How to Spruce Up Your Social Media Content: Emojis, Gifs & Hashtags

Every #socialmedia post one writes is a creative work that started with a white canvas, a well-defined strategy, a plan to reach big volumes and some colors to draw attention and engagement. 🌈

Social media is not an easy game because it’s not only about drawing the attention, it’s about beating the harsh algorithms, adding real value and fitting in the customer’s context.

To win that battle, experts should know their emojis, gifs & hashtags. Why? Because on social media, customers are not looking for you. They’re not scrolling through Facebook to find out about a new discount or professional news. They are definitely not there to learn about what your company’s been up to or how your team building went. That’s why you have to think about them when designing your social media strategy.

via GIPHY

So don’t barge in, fit in. 🤝

Adopt the style, the tone, and format of the channel you’re a guest on. Here’s a snippet of how the miracles of internet will help you achieve social media greatness:

1. Hashtags help you
   • Join the conversation
   • Start a conversation
   • Define the topic
2. Emojis help you
   • Stand out
   • Show humanity
   • Show that you’re involved in your social media presence
3. Gifs help you
   • Connect with your audience
   • Provide engagement
   • Draw attention

Now that we’ve defined why you should enjoy the possibilities of social media, here’s how to truly leverage them.

Hashtags

Hashtags have multiple advantages. They can help a brand engage with a community and gain visibility, they can create brand awareness and help with measuring results and they can even define the topic of your conversation and brand.

We will define in this chapter, 2 main things:

1. When and why use hashtags
2. Hashtags for each social network

Why we use hashtags

Here are the use cases when hashtags are used in social media:

• When you start a conversation or a campaign
• When you want to join a conversation or hijack a subject
• When you want to define your topic and increase social media SEO

#CampaignHashtags

When you plan a social media campaign or an integrated campaign that includes social media, consider hashtags your wild card. They won’t automatically make you win the game, but will definitely boost your chances. They’re your wild card because they’ll help you:

• Win brand awareness
• Gain more visibility
• Measure or track the reach of your campaign
• Create the sense of community

Stressing the latter – hashtags can become the glue that holds the community together during a campaign. Try to remember: #ShareACoke, #IceBucketChallenge or #LikeAGirl.

However, when you decide on your campaign’s hashtag, you should keep in mind a few guidelines. Make sure it’s original – don’t copy existing hashtags. Don’t try to be too witty so that the hashtag loses its meaning along the way. Lastly, we recommend you don’t make the hashtag too brand-focused (unless you’re Coca-Cola).

#HashtagHijacking

Brands have been trying to get in on hot topics for a while now. Some have succeeded and some have deeply failed. Hashtag hijacking can be a beautiful gift! A way for brands to get in on topics shared and discussed by the community and gain great visibility without any costs.

However, with great visibility comes great responsibility and if Ben Parker would’ve worked in social media, those would’ve been his “words of wisdom”, trust me.

Hashtags are used for all kinds of topics, from engaging and amusing ones to extremely sensitive ones. That is why you should think very hard before deciding to jump in on a topic and always keep in mind the Digiorno’s misuse of #WhyIStayed.

#DefineTopic

One of the most natural ways to use a hashtag is in the sentence to basically define the topic of what you’re saying.

It’s quite simple, if I write a tweet promoting a social media resource, I’ll definitely include the #socialmedia hashtag. That will help me reach people following this hashtag and add value to the right conversations.

Hashtags for each social network

Though the concept of hashtags is quite universal and they’re used similarly on all social media networks, each one obviously has their own quirks.

On Twitter, hashtags are very commonly used and are usually intended to be searchable. Twitter is very focused on conversations and hashtags are used to define those conversations and topics. We don’t recommend you overdo it on Twitter. Tweets that end in any possible hashtag the creator could think of are never seen well. I also recommend clicking on a hashtag if you’re not sure what’s being used for (again, with great visibility comes great responsibility).

On Instagram, hashtags are used to explore and discover new content so they are quite important. Plenty of users research hashtags to find new and exciting people or channels to follow so do not be shy when adding them to your post. When creating content, Instagram already helps with hashtags by suggesting the most popular ones when you start writing.

On Facebook, it’s a bit more difficult. Since Facebook is more of a personal and private channel (ironically), hashtags are mostly used for campaigns by brands. It’s less about joining conversations or defining the topic.

Before deciding on the hashtags you’ll use, I recommend trying out Hashtagify.me which is a free tool that will help you map what are the topics that you want to join in.

Emojis

I for one love emojis. They are there to add life and joy to a conversation, to make posts prettier and give them context. Emojis have been on an ascending trend ever since they got here and I don’t predict we’ll get sick of them anytime soon.

Many brands stay away from emojis because they’re afraid they’ll seem childish or unprofessional. I can certainly say that they might not be appropriate for all the brands, but most of them. So unless your target is quite strict when it comes to tone of voice and the subjects that you touch upon are dead serious, give them a shot.

What can you expect from Emojis? ❤

• To humanize your content and brand. 🙋‍♂️

As brands are by default intruders in the social media space, emojis are one of those things that will help you get close to your audience and add a bit of spice to your positioning. People don’t care for automated, lifeless and robotic ToV on social media, they can’t relate. You have to be empathetic and relatable so choose emojis to show that firstly, you’re not a bot, and secondly, you’re not a faceless brand.

• To stand out in the crowd 👋

Though emojis are growing more and more popular, as I’ve mentioned before, brands are still quite skeptic in using them. So it’s a good time to hop on while it’s still a way to stand out.

• To show that you belong 🙈

Brands often make the mistake of just vomiting content on social media. Copy paste the title of the article/video and there we go, people got their content. It doesn’t work like that and when you’re using that approach, people see right through you and the tone is set to “transactional”. I feed you content, you enjoy it. No relationship, no interaction. Just a bit of effort in your social media posts will show that you actually care about your presence and the community. Emojis will help you achieve that.

Basic rules for using Emojis

• Don’t go too crazy 🤒

Emojis come with lots and lots of advantages as we’ve already established, but you shouldn’t go too crazy. People will still see you as a brand and they will point out if you’re going overboard. As anything in life, responsible consumption is recommended.

• Stay relevant 🤫

Don’t start using emojis just for the sake of using them. Authenticity is key in social media. Use them when they are relevant and related to the topic. Don’t replace vomiting content on social media with vomiting emojis, not the way to belong.

• Don’t go too creative 🤩

Lots of marketers have a soft spot for creative ideas and we tend to go too far. Coded messages using emojis may seem like a good idea, but make sure they make sense and that you’ll get enough attention for the message to be decoded before launching such a campaign.

If you’re not sure what emoji to use or what certain emojis mean, I recommend emojipedia – very useful.

Gifs

Emojis went viral, Gifs got a life of their own. We use them so often now and they’ve been made so accessible on social media that it’s almost a shame not to take advantage.

via GIPHY

Why use gifs?

• They’re scroll-stoppers.

Gifs capture the eye of social media users, they will stop users from scrolling and make them take another look at your post. They are the superheroes of content so put that cape on and start loving them.

• They’re engagement magnets.

Gifs don’t only catch the eye but if used correctly, they’ll catch the heart as well. Customers are more eager to engage and relate to your content. They create that connection that we are so eager to bring between brands and the audience and they are definitely not hard to use.

• They inspire emotion.

Gifs show emotion better than anything. They add context to content and inspire the right emotion right from the start. And with the decreasing attention span, we have to do our best to not only catch the attention but also get the message across as quickly as possible.

Basic rules for using Gifs

• Stay relevant. Again.

As we’ve discussed about emojis, relevancy applies to gifs just as well. It’s important to use them right and always stay relevant because if you catch the attention with the wrong gif, it’s just as bad as clickbait. Don’t go desperate, just use them wisely. For example, here’s how we used gifs to describe the life of a social media manager.

• Don’t go crazy. Again.

Though it’s important to fit in whilst trying to win the social media battle, it’s also important to stay on-brand. So don’t try to be too funny if your brand is not funny by default. Respect its positioning and follow its lead.

• Go emotion, not content.

Don’t try to send valuable information via gifs. It will probably not work. Written content, for example, is better placed in videos or copy, not in gifs. The expectations from gifs are either that they will show people how to do something or they will illustrate an emotion – so try to respect those lines.

Other than the native integrations that offer a nice selection of gifs, you can always try out Giphy to select the right gif for your content.

That’s all folks! Hope I managed to inspire some ideas of how to spruce up your social media content. Ping me if I missed anything.