Can emojis and B2B mix? The effects of emojis and emoji–text interactions on B2B social media engagement

Purpose Social media engagement is becoming increasingly critical for business-to-business (B2B) marketing. Yet, creating compelling brand posts that stimulate engagement remains a challenge for B2B marketers. As an increasingly popular linguistic element, emojis have been rapidly incorporated into B2B social media posts. However, there is little clarity around if, when, why and how emojis influence stakeholder responses to B2B social media posts. This study aims to address this gap by investigating emojis’ effects on B2B social media engagement. Design/methodology/approach This study draws on the B2B communication model, fluency theory and extant research on emojis’ communicative effects and examines: how emoji use in social media posts influence B2B social media engagement; and how different emoji–text integrations moderate such effects. A field study was conducted to analyze 64,547 tweets from 82 B2B brands in 19 industries. Findings The results of this study reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between emoji count in B2B social media posts and engagement. Moreover, the ways in which emojis are integrated with the text can affect engagement and moderate such relationship. The inverted U-shaped relationship is weakened when emojis are placed inside the text or used as text substitutions. Originality/value This study reveals the role that emojis play in driving B2B social media engagement. Besides, this study presents a pioneer investigation of the nuanced effects of emoji–text interactions in the B2B context.