Do Emojis Drive More Engagement on Social Media? Uses & Misuses

Emojis are everywhere nowadays – from rudimentary smilies used by nerds on text-based apps predating the internet, they’ve managed to proliferate every aspect of our modern lives. More than 6 billion emojis are used each day, millennials are increasingly comfortable with using emojis in more formal settings, we’re starting to see ads specifically incorporating emojis to drive sales, and against all logic and rationality, we’ve seen entire movies being made about emojis.

This proliferation and the impact of emojis needs to be well-understood by Internet savants. As search engine marketers, it is our responsibility to learn about ways to increase engagement on the social media pages we manage and try to increase conversion rates. In this article, we’ll take a look at the effectiveness of emojis, how to incorporate it into your social media campaign, and potential downfalls an SEM should be wary of.

Emojis Likely Increase Engagement and Conversion Rates

The data is overwhelming – the judicial use of emojis increases engagement, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This has been shown in study after study. This is true across all major social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

This is because emojis, when not overdone, make posts read more relatable, doesn’t make it seem the company is being too self-important, and it can be a break from the eye-damaging monotonous walls of text.

You just have to remember that there are 2,666 emojis in the official Unicode standard list, and not all 2,666 emojis are created equal. Some emojis are completely off the list due to contextual reasons and their double entendres. Others work better in certain sectors than others. The only advice we can give is telling you to follow your Internet-honed judgement but make sure you’re collecting data and measuring engagement and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

Emojis aren’t a Replacement for Other Kinds of Content 

If emojis can be used, they can be overused. Let’s make one thing abundantly clear: emojis aren’t a replacement for variety – even with the increased engagement, they are still less engaging than memes, infographics, and videos.

So, while we think it is a good idea to incorporate a reasonable amount of emojis into your text posts, you shouldn’t forget that you need a varied timeline with an array of different types of content to appeal to different segments of your followers.

The Effectiveness of Emojis You Use Depend on the Platform, Demographics of Your Followers, and Sector 

To simplify things, SEMs sometimes like to bundle all social media platforms together when coming up with a strategy, but this never works out – this is true for emoji use too.

The efficacy of emojis is different on different platforms: the use of emojis is correlated with an increase in engagement to the tune of 48%, it increases Facebook likes by around 57%, and tweets see an increase of 25% only when emojis are used.

The demographics and the sector you work with also influences how you should be using emojis. Millennials are known for their love of emojis, but the practice is much less common among baby boomers. You should be cognizant of this.