Memes, emojis, & GIFs are everywhere on the Internet. The famous memes like the Grumpy Cat, Success Kid, Bad Luck Brian, and various others are the top celebrities on the different social media channels. Social media, in the current era, has become so fast-paced that making your business recognized over a particular portal seems a highly daunting task. This is where the fun elements like memes, emoticons, & GIFs could help you out. These elements of easy interaction are simple to interpret, easy & fun to share, and the great assets to your overall success on the social media platforms.
While these different forms of visual expressions have been around the corner since we started drafting our emails, the recent times have observed a significant rise in their utilization for the marketing purposes by multiple business organizations. The main reason for this sudden rise is quite plain & simple: businesses & brands out there realized these expressions of being a great way of engaging and connecting with the modern-age millennials. Moreover, these graphics or animations served to be a great form of enticing visual content and there is no denying that social media craves for attractive visual content.
There is no doubt how popular memes, emoticons, & GIFs have become on the social media. However, how useful are these for the marketers out there? Let us have a quick look at the same:
- It is Easy to Establish Connections with Emojis: You must be aware of the fact that emojis & GIFs are quite easy to understand & interpret. Moreover, most people are able to identify themselves with these graphics because of the close familiarity. For the marketers, even when you discussing a boring or dry subject with the use of proper memes or emoticons (that could be otherwise complicated for the layman to understand properly), you are able to tone down the importance & seriousness of the given subject. Make the subject fun-filled with hilarious memes or emojis or go forward with explaining a dull point with the help of a GIF.
- Great Way to Showcase Your Products: GIFs & memes can be regarded as great ways of showcasing your products or services to the end users on different social media platforms. These graphics have the capability of capturing the avid attention of the visitors in an effective manner when compared to some static image.
- Creating Engaging Stories with GIFs: With the ongoing social media marketing trends, you can expect the GIF trend not going away anytime soon. These are great resources for effective story-telling. But, how does that help you as a marketer? You must realize that people love stories. Therefore, why not craft a proper story by making proper use of the GIFs & emoticons or even introduce a new product on the social media through these elements?
- GIFs & Emoticons Add Great Value to the Brand: Before you start using the emojis & GIFs for effective social media marketing, it is important to note that these must reflect the innate meaning of your brand. Try making branded emoticons & GIFs and utilize them for engaging with the respective followers on different social media pages.
- Add Humor to the Marketing Message: Emojis, memes, & GIFs can be used for adding a great deal of humor to the marketing message from your brand. When you use these properly for social media advertising, you can engage a wide pool of followers effectively. However, you must be careful while adding humor to any aspect of marketing in order to avoid any issues.
- Engaging with Customers: A simple GIF or emoji can be used for breaking the ice or interacting with your customers. You can try making them participate in some contest wherein they have to send replies with the use of GIFs or emojis. Such activities will help in developing positive interaction with the end users of your brand.
Using Emoticons, Memes, & GIFs for the Success of Social Media Marketing
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Now that you have realized the importance of using emoticons, memes, & GIFs for the success of your social media marketing strategies, here are some ways in which you can use each one of them to their full advantage.
Emoticons
We are all well-aware of the use of emoticons or emojis in our day-to-day lives. We use them almost every minute while replying to texts, messages, emails, or tweets. Almost every social media channel is filled with the use of different types of emoticons signifying different expressions. To top it all, these fun elements of expressing oneself can also utilized by the business organizations or brands across different social media channels for ensuring effective marketing of the products & services offered by them.
How to Use Emoticons for Marketing?
- Make your brand stand out from the others by designing & developing your own set of emojis
- Use the emoticons productively towards enhancing the customer engagement on different social media platforms. For instance, you can ask the audience to vote or play a contest of something by exchanging proper emojis.
- Respond to tweets or comments with the use of emojis for establishing a communication with more specific emotions.
- Use the emojis for telling a proper story of your brand
- You must realize that unlike other forms of expressions, emoticons are not bound by any language. Thus, these can be progressively used for conveying your message on the social media in an effective manner.
Memes
The best thing about memes is that these tend to be extremely versatile. These can be available in the form of an audio file, a simple image, a video representation, a GIF, a phrase, or a combination of all the given traits. Memes are usually mean to imply fun and greatly signify heavy sarcasm. With such creative minds on the Internet, people always come up with creative ways of using & interpreting them on the social media. Given their importance, as a marketer, you can also make use of the memes for promoting your online business.
How to Use Memes for Mareting?
- Memes can be the perfect solution to your humor-based marketing campaign on different social media channels.
- By using memes in a proper manner, you can enhance user engagement as well as effective sharing of the content available on your site or social media pages.
- You can target the specific group of end users who are able to understand & interpret the meaning of memes. By doing this, you can establish a stronger connection with them on a positive note.
- Memes can offer a perfect way of answering both negative as well as positive feedback & comments on the social media.
GIFs
Standing for Graphics Interchange Format, the GIFs are defined as a collection of pictures that are bundled together into a single file that is shown in proper succession resulting in a well-defined animation. Out of all the possible marketing techniques on social media, the GIFs are known to generate the highest levels of productive engagement than simple images. Moreover, these also tend to be cheaper significantly than creating videos or audio files on the social media marketing scenario. Given the rising trends of using GIFs on the social media platforms, most marketers out there are looking forward to utilize these for the success of their online marketing skills.
How to Use GIFs for Marketing?
- Spice up the social media marketing campaign by creating an animated version of your brand’s logo or other forms of content.
- Showcase the available products or services on the social media pages in the form of GIFs.
- Drive relevant traffic to your site’s content including blog posts with the use of GIFs.
- Engage with your followers on social media by asking them to tag some friend that could be related to the given GIF or animation.
- You can also ask the followers to give proper feedback like a GIF.
- Reply to queries or comments on the social media by making use of witty GIFs.
- Go forward with telling a story or describing some products by using a GIF.
- Try animating some brand-related data that can be shared on the social media channels.
- Announce some major news or collaborations in the form of GIFs.
To Conclude
While you must have realized the importance of using emoticons, memes, & GIFs for effective social media marketing, it is important to note that context is everything. You cannot simply go forward with posting anything that stands highly irrelevant to your site’s content or meaning. You need to ensure that your target audience is able to familiarize with the particular context in which you are making use of these graphical expressions. If you utilize a GIF for bragging about something that happened in your personal life, but your target audience is completely unaware of the same with respect to your business, then this might create a wrong impression.
Be careful! Be fun!
