Singapore – Where words can’t be fully expressed, brands online turn to emojis to use in their social media posts, more relevantly on Facebook and Instagram. With the high use of emojis now online, unified CX platform Emplifi has recently enlisted the most-used emojis by Singaporean brands across the two aforementioned social media platforms.
In Singapore, the sparkle and heart emojis came out on top for Facebook with over 700 brand pages using them, while the sparkle and wink emojis were popular on Instagram and used by over 250 brand pages.
The heart emoji, a normal camera and a flashing camera emoji were the next most-used emojis in Instagram with over 500 Singaporean brands, while the heart-eyed emoji, the wink and the party-popper emoji were the next most-used emojis by local brands on Facebook with more than 1,300 brands in total.
For Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief of strategy at Emplifi, the emoji’s significance to brands reflect the very nature of emojis, whose purpose is to add feeling and emotions to what can be plain or perhaps even boring text and should be part of the broader human conversation. On social media platforms, no one wants too much text or even too little, you need to strike the right balance. From a brand’s perspective, an emoji helps communicate as it can add tone and clarity to the written post.
Asked about the authenticity an emoji brings to the brand’s social media message, he states that customer experience has always been important, and further highlighted by the pandemic, hence brands need to be empathetic to their consumers.
“Emojis are another form of expression, particularly when we don’t have the right words to convey what we want, an emotion or if we’re trying to be lighthearted. Brands that bring out their human side and authenticity have better engagement with their audience. When it comes to falsifying empathy – don’t think you can pull the wool over your audience’s eyes, social media users are savvy, and can get a gut feel when something is awry,” Ben-Itzhak said.
He added, “It’s also not just one or two posts, it’s behaving in a certain way across all your social media platforms, on a daily basis, and your community management.”
Speaking about the top most-used emojis among Singaporean brands, he stated that the results speak for themselves: emojis used for positive sentiment, and no doubt with the pandemic, brands have wanted to uplift the spirits of their audience.
“Face-to-face communication has been limited during the pandemic, and with greater engagement on social media platforms, brands need to be personable and conversational. Brands should use sentiment analysis, that evaluates emojis, to better understand their audience and reactions. Consumers respond well to emoji use, but don’t go overboard – the ideal number of emojis per post peaks at three, after which interactions tend to go down,” Ben-Itzhak concluded.
