Using Emojis in Marketing

By Adam  |  17 Nov 2015 10:00:00

Over the last few years, emojis have started to overtake emoticons as the way for people to express emotions over social media (and through chat systems). It was Apple who really helped to cement the popularity of emojis when they included them in the software of iPhones (and many other brands of smartphone followed suit). But let's backtrack for a second here: there's a good chance that some of you may not actually be familiar with the concept of emojis, so I shall explain. Emojis are small pictographs which can be shared along with text on social media, in private chats and other places too. So if you wanted to express a positive emotion, you might then add a smiling emoji to go with what you've written. There are loads of emojis and some of them have less obvious uses.

If you doubt the significance of emojis all you need to know is that the official Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a 'tears of joy' emoji, this is the first time it hasn’t been an actual word. It's certainly quite exciting that a respected organisation has acknowledged emojis in such a way! By this point you may be asking yourself just what exactly this has to do with your eCommerce business, but I think it's a good idea to be conscious of emojis and to consider using them for your social media marketing. Sure, emojis won't be appropriate for every single business, but they certainly will be for a significant number! Using emojis will show customers that you keep up with the latest trends (customers will expect businesses to be 'on the ball' about things like this) and it will also help to convey a positive image. If you write a pleasant tweet, it will make customers like you, but a pleasant tweet with a nice little emoji will help to push that feeling even further!

Ultimately, you don't have to use emojis (social media marketing can be just as effective without them) but you certainly mustn’t feel that you can't use them! The idea of social media marketing is to keep in touch with existing customers and to try and reach new ones too; while you're doing this, you should try to be as likeable as possible, because if you're likeable, people are more likely to buy from you. So keep all of this in mind as you do your social media marketing, but if you don't even have an eCommerce website to do social media marketing for, then sign up to Sellr now and create one for no cost at all!