Whether you’re writing a post, joining a blog conversation with a comment, typing an instant message to a friend, responding to a question in a message board or sending an email to a business contact, emoticons express your brand personality. As you choose to display your brand as happy, sad, confused, flirtatious or embarrassed, keep in mind that it’s an important strategy of formally showcasing your brand’s personality through non-multimedia form. Your emotion can also make or break your relationships, so choose wisely.
Emoticons came into existence within the AOL Instant Messenger utility years ago. Before emoticons, the issue was misinterpretation of messages sent from one computer to the next. Think about it, if you received a message that was a sexist, racist or a misleading joke, you might take it the wrong way and either stop responding to that person or completely block them. It’s really hard to tell online EXACTLY what people mean, how they feel and what EMOTION they are placing into a dialog. Emoticon’s solved that problem by hinting towards common feelings to ensure understanding.
You can actually brand yourself as a happy person, by sending multiple smiley faces to someone within a single conversation. They may think you have issues, but if they know you, then they will think it’s the norm. Also, who doesn’t want to receive a smiley face, seriously! It’s when your friends start sending sad and confused faces, that you should be concerned. By sending those faces, you are conveying a brand with low self-esteem, especially if there is repetition.
Question: How can I show this person I mean what I say? Answer: Call the person
Question: When I send a message, how do they know I’m joking? Answer: Send the laughing emoticon after the message
Depending on the situation, you should insert an emoticon into the conversation. The more serious the conversation, the more you will want to use other forms of contact. If you want to joke around with a friend or girlfriend, then emoticons are commonly used to show feeling and connection.
What emoticon’s do you typically use for your brand?
