Emojis, Engagement and the Release of iOS 10

Apple announced at a press conference marking the launch of the iPhone 7 this week that iOS 10 will officially be released on September 13, 2016.

So, not only are we in store for shiny new iPhones with wireless AirPod headphones, advanced camera options, water and dust resistance and more—we are also going to get a and a host of new features as part of Apple’s updated operating system. This includes new emojis.

Love them or hate them, emojis are here to stay and from a social media marketing point of view, they can be a valuable tool for increasing engagement and communicating with your online communities.

Emojis can speak to your audiences across language barriers, they also convey tone, which can often be misinterpreted online and via text. They can also make your brand appear friendlier, funnier, and up-to-date with younger followers.

Studies have even indicated that internet users respond to emojis because they resonate on an emotional level. We kid you not, neuroscientists have actually studied the effects of emoticons and emojis on the human brain and have found that we respond to these smiley faces in the same way that we would with a human face. 

If you aren't already using emojis in your social media marketing campaigns, give them a try. You'll be amazed at the boost in engagement levels.

So, what are we getting with these new emojis? Diversity tops the list. As seen recently on Apple.com, “Apple is working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.”

We’ll see female police officers, firefighters and construction workers, dancing men with bunny ears, single parent families, female basketball players, the Rainbow Flag and much more, as seen on Emojipedia. The new-look emojis will also have a better, updated design, will be slightly larger and will also feature more animals, sports, facial expressions, food and drinks. Lovers of bacon, who don’t have the inclination to type out b-a-c-o-n, your emoji is almost here…

DID YOU KNOW?

The word "Emoji" has nothing to do with emotions, it means "picture character" in Japanese

Emojis are different to Emoticons, which look more like this :-( and :-)

July 17 is World Emoji Day

This emoji 😂 was chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year for 2015 (!!!)

Nearly half of all comments and captions on Instagram contain emoji characters

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That's it for today's blog. Thanks so much for visiting our site and have fun with those new emojis!

Laura and Jenny