Whether you love them or hate them, emojis are here to stay. They’re a big deal. As someone who has made a living for years writing, emojis kind of hurt my heart. I mean, come on. Why do I need to include emojis in a perfectly good blog post or Facebook post? Is there a point to all that? There really is so let’s talk about the why first. 

Why Use Emojis?

5 billion (yes, billion, with a B) emojis are sent daily on Facebook messenger. That’s every day. That blows my mind. 92% of internet users have used emojis. 25 to 29-year-olds are the most likely to use them. 230 new emojis were launched in the last year. Emojis are universal. 

Emojis really do engage your fans. The use of emojis can increase engagement by a whopping 48% on Instagram. Influencers are using them to engage with their end-users. 

Emojis innovate marketing campaigns. For example, Taco Bell got 33,000 online signatures for a taco ???? emoji. Disney used emojis to promote The Force Awakens. 

Emojis work with human psychology. There has been a study that shows 72% of 18 to 25-year-olds preferred using emojis instead of words to convey their feelings. Again, that blows my mind. Don’t be an emoji snob. If your brand is too exclusive for emojis it’s probably too exclusive for most internet users. 

Now that you know why you need them, let’s look at where to find them. All of these tools are FREE!

Emojipedia

This is one of my go-to tools. It’s one of my favorites because it’s a reference website and it documents the meaning and common usage of each emoji character in a Unicode standard. What does that mean? It means if you’ve been using the peach emoji as a reference to fruit, you should probably stop doing that because it has another meaning. If you want to know what it is you can go look it up on emojipedia and find out. 

It’s also great for when you’re typing on your laptop and don’t want to have to stop and go look through your phone for an emoji. It’s easy access to add emojis to captions I’m typing out on an actual computer. 

Emojim

Emojim is a browser-based app that helps you search for and discover the proper emojis for your social media updates, blog posts, and more. It’s also one for use on your actual computer. It’s super responsive. You can use it on desktop or mobile devices but it really shines on desktop. You can type what you’re looking for into the search bar or you can just take a glance at what they have, which is the big difference between it and emojipedia. It has a complete list where you can just go through and look at them all but with emojipedia you have to search for something first. 

EmojiCopy

EmojiCopy is a web-based app that has search capabilities like the others. However, it’s big claim to fame is that it allows you to use multiple emojis at once. Sometimes it takes a whole row of emojis to convey an emotion or a phrase. This site makes it easy to select multiple emojis instead of having to do just one at a time. 

???? Don’t Be an Emoji Snob

Now that you have the tools to effectively use emojis, start working them into your social media posts and promote better engagement while also having a little fun with your message.