Emoticons are the Personality Behind Your Brand Online - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Emoticons are the Personality Behind Your Brand Online - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Whether youre writing a post, joining a blog conversation with a comment, typing an instant message to a friend, responding to a question in a message board or sending an email to a business contact, emoticons express your brand personality.   As you choose to display your brand as happy, sad, confused, flirtatious or embarrassed, keep in mind that its an important strategy of formally showcasing your brands personality through non-multimedia form.   Your emotion can also make or break your relationships, so choose wisely. Emoticons came into existence within the AOL Instant Messenger utility years ago.   Before emoticons, the issue was misinterpretation of messages sent from one computer to the next.   Think about it, if you received a message that was a sexist, racist or a misleading joke, you might take it the wrong way and either stop responding to that person or completely block them.   Its really hard to tell online EXACTLY what people mean, how they feel and what EMOTION they are placing into a dialog.   Emoticons solved that problem by hinting towards common feelings to ensure understanding. You can actually brand yourself as a happy person, by sending multiple smiley faces to someone within a single conversation.   They may think you have issues, but if they know you, then they will think its the norm.   Also, who doesnt want to receive a smiley face, seriously!   Its when your friends start sending sad and confused faces, that you should be concerned.   By sending those faces, you are conveying a brand with low self-esteem, especially if there is repetition. Question:   How can I show this person I mean what I say?   Answer:   Call the person Question:   When I send a message, how do they know Im joking?   Answer: Send the laughing emoticon after the message Depending on the situation, you should insert an emoticon into the conversation.   The more serious the conversation, the more you will want to use other forms of contact.   If you want to joke around with a friend or girlfriend, then emoticons are commonly used to show feeling and connection. What emoticons do you typically use for your brand?