As you have probably noticed, using emojis is a trend that is here to stay, since these small images can mean the world to your business in terms of Marketing, here we will show you why.
In this blog post we will take a look at what Emojis are exactly and why everyone likes them so much. We will also share with you 5 Reasons why you should Use Emojis on Social Media and how to add them to your posts and schedule them through Postcron. Here we go!
What are Emojis and How Are They Different from Emoticons?
Before we begin, it is important to go over what an Emoji is, these images are widely used on Facebook posts, Twitter and many other Social Networks. That way we can see the difference between emoticons and how this difference represents a cultural technological leap.
Lets begin with Emoticons. As specialist Alex Hern explains, an Emoticon is a small composition of characters used in western writings where the conjunction represents a human emotion, for example: 🙂 (=happiness, good mood, etc.).
The fact is that emoticons are composed exclusively of simple characters and this has to do with technological limitations from when they emerged in 1982, when computers only supported basic text characters.
On the other hand, Emojis were created at the end of the 90´s by a Japanese communications company NTT DoCoMo, and from then their use has increased and used all over the world.
It should be noted that different from emoticons, Emojis not only represent human emotions, they also represent various types of situations, objects, humans and places. This includes from hospitals, to plates of spaghetti, families with children, extraterrestrials and even weather conditions.
Why is the use of emojis so successful?
En primer lugar, los Emojis son un elemento de comunicación ideal para estos tiempos en los que todo tiene la impronta de la inmediatez, pues como sabemos una imagen dice más que mil palabras… (¡Y de una sola vez!).
Pero eso no es todo. Tal y como lo dice Jeremy Burge, el fundador de la enciclopedia online de Emojis, “Los emojis son la mejor forma de añadir personalidad a una conversación netamente textual”.
En efecto, muchas veces el texto sólo no es suficiente para otorgar un sentido claro a una frase. Por ejemplo, la frase “Tengo novedades” lisa y llana no aporta un sentido de contento o tristeza, no dice mucho realmente, mientras que la opción: “Tengo novedades 🙂 ” es mucho más clara.
Along with this, a diversity of academic investigations exists to analyze the impact of Emojis in our culture. One of them was created by Dr. Owen Churches, from the University of Flinders in Australia and he revealed something decisive: the human brain reacts to emojis in the same way as it does to real human faces.
Dr. Churches was interviewed by the web mashable.com to expand the information about this topic and he confirmed that
people´s brains have learned to recognize emojis such as the smiling face “:-)” since they interpret this often. Accordingly, this has become “a learned neurological cultural response”.
In addition, Dr. Churches confirms from the vision perspective, that emojis are more similar to human faces than emoticons. For this reason, Emojis are more personal in terms of psychological impact as if they were considered simply a series of visible icons on a screen.
A study performed by experts in Mexico also shed light regarding people and Emojis. In this investigation, two groups of people who chat across computers were proposed. One of the groups used emoticons and the other did not.
As a result of the process, those who were able to use emoticons said they enjoyed their communication much more than those who used only words.
Lastly, some investigations reveal that Emojis and Emoticons amplify any message we want to transmit. This way, a mad emoticon sends a more hostile message and a happy emoticon is able to multiply the happiness transmitted in a text.
So, we can say that Emojis:
- Delight and entertain people
- Amplify the meaning of any message
- Says much more “than a thousand words” in only one glance (immediate effect)
- Produce in the human brain the same effect than a human face does
As you can see, there are many reasons why Emojis can be great allies regarding Social Media Marketing.
Why and How To Use Emojis on Social Media?
1- To be precise
As the famous word says, “less is more”, and this applies perfectly to the way Emojis work. As we explained above, these images have the power to communicate a lot with little (just a simple view is enough to make sense), and this is why it is recommended for all the Social Media strategies.
So the American company, Domino’s Pizza decided to take advantage of this immediate information and use Emojis to send pizza orders through the Internet to the next level. They invited their audience to order a pizza online by using Emojis as a pizza slice.
As a result, the company received four times more orders than they used to through their regular order, by using the phrase “Easy Order”. Denis Maloney, responsible of Digital Marketing at Domino’s Pizza, confirmed that what they were doing was not only a Marketing campaign, but also a new order platform.
2- Para brindar información memorable
El hecho de que los emojis sean imágenes fácilmente identificables colabora en mucho a la fijación de un sentido y a la transmisión de una emoción asociada a dicha información. Es por eso que si deseas transmitir un estado de ánimo relacionado con tu marca, utilizar emojis en tus posts es lo más recomendable.
La empresa automovilística Chevrolet tomó la decisión de desafiar al público a un reto en las Redes Sociales, como parte de su campaña de lanzamiento del modelo Chevy Cruze 2016. Para ello hizo público un brief del nuevo modelo “redactado” exclusivamente con emojis, tras lo cual se invitó a la audiencia a descifrar el sentido del mensaje.
La estrategia obtuvo excelentes resultados: 18 veces más engagement en Twitter, 166 mil vistas en YouTube, 2,7 millones de vistas en de anuncios pagos en Redes Sociales y una cuantiosa cobertura mediática, de acuerdo al informe del sitio especializado searchenginewatch.com.
3- To attract millennials to its contents
As you may already know, “millennials” are people who spent their adult life during the change of the millennium, or those who were born in the 80’s or at the beginning of the 90’s.
Based on their historical circumstance, these people lived exposed to Emojis and they communicate daily by using them on different social media platforms. That is why, if you are trying to sell a product or service to the population, I recommend strongly that you use Emojis in your publications.
Taking into consideration this reality, Ford planned its Ford Focus “Let’s Go” campaign, by offering the public a collection of emojis or personalized stickers so they could download them.
According to specialized media, this campaign reached an excellent impact by obtaining more than 25 thousand downloads of the Ford Focus image a day during 10 days and more than 40 thousand “shares” that generated at the same time more than 1 million impressions.
4- To transmit happiness
As we mentioned above, Emojis are capable of amplifying all types of emotions transmitted in a message. Now, in terms of Digital Marketing what is needed is for people to associate positive emotions with your business or proposal. To achieve this, there is nothing better than to use happy Emojis!
The American brand Bud Light decided to celebrate the 4th of July, Independence Day in the United States, with a very special tweet: an image of the country, made up of three basic emojis: the United States flag, the toasting of two beer mugs and fireworks.
As a result of this strategy, the brand obtained a huge repercussion on the Social Network and on Twitter in particular, where it reached more than 140 thousand re-tweets. At the same time, it successfully promoted the idea that a Bud Light is a classic tradition on the 4th of July.
5- To tell stories
As you probably noticed on this post, children are not the only ones who enjoy a good “story with pictures”. In fact, the expressive power of Emojis is such, that their presence can multiply the impact of your message enormously.
This was done during the 2015 Star Wars launch, when Disney and Lucasfilm decided to appeal to Emojis on Twitter in order to promote the most loved characters of the Saga and incorporate them into people´s conversation. That way, users could write hashtags on their tweets, which were automatically shown as Emojis.
As a result, the Star Wars campaign received the highest global numbers in terms engagement, and at the same time reached high expectations about the launch of the movie. And meanwhile, people had fun telling stories and making comments on Twitter about their favorite characters.
As you can see the power in Emojis is incredible and as many companies have demonstrated, you can also take advantage of them with your business. To obtain the maximum benefit I recommend that you schedule your posts with Emojis with the help of Postcron, so they are automatically published during the week or month. With this tool you can add emoticons as you write your posts, that will later be viewed as emojis once your post is published.
With Postcron you can program your posts with Emojis.
And that is all for today! Add Emojis to your publications as much as possible and let us know the results… We bet they will be very positive!
We hope you have found this post useful! To know more about related topics and how to optimize the results of the Social Networks, we recommend that you read the following articles in our blog:
- The Ultimate Guide to Using Hashtags
- Social Network Marketing: How Many Times per Day Should You Publish to Reach your Audience?
- Downloadable Checklist to Devise Your Social Media Plan Step by Step
Please remember to give us your opinion on the commentary box and share this blog post with all your contacts. See you soon! 😉