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Emojis – More than just a smiley face

08/01/202207/18/2022 by scmarketing

To celebrate World Emoji Day we thought we’d take a little look at the history to date and how they can help with your marketing campaigns.

Emojis born

Emojis have barely been around for twenty years and they’re continually coming up with a whole load of new ones!

The first ever emoji was created by an employee at NTT DoCoMo back in 1999 – he made 180 different faces that were used on mobile phones throughout Japan before anyone else caught onto this.

It wasn’t until 2010 though where these cute characters became international phenomenon after being incorporated into Unicode standard so everyone could use them outside their country.

Since then, there has been thousands upon thousands of these little icons added including Zodiac signs, sport equipment, places as well many more unique features that make each one special. As we speak there are over 3,300 total characters available.

Drive engagement

Emojis are more than just a smiley face. Emojis have been proven time and again that they can help boost engagement levels by increasing click through rates (CTR), open rates, or even conversion stats!

They can help drive engagement on all types of digital media—email and social networks alike! One survey found that including emojis in your subject lines increases open rates by 9%. It may be because they make messages seem informal and more personal.

Emojis are the best way to add personality and fun into any business message. Emojis allow your text to be more than just words on a page. They convey what you’re trying to say in an exciting way when text alone just doesn’t do the trick! They give your brand a little extra something that’ll intrigue or persuade someone to take action and click through, buy a product or download a guide.

However, if you are using these little icons for your own marketing, employ them wisely through email campaigns or social media strategies. As we always say, one size does not fit all.

Emojis to improve engagement

HubSpot has a fantastic overview of what emojis are most popular and the best for boosting engagement and Click-though. Take a closer look at HubSpot’s list here.

To create this list HubSpot studied over 19million HubSpot published posts across social. Even HubSpot admits that they have no idea why these emojis worked. A lot of the time it’s about trial and error and working out what is best for your very unique target audience. Anything you do is about keeping it relevant for them as what’s good for one business can be totally irrelevant to another.

Emojis to Boost Engagement

🙆(Person Gesturing OK Emoji)
🍒(Cherries Emoji)
🐠(Tropical Fish Emoji)
💃(Woman Dancing Emoji)
🌤(Sun Behind Small Cloud Emoji)

Emojis to Encourage Click-Through

🐙(Octopus Emoji)
🐴(Horse Face Emoji)
👖(Jeans Emoji)
🍒(Cherries Emoji)
🚂(Locomotive Emoji)

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If you need support with your digital marketing, why not book a time with us to chat about your requirements further.

What are YouTube Shorts?

06/28/2022 by Gray Okenge

We’ve said for a long time now about the importance of video as part of your marketing strategy and recent insight from YouTube cements this further.

Over 1.5 billion users each month are watching YouTube shorts. You-Tube Shorts is a short-form platform offered by YouTube which simply means that videos are limited to 60 seconds. They are also shown as vertical videos. If this format sounds familiar, read on!

The YouTube Shorts app is fairly new. It launched in 2020 and has appeared in response to TikTok and Instagram Reels. YouTube Shorts is still in early stages and will evolve with the might of YouTube behind it – let’s face it there are 2 billion active users on YouTube each month.

Unlike its social counterparts, YouTube Shorts stay visible on the channel, they don’t disappear like Instagram Reels or Stories.

We know that video is important for increased engagement on social channels and so to is content in ‘bite-size’ chunks. So, we encourage you to trial using videos on Instagram Reels and perhaps explore YouTube Shorts to dip your toe into creating content on one of the most popular social media platforms for video.

To help you kick start your video content, head to our blog with tips for creating video for your business that are simple and effective to engage with your audience.

Video for digital marketing

If you need a hand with video content, we can help you factor these into your overall marketing plan from ideas and script creation through to video production and editing.

Tips for LinkedIn social posts

08/01/202206/17/2022 by scmarketing

Social media marketing is a key element of a digital marketing strategy. It allows for another avenue of reaching your target audience in a way that they choose to receive information and at a time of their choosing. It can offer a more personal approach and informal way to market to your audience.

However, with a multitude of social channels to consider you do need to choose and test the right channels for your business – one size does not fit all! For the purpose of this blog, we’ll look at LinkedIn and provide an overview of the type of content that can help with your approach.

As a professional networking social channel, it’s an online way to connect, network, gain insight into your sector and search for career opportunities.

Be insightful

For a LinkedIn business account, as opposed to your own personal profile, keep posts insightful about your industry, perhaps weave in information about your products and services but all the time thinking how your business can help your specific target audience. Think about what tips and advice you can offer your followers rather than being solely product and service focussed.

Downloads

Recent research has also highlighted that 3x more clicks are generated by uploading native documents such as PDFs directly to LinkedIn.

So, if you have any infographics or industry insight perhaps create a one-page document that you’re happy for prospects to view. This can act as a teaser to enticing people to head to your website and look at what other resources you may have. However, a lot of the time we would recommend that you have content download behind a gated page so you can capture email addresses. It’s a bit of a balancing act. Just be mindful of this rather than giving away all information without the return of an email.

Engage with your first sentence

You can create longer posts on LinkedIn and followers are accepting of that. However, it’s worth noting that the first 140 characters are seen on mobile apps so make those words count to get people to read more.

Hashtags

Hashtags are much more popular on LinkedIn but as with other social media channels, keep them relevant to your post. Perhaps two or three hashtags so as not to detract from your message.

Emojis

As for emojis, go for it. While they can help create standout perhaps choose to use sparingly and dependent on the type of post and your brand guidelines of course. We’ve certainly come across some on the network having an issue with the overuse of emojis – so be cautious but don’t let it stifle your creativity.

Introduce video

Introducing video into your marketing strategy is more important than ever. LinkedIn users are 20 times more likely to share a video on LinkedIn than any other type of post and video views average 15.6%. Simple video can be created on your smartphone. Shots of speakers at events or your exhibition stand through to teaser campaigns or tips and advice brought to life.

We have further advice on creating video for your business here. However, get in touch if you want to talk about a holistic marketing strategy incorporating video.