A picture is worth a
thousand words. While special characters, sometimes called wingdings, don’t
convey quite that many words, they are a great way of expressing a point in a
succinct way, especially on Twitter and other social media sites. From
expressing an emotion through an emoticon, to building a bar chart, there are a
plethora of ways you can amp up your social marketing efforts using these
characters. What's the key in all of this? Keep it professional and brand
consistent. Special characters won’t help if they don’t make sense for you and
your business.
Spice
up your Profile
A Twitter bio only gives
you 160 characters, which isn’t all that many when you think about all the
things you want to squeeze in. Try these tricks to make the most of your space:
·
Show
off your interests. For example, ♫ can show that you’re in
the music business, while ✞
can show that you’ve got a religious affiliation.
·
Supply
contact information. Rather than spell out email or phone, you
could use these special
characters, respectively: ✉
or ✆. Other writing symbols
are at your disposal too; for example, ✍
or ✎. By using these symbols,
you’re saving a ton of characters, which gives you more space to really convey
who you are.
·
Build
associations. ✈
can show you’re a travel company, while ❀
can easily and quickly convey that you’re a flower shop. Of course, only use a symbol if it makes
sense for your company and your brand. For example, since Russ Brown
is a motorcycle attorney, a special character of an automobile wouldn’t make
sense, and currently there’s no motorcycle character that could be used. In
this case, a special character wouldn’t necessarily fit the brand.
Squeeze
More into Your Tweets
Every character counts.
That’s why you can also condense lists of items. For example, rather than use a
string of numbers in this format: 1), you could use arrows like this: ►, which saves one space
per list item. While it’s not saving you many characters, they can still make a
difference. The same goes for ellipses. When used correctly, by placing all
three dots (...) next to each other, they’ll only count as one character. You
can also make sure they’re just one character by typing Alt+0133.
Another way to convey more
information in your tweet is to create a bar graph. This can show how such
things as job employment rose and fell over time. Bar graphs can be generated
using macros like Sparkbars,
which works with Excel.
Last but not least, turn
your tweets into works of art. Take a look at #TwitterArt
for inspiration, and then think outside the box and use ASCII to tell a tweet
through a picture.
How
to Add Special Characters
Now that you have all
these ideas for using special characters on your social media profiles, how do
you get started? You have a few options. The easiest way is to simply copy
and paste the characters. Alternatively, you can use alt codes to input them yourself
(option key on Mac).
Words
of Warning
While special characters
are widely supported across most browsers, it’s important to note that they
don’t always appear as they should. For one, they don’t always appear on mobile
devices. Additionally, some social media sites won’t allow you to use special
characters, at least in your profile name. Even so, don’t let this deter you.
Experiment with your social media profiles, particularly on Twitter, and then
start tweeting using your newfound knowledge.
