It is World Emoji Day 2021 and we've had a look back at the last 365 days of Twitter conversations about UK higher education. We've used our Brandwatch for Education social listening tool for a bit of lighthearted research.
It's short, it's sweet, it's a bit of fun on World Emoji Day 2021.
Top 10 Emoji across all conversations
The top 10 emoji gathered 413,000 mentions in the last year, and 38% of these were generated by the use of 👇 and 👉. I wonder whether the sector needs to be a little more exciting when it comes to the use of emoji. On the whole the top two emoji are used to point at links or threads mentioned.
When it comes to accessibility, keep in your mind you're adding unnecessary text for screenreaders. They'll read out your emoji as "Backhand Index Pointing Down" (👇) "Backhand Index Pointing Right" (👉).
Top 10 by topic
Those pointy hands creep into discussions across the topic breakdowns too. The topics below cover red flag issues, student success and wellness, Coronavirus, admissions and enrolment, academic topics, and funding.
While emoji may not be the most detailed of data sources for insights, combined with text and sentiment analysis they given an additional layer of context. Your audience could be using emoji to convey their emotions about a topic, not something you'd want to miss out on knowing.
Want to know more about social listening?
Speak with the team at Neon Caffeine to explore how your university can make the most out of social listening, and decipher the emoji being used to take about your institution.