LinkedIn is a professional social media platform that can be used for a variety of purposes, such as networking, finding jobs, and marketing your business. LinkedIn is often considered to be more formal than other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. So, should you use emoji on LinkedIn? The pros and cons are discussed below.
The pros of using emoji on LinkedIn
- Emoji can help to add some personality to your profile and make you stand out from the crowd.
- They can also be used to express emotions and add visual interest to your posts.
- Emoji can help to communicate ideas more effectively than words alone.
The cons of using emoji on LinkedIn
- Some people may view the use of emoji as unprofessional.
- They can also be challenging to interpret, which could lead to confusion.
- Emoji can clutter your posts and make them harder to read.
Should social media users include emoji in LinkedIn posts?
In order to crowdsource an answer, social media trainer and coach Julia Dixon staged a poll on LinkedIn recently. The results of how the users voted are leaning strongly towards using emoji on LinkedIn.
79% of all LinkedIn users who voted in this poll agreed that the use of emoji is just fine. 10% of the people who voted disagreed and would rather not use emoji on LinkedIn. The third group of 11%, slightly more than the people who voted “no,” were not entirely sure and voted for “it depends” and shared their comments right beneath the post. The voter group consisted of 185 LinkedIn users.
Personal remarks
The culture and the rules of engagement within a social network are defined by the user base. Microsoft did not create a style guide or handbook on what is okay to do on LinkedIn or what is not okay to post. In my personal opinion, social media should stay authentic and reflect who you are as well as your posts should be the way you want them to be, whether your followers and connections might like that or not. If you use emoji in LinkedIn posts, then some might frown upon it, but it’s unlikely that someone will have a bad opinion about you just for “doing what everybody does.”
In the end, it’s up to you and your creativity. Yes, there are potential problems that people could misinterpret emoji as far as visual communication goes. Still, suppose you stay away from ambiguous emoji and stick to the ones that are generally well-understood all over the world and all demographic groups. In that case, I believe there is a shallow risk of being misunderstood in a way that would alter the message you are trying to communicate in your post. The same goes for any other kind of visual communication, including memes, GIF-animations, videos, or other media.
Summary
The verdict? LinkedIn is a professional social media site, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use emoji in your posts. The pros of using emoji include adding personality to your profile as well and making your posts more visually interesting. The cons are that some people may view the use of emoji as unprofessional, and they can be difficult to interpret. Like always, when trying to communicate, think first about who you are trying to send a message to, and if this target group likes emoji or doesn’t care, then use them. If you think your target group would think you’re unprofessional for using emoji, then maybe don’t.
YouTube: How to improve your Linkedin profile with symbols, icons, and emojis (Michael Luchies)
Photo credit: The images shown in the article (1, 2, 3) were prepared by Rawpixel.com.
