How to Incorporate Emojis into Your Social Media Strategy
To emoji, or not to emoji, that is the question…
Emoji-based marketing campaigns have increased 777% year-over-year, so something has to be working here. Although, before incorporating emojis in your messaging, consider your brand, their voice and how you want to be perceived by the public to understand if emojis are an appropriate way to supplement your content efforts.
If you choose to experiment with emoji-based marketing, here’s some guidelines to help you out along the way.
- Diversify Your Emojis
This should go without saying, but use emojis with equality in mind. Whether it’s gender, race, or other representation, every person should be represented by your brand. The general public is still upset with the variety of choices of emojis available. 75% of U.S. consumers would like to have more emoji options. Misrepresenting or under-representing a group of people is not the subliminal message you want to send on with your emoji choices.
- Understand the Meaning
Make sure you understand the meaning behind the emoji that you choose and familiarize yourself with the emoji library. A huge blunder that social media marketers can make is not recognizing a double meaning behind an emoji. An emoji used in a different context, and displayed to different audiences can have completely different outcomes and meanings. You want to make sure that your brand appears to be on trend and in the know, and this doesn’t happen when you mistakenly use an emoji that could mean a handful of things.
- Know Your Brand
Emojis are great additions to your content efforts and 92% of the online population uses them, but not all brands should. If your brand voice is more direct, serious and professional, then maybe shy away from emoji usage in your messaging. When using emojis for a brand that is playful, interactive and targeting a younger demographic, that’s when it’s time to experiment and get creative.
- Recognize Your Demographic
Understand your target audience and whether they’re emoji friendly or not. When your target demographic includes Gen Zs and Millennials, it might benefit your brand to use emojis to spice up your social strategy. Appealing to a younger demographic has to be done in a way that doesn’t seem forced. Relate to the lifestyle of your audience and the way that they communicate with one another. Although, don’t limit yourself to only using emojis with a younger audience and experiment with brands that have a fun brand voice even if they are targeting an older demographic.
- Avoid Creating Cryptic Messages
You can use emojis to replace words in a message, but if you replace too many of them, then the message could be lost completely. It’s important to remember that your main goal as a marketer is to deliver a message, not confuse your consumer. Emojis should be used to add value to the overarching context and not take away from your primary messaging goals. Social media for brands is only effective when you can clearly communicate with your audience.
- Don’t Use Emojis Excessively
Incorporating emojis can be amusing and entertaining, but as a marketer, you need to understand when enough is enough. Overusing an emoji could hurt your brand in the end and make consumers view you as unprofessional and bothersome. Use emojis to deliver your brand’s message with a fun spin without going over the top.
At the end of the day, emojis should be viewed as an additional marketing tactic to increase your social media engagement. Emoji usage results in over 25% more engagement on Twitter, 57% more likes on Facebook and nearly 50% of all comments on Instagram include emojis. As long as you can avoid the six traps outlined above, don’t you think it’s time to start adding value to your social media strategy?
