Have you ever had the dilemma of whether to include a kiss or not in your communications whether that’s email, social media or text?
Photo by Cassie Lopez on Unsplash
Oscar Wilde said;
“A kiss may ruin a human life”.
Okay possibly a little dramatic however, working in the marketing communications field there is so much to think about when communicating on behalf of a client. Its important to ensure that your corporate voice is a true reflection of a clients brand objectives. Do they utilise emojis or not? What does their brand stand for? How do you communicate this to their target audience? And probably most importantly who is their target audience?
This is a challenge for all marketing communications professionals. Whether that’s the tone of voice on your website ensuring that users stay on your site long enough to complete a purchase, make an enquiry or simply engage with your content. Or selecting the appropriate social media to retain your audience. As a rule of thumb older audiences (35-44 year olds) are frequent users of LinkedIn, Millennials are most prolific on Snapchat, Tik Tok, Instagram, Vine and Tumblr. Whereas the 25-34 age group seems to dominate most social media platforms.
This starts to give an indication on which platform to utilise but how about emojis? The popularity of emojis has grown so much there is even a ‘World Emoji Day’ set up in 2014. This year’s will be celebrated on July 17th. According to the organiser Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia;
📈 More than 700M emojis are used in Facebook posts every day
📊 The most used emoji on Twitter is 😂 Face with Tears of Joy
📸 By mid-2015, half of all comments on Instagram included an emoji
Photo by Domingo Alvarez E on Unsplash
So, it appears that emojis are here to stay! So how are they best incorporated into your corporate communications? I would say exercise a hint of caution. The key to effective communication is that it has a clear call to action (CTA), concise and most importantly reflects your brand. Overusing emojis can cheapen your communication and ultimately turn visitors off.
But how about broader communications? Have you ever sent a text to someone and accidentally included a kiss at the end? Is it appropriate to include a kiss as a sign off on an email? Etiquette specialist William Hanson has some guidance on this conundrum he says;
"If you'd kiss the person in real life, then put a digital kiss on the end of the text, tweet or email."
Perhaps slightly draconian in this day and age. Particularly in this COVID era where face to face communication is relatively obsolete. We’ve had to push the limits of our digital communication to ensure that the right tone is achieved in it. Adding a kiss may have become even more important to ensure the recipient understands the intention the message was sent with. My advice would be text and emails will take you so far but if in doubt pick up the phone or arrange a Zoom catch up. Obviously, this can’t fully replace a meeting in person but with many companies having invested heavily in making it possible for employees to WFH, my prediction is that digital communications will be as important in the post COVID era as they are now.
If you’d like to arrange an informal chat to discuss your corporate communication with a friendly ear 👂, feel free to pick up the phone and give me a call 📞 07979940526 or if you prefer email 📧 kiesha@iconmarketingcommunications.co.uk.