It’s hard to imagine social media without emojis. These small visual characters can transform a simple sentence into an engaging call to action that drives results and revenue for your brand.
Take this stat: over 10 billion emojis are used around the world each and every day. Plus, most iPhones have over 3,600 emojis ready for users to add to text messages and social posts.
Staying up to date with the latest emoji trends ensures your brand is leveraging trending moments and speaking your audience’s language.
Looking for the most popular emojis on social media in 2024? You’ve come to the right place. Keep reading to discover the most popular emojis you need to use, how to weave emojis into your social media strategy and what common emoji mistakes to avoid.
Why should you harness the power of emojis?
Emojis are visual icons used to express ideas and emotions. With origins in ‘90s Japanese art, emojis have evolved to become a popular way of communicating in the digital age.
Since 2010, emojis have been incorporated into Unicode (a software coding standard), sparking the rollout of emojis across iPhones and Android devices. Now, emojis are synonymous with reacting to content on social media and quickly communicating with others online.
So, why should you leverage emojis in your marketing strategy as a small business or brand?
- Inspire engagement: Emojis add visual interest to captions, email subject lines and even blog post copy, skillfully guiding readers through your key messages and giving them a reason to consume your post (and even take action, like sharing or commenting).
- Showcase your brand personality: With the right emoji usage, you can ensure your brand’s visual aesthetic and tone of voice are carried through in your emoji selection to build an instantly recognizable (and memorable!) brand identity.
- Convey emotions to humanize your content: Emojis are a powerful way to add emotion into your content, giving your audience the ability to deeply connect with your brand and relate to your key messages.
Keep Reading: Dive into our complete emoji marketing guide, backed by practical do’s and dont’s for emoji usage on social media.
The Most Popular Emojis of 2024: Ranked
Now the bit you’ve been waiting for: what are the most popular emojis in 2024?
On World Emoji Day 2024, Emojipedia revealed the most popular emojis of 2024, which include:
| Emoji | Meaning |
| Red heart ❤️ | Symbolic of love, affection and romance |
| Skull 💀 | Represents danger, death or mortality |
| Loudly crying face 😭 | Intense sadness or strong emotions |
| Heart hands 🫶🏻 | Showing love or affection towards something |
| Face with tears of joy 😂 | Laughing so hard it causes tears of joy |
| Check mark button ✅ | Signifies agreement or completion |
| Sparkles ✨ | Can represent something is ‘sparkling clean’ or even magic, excitement or celebration |
| Star ⭐️ | Usually used to show power or appreciation |
| Face holding back tears 🥺 | Can be used in a range of contexts, usually showing someone is overcome with emotions of sadness, admiration or gratitude |
| Saluting face 🫡 | Used to show respect or obedience and can have sarcastic connotations |
| White heart 🤍 | Represents pure love or even deep, infinite romantic love |
| Folded hands / prayer 🙏 | Often connected with spirituality or hopefulness as well as gratitude |
| Melting face 🫠 | Used to show everything from embarrassment to shame and even extreme heat |
| Eyes 👀 | Usually used to draw attention to something or even build drama, suspense or tension |
| Mending heart ❤️🩹 | Signifies healing or recovery, particularly from heartbreak or emotional pain |
| Pink heart 🩷 | Represents love, friendship and warmth |
| Thumbs up 👍 | Signifies agreement or acceptance |
| Check mark ✔️ | Used when a task or job has been completed |
| Smiling face with heart eyes 😍 | Represents love or gratitude towards something |
| Index pointing at the view 🫵 | Used to share a direct message with the reader |
When using emojis, it’s important to remember that context is everything. In a personal context, emojis can be used to quickly acknowledge messages from friends and family, with no limits to the amount, style or frequency of emojis used.
However, in a brand or business context, emojis need to be used selectively and strategically. Injecting too many emojis into an email campaign can alert spam filters to impact the deliverability of your messages, while using the wrong emojis in your Instagram captions can cause your audience to disengage from your brand’s content.
But, by learning what each emoji means and how to use emojis in your brand’s social media strategy, you can use these visual icons to your advantage.
Keep Reading: Explore our Emoji Dictionary, packed with definitions of every single emoji you need to know about.
Current popular emojis trends
Possibly the biggest trend impacting emojis is this: each generation has its own interpretation of what emojis mean and which emojis should be used.
The biggest divide is between Millennials and Gen Z users, with polls revealing that Gen Z would never use certain emojis (such as 👌🙈💋).
@miriam.digitalinfluence Gen-Z-approved emojis 🤪 Don’t forget to share this with your fave millennial 💓 #genzmarketing #genzhumor #socialmediamarketing #digitalmarketing #socialmediaforbusiness ♬ original sound – miriam — social media manager
While Gen Z might be cancelling a tonne of popular emojis, these icons still resonate with older audiences. This tells us that it’s crucial to understand how your ideal customers use emojis to avoid making an emoji faux pas on social media.
How to leverage popular emojis in your social media strategy
Ready to add the most popular emojis to your social media content? Here are three best practice tips to get you started.
Tip 1. Align emoji selection with your brand voice
Every emoji has its own vibe, and it’s important to ensure your emoji selection matches your brand personality and tone of voice.
When used out of context, the wrong emojis can be distracting or even disengaging for users. But, when you curate an on-brand selection of emojis that capture the look and feel of your business, you’ll be able to use these visual icons as another brand-building tool.
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Our tip? Create a library of up to 10 on-brand emojis and add these to your brand guidelines. Ensure team members know what each emoji represents, when to it and even what off-brand emojis to avoid.
Tip 2. Check emoji meanings to avoid misinterpretation
According to The New York Post, some of the most misunderstood emojis include:
- 💅 – does it mean ‘classy or fancy’, ‘self-care’ or ‘getting a manicure’?
- 💨 – does it mean ‘dashing away’, ‘exhaustion’ or ‘smoking’?
- 🙃 – does it mean ‘sarcasm’, ‘smiling through the pain’ or ‘passive aggression’?
In fact, studies have shown that 81% of US adults have been confused by someone’s use of an emoji.
So, what’s the solution to emoji confusion? It starts here: understanding the most common interpretation and definitions of each emoji to cover your bases. With this knowledge up your sleeve, you can make informed decisions about how and when to weave these icons into your social captions and content.
Tip 3. Avoid these common emoji mistakes
Emojis are usually a positive addition to a brand or business’s marketing material. However, when used incorrectly, emojis can do more harm than good.
So, here are three common mistakes to avoid when using emojis:
- Using too many emojis: Flooding your caption with a sea of repetitive or unrelated emojis is a sure-fire way to distract readers from your core messages. Plus, for vision-impaired users who are using screen readers, too many emojis can cause your social media captions to become unreadable.
- Using emojis instead of words: While emojis do have literal meanings, it’s best to use them in addition to copywriting rather than as a replacement. This will avoid any misinterpretations and ensure your captions are visually appealing.
- Using random emojis that don’t make sense: Emojis should immediately make sense to the reader rather than leaving them scratching their head. If you’re unsure if an emoji is the right fit for your post, remove it.
Level-up your social media content with Plann
Whether you’re struggling to keep up with the fast-paced nature of social media or simply want to devote more time to growing your business and focusing on those tasks that take place offline, Plann’s range of features is sure to help save you time with an automated social media strategy.
From AI-generated captions to cross-posting, analytics, hashtags and more, Plann can help you maintain a consistent posting schedule while you remain focused on business growth. We even auto-post your Instagram Reels to take the hassle out of growing organically on the platform!
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