A Winky Face at Work? ??

Continuing with the theme of effective communication from my last article, let’s dive into how workplace communication styles and methods are changing.

While email is still the queen, we now have fast and intuitive tools for communication, including Slack (??), embedded messaging in social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn, and trusty text messages. What’s starting to creep onto our radar, particularly via those mediums, is the use of emojis in a B2B communications context. Sure, they’ve been around for awhile, and your teenage kin are probably power users, but mainstream cultural awareness of emojis is swiftly becoming ubiquitous (Exhibit A: The Emoji Movie).

Thus, as a B2B comms pro, I’m weighing in on the discussion of utilizing emojis while communicating for business purposes.

Emojis have the unique ability of lightening the mood of a message or showing a certain level of comfortability with the recipient. Most of us have probably been in a situation where we’ve written an email or text that was meant to be funny or sarcastic but ends up coming off as mean or rude. You resolve to write the email in a more straightforward tone, but it sounds worse. You venture to put an emoji at the end but you pause, second-guess yourself, and wonder how the recipient will respond to the newly-crafted email. You wonder if they’ll even get the point you’re trying to convey. Or maybe the whole idea of emojis is still too new.

But is utilizing emojis really a new way to communicate? Or is it actually a blast from the past… the distant past?

We’ve actually been using visual pictures and symbols to convey thoughts, ideas, and feelings for thousands of years. In fact, researchers have found hieroglyphics dating as far back as 5,200 years old.

Emojis are simply Hieroglyphics 2.0.

Hieroglyphics are often associated with the ancient Egyptians, but they were actually used by many cultures throughout history. The ways in which groups used this written form of communication varied, but for today’s purposes, I want to focus on the Aztecs and their use of hieroglyphics, because they used hieroglyphics in a very particular way. Unlike the Egyptians, who utilized hieroglyphics as an alphabet, the Aztecs used them as a system of visual symbols that represented things or ideas in order to tell a story. These symbols often looked identical to what they represented (i.e. a snake was represented by a picture of a snake; a moon by a picture of a crescent). This allowed the Aztecs to record history in a language that was accessible to everyone who could see it, regardless of their spoken language.

So, while a keyboard of emojis may be new for the 21st century, the method of using symbols to communicate complex ideas has been around for thousands of years.

At 3Points, we are no strangers to emojis, and, as we know, they are ever-increasing in usage. What is less clear, however, is their role in a business or commercial setting. Many platforms used for business, such as Slack, have emojis built into their software for easy accessibility. Gmail, which is used widely in business settings, offers emojis. Such inclusions in platforms used for business suggests that using emojis would be perfectly natural.

In my opinion, if used properly, emojis can enhance your online presence, improve social media campaigns, and add meaning to all your electronic communications. But how can professionals utilize them in the workplace while still maintaining professionalism?

There are a few guidelines to ensure maximum effectiveness:

1. Emojis Are for Emotions: Use emojis to express emotions and feelings that complement and give further depth to the words you’re using. The most popular emojis on Twitter are those with faces or symbols that show emotions such as a heart. Emojis that imitate an actual object such as a car are used far less. Emotion emojis tend to perform better on social media for companies because it’s harder to succinctly capture emotions in short communications. Users are also feeling “fatigue” from the emotionless emojis like the star, which every company seems to be using to indicate a sale. Emojis that express emotion allow you to connect with your audience and add a new element, as opposed to simply saying something and repeating it with emojis.
2. Know Your Audience: No matter what, if you want to connect with your audience, you need to ensure that you understand who they are and what they want. If you’re thinking about using emojis, you should be sure that they are an emoji-friendly audience. It’s safe to assume that if your intended audience is millennials, you are good to go. If the demographic is over 35, you need to consider the setting and the person specifically. A conservative CEO in a corporate environment may be less receptive to emojis than a younger up-and-comer at a startup or growth-stage company. Also, even if the recipients are open to emojis, they must be able understand your emojis and place them within the right context. You may be adding emojis into your message effectively, but if the recipient isn’t on the same page, misunderstandings can lead to poor results.
3. The Right Conversation: While emojis can add emotion and meaning to conversations, they usually carry a lighthearted connotation. They are perfect for routine client communications, playful internal communications with coworkers, or other positive conversations. However, emojis will not be received as well in heavy, deep, or controversial conversations. Even emojis that carry a negative connotation, such as ??, are not appropriate for these types of conversations. They can undermine the importance of the conversation and give the other person the impression that you are not taking the matter as seriously as they are. Thus, save your emojis for those happy and light conversations and leave them out when things get real.

If you affirmatively get through those three guidelines, your conversation just might benefit from an emoji. So next time you’re finishing up that email response to your supervisor or colleague and you pause at the end, looking for a clever and relevant way to finish, don’t be afraid to drop in a ??, ??, or ??!

What’s your favorite emoji to use at work? Let me know in the comments, below!

Until next time, ??

Drew