Emoji marketing? Who knew?! I was at the Fashion Summit at the Web Summit in Dublin last week and we were told that emoji-branded street-wear is massive and so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised that emoji marketing is equally a trend in digital marketing.

What Are Emojis?

Emojis, created in the 1990’s by a Japanese communications firm, evolved from typographic displays of facial representations or emoticons. They are a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion in electronic communication. I don’t know about you, but I find myself unable to send a text, instant message, tweet or post a Facebook status update without using an emoji! Admittedly, I do contain myself on LinkedIn. 🙂

Infographic

My friends over on Sprout Social have published an interesting emoji marketing infographic on how to use emojis to make your online community smile. 🙂

The human brain is wired to understand images; we process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. When it came to getting your message out during the Internet’s early days, the written word was the best method. But today we receive five times as much information as we did 30 years ago. So it makes sense to focus on visual marketing and let’s face it emojis are fun.

Did you know?

Today 63% of social media is made up of images. This has opened up a number of creative opportunities for marketers. One of the biggest visual trends to take the marketing world by storm is emoji.