How to Use Emojis in Your Content

Emojis have become a fixture in almost every form of written communication from texts to emails to social media posts. In 2015, the Oxford Dictionary chose the â€Å"LOL† emoji as their Word of the Year and there’s even a World Emoji Day, celebrated on July 17th. Free Actionable Bonus: Free Actionable Bonus: Want to create better content for social media? Get the complete guide to building a social media strategy and creating content for social, plus 6 awesome examples to inspire your next post. With emojis showing no signs of fading, it’s no surprise that many businesses have made them a key addition to their content. If you’ve been on the fence about using emojis in your content, there’s no better time to start experimenting. Here’s a peak at what makes emojis such a powerful marketing tool and how some brands have used that in their content. Understanding Emoji Power What’s behind our love affair with emojis? A number of factors come into play. Emojis represent a purely visual form of communication that transcends language barriers. They also make your written content feel more friendly, convey the right tone and can help you better establish a connection with your audience. Best of all, they manage to say a lot in a single character. That brevity is perfect for push notifications, where messages of 24 characters or less have proven to perform the best. Emoji Marketing 101 More and more brands have been adding emojis to their marketing messages. A few memorable examples include: Domino’s Pizza: There are times when you’re so hungry, you can’t bear the thought of picking up your phone to place a pizza order. Sure, you could order online, but that’s too much typing. Enter Domino’s Pizza and their â€Å"tweet to order† system. Customers who have registered with the company’s Easy Order system can simply tweet a pizza emoji to Domino’s and their order will be on its way. Taco Bell: For quite some time, there were emojis for burgers, pizza, hot dogs and a number of other fast food treats but not for tacos. Taco Bell sought to remedy this oversight by launching a petition on Change.org, lobbying the Unicode Consortium to give users a long-awaited taco emoji. The petition was signed by over 33,000 taco lovers and the Unicode Consortium consented to the taco emoji. Taco Bell immediately put this new emoji to good use by unveiling their Taco Emoji Engine. Users who tweeted the taco emoji to Taco Bell’s Twitter account would be rewarded with one of 600 random â€Å"taco-inspired† sounds, images or gifs. Chevrolet: This example pushes the envelope and is memorable for it. The automaker introduced their 2016 Chevy Cruze by putting out a press release written almost entirely in emojis. Chevrolet challenged audiences to figure out the message on their own, but they eventually released a translation for readers who weren’t interested in deciphering the symbols. Over 6 billion emojis are sent via mobile messaging each day making it clear that these smileys are here to stay. Don’t miss out on a unique way to be creative with your content. Have fun experimenting with emoji marketing and enjoy this new way of connecting with your audience.