitter via mobile, it is the perfect platform for emoji fans to express themselves in a fun and creative way. In addition, people love to use emojis on Twitter. And with so many emoji characters to choose from, the imagination and personality displayed on Twitter is extraordinary”.

Providing quick and meaningful response options is imperative, and emojis communication achieves just that.

4 recommendations for brands looking to use emojis

· Add personality: power up your tweets with emojis to show the personality of your brand and add more emotion to your messages.

· Be fun: Enjoy the visual nature of the emoji to surprise and entertain followers.

· Drive the action: Encourage followers to interact by asking questions that drive the action with emojis. For example, @Dominos used a pizza emoji to boost sales. By connecting Domino´s accounts to their Twitter profiles, people could tweet a pizza emoji and get one at home.

· Use videos: Bring your campaign to life by using animated emojis to tell stories through native videos and GIFs.

While not all of these points are applicable to all brands, they provide some interesting insights into emojis use and can help broaden your thinking about how they can be used in a meaningful and engaging way.

Regardless of your point of view, the emojis trend is exactly that: a real and genuine trend, something that is being used by an increasing number of people. Should your brand use emojis in its messages? It's a case-by-case proposition: you would definitely expect those trends to be more applicable to B2C than B2B. But whatever your sector or industry, don't dismiss its potential.

The statistics underline the emoji trend, the data suggest that they could help generate significant increases in commitment, when done right. More and more consumers use them, more and more discussions take place through combinations of images and text. As younger consumers move into more commercially important demographic sectors, it may make sense for you to communicate with them in the way they are most familiarized.

Essentially, the best advice would be not to let your personal opinions determine the possible use of emojis. Let the data decide, let your audience tell the story of what is important to them and then act.

Main photo: William Daigneault