On a daily basis, social media specialists around the globe tirelessly work in dimly lit spaces, fueled by old coffee and stale donuts, all in pursuit of a solution to a significant challenge faced by marketers: No one cares about our social content enough to give it a like, a retweet, a comment, or even a share. Don’t despair! I’ve found a remarkably straightforward method to significantly boost your social media interaction, and it’s enjoyable too. The answer? Emojis!
Emojis: More Than Just Pictures
Emojis possess immense power because they enable us to express far more than words ever could. (Did you know an emoji was even named word of the year??) People tend to react favorably to messages that establish an emotional connection, no matter how fleeting.
In case it’s not obvious, that’s a fist-bump emoji. Consider the sheer quantity of words individuals encounter daily, particularly online through various media, websites, emails, and text messages. People are simply inundated with words. We are aware that people process visuals 60,000 times faster than text alone, and emojis provide a fantastic way to leverage that visual impact in your social media posts, where brevity is essential.
Mastering Emojis on Twitter: A Guide to Avoiding Cringe
Emojis only earn a bad reputation when misused. Having essentially memorized the complete emoji vocabulary, I try to incorporate them into interactions whenever appropriate. The possibilities are vast, and a well-thought-out emoji approach goes beyond simply adding a smiley face. Try a quick Google search to discover the emojis accessible on your specific device or operating system:
Instead of randomly inserting emojis, prioritize relevance to the context. If your topic is junk food, use a donut emoji. When discussing an event in a particular country, include that nation’s flag emoji.
The Power of Emojis: Recognized by Social Platforms and Operating Systems
The influence of emojis is so substantial that Facebook has dedicated considerable time and effort to create and test six supplementary emoji-like “reactions” intended to complement the “like” button.
Image source: Facebook Currently, these are being tested exclusively in Spain and Ireland, but a global rollout to all users may happen eventually. Apple released a slate of new and updated emojis for iOS 9.1 just last month introduced new additions, including a burrito, a middle finger, a robot, and even a unicorn.
Image source: Apple If you take a look at my Twitter and Facebook feeds, every update I post includes at least one emoji, and frequently, my replies and updates are entirely emoji-based, without any words at all. Seriously, with such a diverse selection available across platforms, who needs words? Consider this: how strange would it be to have a real-life conversation devoid of any emotional expression? Emojis address a major obstacle in online communication: the absence of emotional context.
Boosting Social Engagement with Emojis
Increasing engagement rates is crucial for success in both paid and organic social media. In the organic realm, this leads to greater content visibility. Unfortunately, determining which updates perform best in organic social media marketing is challenging due to the multitude of factors at play. However, in paid social media, it’s quite simple to conduct split tests using the same promoted post, both with and without emojis, targeting the same audience simultaneously. Here’s a concise illustration, comparing this tweet with no emoji and the same image and message plus emojis:
As you can observe, the emoji version exhibits a 25.4 percent higher engagement rate (11.06 percent compared to 8.82 percent) and a 22.2 percent lower cost per engagement ($0.18 versus $0.14). It’s essential to remember: Twitter Quality Score rewards higher post engagement with lower CPEs. Therefore, incorporating emojis not only enhances engagement but also reduces your expenses. As previously mentioned, this trend consistently appears across our tests (with the emoji variant occasionally outperforming the non-emoji promoted post by as much as threefold), but I’ve noticed that ensuring the relevance of your emoji choices to the update is key. Try it out yourself! This post was initially published on Marketing Land and is shared here with permission.
