Nearly everyone understands the use of emojis in their personal social media accounts. They are widely used and often replace actual words to express a point. Some might even say they are overly used and can be annoying at times. But they are certainly popular, and no one argues that mainstream acceptance of them was reached long ago. But should there be emoji use in social media for business? Or will that detract from your messages and give prospects negative perceptions of your brand?
In short – yes! – you should use emojis in your business social media initiatives. But won’t that put your brand at risk of seeming childish and not serious? No, not if you use emojis judiciously and for key reasons.
Because emojis have been used so widely in personal accounts, a culture has formed in the last decade that allows emojis to be shorthand language for social media customers. People are now trained to immediately understand these visual symbols that allow them to consume information more quickly. When emojis are used with this principle in mind, they can be very powerful and helpful in terms of delivering results for your business.
For instance, a popular way to highlight an important part of your social media post is literally to use an emoji to ? point to it. You might also want to use things like checkmarks ✔️, thumbs up ?, hearts ?, a phone for “call us” ☎️, and more.
At Digi Hammer, we recommend using one or maybe two of these per post at most. There are some posts where you may not use any at all. This judicious use will help them stand out all the more and help prevent them from becoming white noise in your marketing.
They’re also great to use in any social media advertising you’re doing. For instance, using the pointing emoji in an ad to visually direct people to “sign up”, “order”, “click here”, etc. can emphasize the call-to-action you’re trying to promote in your ad.
You can access all emojis for free at http://emojipedia.org. Furthermore, the site gives you a preview of what each emoji looks like on various platforms so you can see exactly how it will look before you use it (and how they look does vary by platform).
If you’d like to learn more, contact us for a free, no-obligation consultation.
