by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
I love emojis was into them from the start, but after sending ? this to my mother and for her to say “why are you crying?” it got me thinking.
Can people misunderstand emojis?
Based on my mother’s response, obviously.
One of things we teach in our social selling, social Human Resources (HR) programs is that if somebody is going to miss understand you then they will.
I’ve seen the use of emojis creeping into use on people’s profiles on LinkedIn. The “inspiration” behind this blog is a Marketer who has probably posted the most boring piece of corporate content known to any of us. Anyway, he, and it is a he, has a tick ✔️ next to his dull summary title.
His summary title (the most visible think about him on the internet) is Strategic Marketing Consultant but it’s not any it’s a Strategic Marketing Consultant ✔️ Does this add anything? It’s an open question!
Recently we did a brain storming session on our values and we talked about the words and images that we thought summed up DLA Ignite the best. For example, we like photos of groups rather than photos of single people as it created a feeling of community which is something we create.
We discussed the use of “clip art” and everybody agreed not to use it as it looked unprofessional. Some of the readers may not remember Microsoft Clippy. It was a Microsoft creation that was supposed to help you use Microsoft Word. While, I’m sure it helped some people it became an industry joke. We don’t want to be like Clippy, do we?
So what about emojis in summary titles, summaries and in fact on any part of a LinkedIn profile? As a society we have moved away from shirts and ties to chinos and jeans. In my corporate job I left 3 years ago, never a day went by without a suit. Since starting our start-up I hung up my suits never to be warn again.
Are emojis the chinos and jeans of the written word?
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