World Emoji Day: Why Use Emojis in Your Social Media

Written by Emma Natasha

July 19, 2022

Social media is at the heart of most, if not all, businesses in making the most out of their digital marketing strategy and one way to attract more people to their social media presence is through emojis. Starting out as an informal way to convey feelings in personal interaction, emojis have now transformed into how brands give a more personal touch in interacting with their audience. To commemorate World Emoji Day of 2022, here is why you may want to use emojis in your social media.

Statistically Speaking…

Communication strategies are always improving; consumers tend to skip boring, explicit marketing that tries to sell them items and services. Instead, they prefer businesses to which they can relate and trust, brands that behave like their friends. According to a WordStream research, using an emoji in a Tweet can improve engagement by 25% when compared to tweets that do not include an emoji. Including an emoji in your Facebook posts may boost sharing rates by 33% and engagement rates by 57%. Additionally, a case study done by SocialMediaToday.com revealed that businesses who use more emojis receive higher Instagram engagement with their posts than brands that do not.

Why should you use emoji in marketing is similar to why businesses embrace social media. What was formerly deemed unprofessional is now regarded as friendly, welcoming, and, most importantly, anticipated. It is no longer a secret that people are inclined to be more pleased by visuals rather than words, so why not incorporate visuals in your words through emojis?

Here are positive benefits using emojis can provide to your marketing efforts.

Making Your Brand More Like a ‘Human’

People embrace businesses that exhibit their friendly personality and using emojis is an easy way to add personality to your message. Emojis are not only attractive and engaging, but they also provide color to rather black-and-white text-based communications. Personalize your business and connect with your audience by using the emoji they use every day in messaging apps, conversation, and social media. If you have a fixed schedule of posting to your Instagram story, you can add some emojis to complement the message you are trying to say, for example:

Instead of writing this:

Weekend Sale is back! Get 20% off for all purchases by using WKND20 promo code when you check out from our website. No minimum order needed!

You can put it this way:

Weekend Sale is back! 🛍 Get 20% off for all purchases by using WKND20 promo code when you check out from our website. No minimum order needed! 🤩

Emojis make your business stand out aesthetically and psychologically, allowing you to connect with customers. Your online audience will feel as if they are talking to a friend rather than a company, allowing you to engage and establish meaningful relationships with your customers.

Boost Engagement

Emojis are generally fun. When you interact with your friends, you will most likely type 😱 instead of the old-fashioned “I am shocked”. This makes it easy for your friends to respond as well, since feeling is better-conveyed if you can give a brief ‘image’ of what you are trying to say. People are more likely to engage with your marketing if emojis are featured, regardless of where they appear. Emoji-enhanced push notifications have an 85% greater open rate and 9% more conversions. Similar to this case, using emojis in your social media captions will make your message more relatable, hence increased engagement. You can try a similar approach in using emojis for your posts in Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other social media platforms.

Great for All Kinds of Brands

If you think that emojis are only suitable for creative businesses or for companies whose target audience is young people, then you need to dig deeper into the emojis list. While it is true that most people use the ‘expressive’ emojis like 😱, 🥳, or 👍🏽, there are also ones that can give a visually-attracting sense without sounding unprofessional. Simple emojis like 📩 , ✅, and 🔹 can be used for businesses in highly-professional settings, such as banking, engineering, and logistics. These ‘serious-yet-catchy’ emojis can also be used to replace black bullet points when you write for LinkedIn posts,

What to Consider in Using Emojis for Social Media

Similar to other marketing strategies, there are several things to keep in mind and avoid when using emojis for social media. You do not need to be too much by putting an emoji for every sentence, but you can still keep your post to attract your audience with just enough emoji. Here are some tips:

Double check the meaning of emojis you are going to use. It can be a disaster to use 😂 or a laughing-while-crying emoji to express condolences on behalf of your business.
Make sure that the emojis you use are visible on all platforms across all devices. There are some devices that cannot display newer emojis like 🥹 or 🫢 (see how these two emojis may appear as blank square in your display too). Thus, it is best to stick with emojis that work well and are readable everywhere, like 😎 or 💯.
Unsure of what emoji to use for certain keywords? If you write captions from your mobile device, Google Keyboard usually provides a list of suggested emojis after you type a specific keyword, such as ‘office’ or ‘discount’.

Finally, whether or not to use emojis on your social media captions is entirely up to you. Yet, considering the result it shows, using emoji is a strategy you can highly consider. Remember to always be authentic to your brand. and understand the purpose of each emoji you intend to use. Happy World Emoji Day!