Selected, deleted, replaced with something else, then replaced again with the original selection. Carefully chosen to help punctuate text, emojis can play a critical part in your communication. Used to add tone and context to messages, emojis are a regular part of digital communication. While adding smiley faces to a business email used to be frowny faced upon, emojis are now acceptable when used in the right way. Although, they are still highly dependent on context, interpretation, and your ability to read the room.
An emoji will likely never appear in any sort of official communication, say, an investor’s report, media release, or outcome from a legal hearing - although a gavel would be kind of cool. In the time of digital communication, emoji use can actually help to connect remote workers who are missing the typical access to informal conversations that take place in the traditional workplace, such as in communal gathering spots. Adding an emoji helps to communicate nuances 🙂 , spread positivity🍻 , express personality 😱 , and reinforce the intent of the message 🤷 . Using emojis at work can allow you to be more concise, bond with team members, and cultivate a corporate culture.
In The Emoji Code, author Professor Vyvyan Evans, an expert on language and digital communication, says that as much as 70% of our communication comes from nonverbal cues. Things such as tone, pitch, rate of speed, and body language give important indicators that both compliment and change the meaning of our words. He says that emojis can add emotion back into text-heavy digital conversations, help clarify the tone of the written conversation, and ensure that the recipient of your message interprets it in the way you had intended.
In a 2019 paper published by the University of Columbia, researchers describe how electrical activity in the brain indicates that we process emojis and human faces in the same area of the brain. Many emojis often include the most noticeable features for visually conveying human emotion — eyes, mouth, and sometimes eyebrows. Researchers say that when someone sends an emoji in an online communication, the recipient’s brain generates a similar response as when seeing the face of the sender.
They’ve made their way into brand marketing, products, marketing campaigns, and company culture. At StormFree, we use emoji reactions to acknowledge receipt of a message or information, such as 👍 or 👀 to confirm that a message has been read or information is being reviewed. We also find emoji reactions valuable when expressing things such as recognition, excitement, or gratitude in a quick and personal manner. We have incorporated emojis to help characterize teams and projects, and we've used them for team votes.
In his book, The Semiotics of Emoji, University of Toronto professor Marcel Danesi says that emojis have become the world's fastest-growing form of communication and believes that having 'emoji competence' - the art of peppering written text with appropriate emojis in order to provide a positive emotional impact - plays a significant role in how we interact digitally.
Emoji use can help teams organize and prioritize messages without over messaging or clogging up chat streams with unnecessary text. And in a time of constant online interactions where it's common to feel overwhelmed by information, sometimes an emoji says everything that needs to be said 👏 👏 👏 👏.
