Should You Use Emojis on LinkedIn.

The short answer

Use emoji on LinkedIn if they suit how you write, and stop expecting them to move a post. Posts with three or more emoji earned about 10% more reactions and comments than the typical post in our study, and posts with none 11% less, yet the strongest writers use emoji at almost the same rate as everyone else.

That comes from NBK Social’s own study of 74,119 public posts by 346 prominent LinkedIn writers, collected on 10 September 2026. The gap is about who uses emoji, not what emoji do. The LinkedIn emoji question is a style decision, and the one place the numbers lean against them is the first line.

How we measured it

We counted the public reactions and comments on every post from the 346 writers. The figures below come from the 187 writers whose typical post earns at least 100 reactions and comments: 39,858 posts.

Every number below is a score against the typical post. For each group of posts we found the typical post (the median: half the group did better, half did worse) and divided its reactions and comments by the typical post across the whole set, which earns 320. A score of 1.00 means the group’s typical post did as well as the typical post overall. A score of 1.10 means 10% more. A score of 0.89 means 11% less.

What the numbers say

By how many emoji a post carries:

• Three or more emoji: 1.10, about 10% more than the typical post, across 11,833 posts whose typical post earns 350
• One or two: 1.07, 7% more, across 10,508 posts whose typical post earns 342
• None: 0.89, 11% less, across 17,517 posts whose typical post earns 284

Read on its own, that looks like a reason to add a few. It is not.

Why emoji are not a lever

The test is whether the writers who do best behave differently from everyone else. For emoji they do not. The strongest writers in the set put emoji on 66% of their posts, the typical writer on 62%.

Set that beside the habits where the two groups do split. The strongest writers put hashtags on 6% of posts against 10%, open with a first line of 47 characters against 54, and close on a question on 2% of posts against 4%. Those are differences in behaviour.

Emoji sit in the shared column, alongside media on 97% of posts for both groups and a similar number of blank lines. The strongest writers on LinkedIn are worth reading closely, from their headlines to their posts, but copying their emoji habit copies nothing that separates them.

The raw gap between the emoji groups says more about which writers favour emoji than about what an emoji does to a post. Every score in the study is a pattern, not a cause, and this one most obviously so.

The first line is the exception

The study also asked whether the opening line carries an emoji, and read the answer four ways. Each is a score against the typical post, as above, unless said otherwise:

• On raw reactions and comments: 0.92 with an emoji in the first line, 1.02 without, across 5,450 and 34,379 posts, so 8% below the typical post and 2% above
• Per 1,000 followers, which sets account size aside: 1.05 with, 1.00 without
• Against each writer’s own typical post, which sets account size aside another way: 1.02 with, 1.00 without
• In the share of a post’s reactions and comments that are comments: 0.82 with, 1.04 without

On the two measures that set account size aside, a first-line emoji holds level or sits slightly ahead. The raw score dips, and the comment share drops furthest. When the first line carries an emoji, comments make up a smaller share of what the post earns.

Our view is to keep the first line in words. The strongest writers already keep it shorter than everyone else, and an emoji there buys a small lift on two measures at best while the comment share falls.

Where emoji earn their place

This is judgement rather than measurement, because the study finds no lift to chase. Used as a style, emoji do real work in a few places:

• As markers on a list inside a longer post, doing the job of a bullet
• To separate the sections of a long post so a reader can find their place
• Once, where a sentence could otherwise be read in the wrong tone

And a few places where they cost more than they give:

• In the first line, for the reason above
• In place of words, so the reader has to decode the sentence
• In a post delivering bad news, a correction or anything about people’s jobs

How to type emojis on LinkedIn from a desktop

Both shortcuts belong to the operating system rather than to LinkedIn.

On Windows, Microsoft’s instruction is to press the Windows key and the full stop key together during text entry. The emoji panel opens. Click an emoji, or keep typing to search for one. The same panel carries GIFs and kaomoji.

On a Mac, Apple gives two routes:

1. Press Fn/Globe and E together, or choose Edit, then Emoji & Symbols, to open the Character Viewer, then click an emoji
2. Type a common word such as “heart”, press Fn/Globe and E, and press Return to swap the word for the suggested emoji

What good looks like

A team that posts on LinkedIn, whether from a company page or from several people’s profiles, settles emoji once and writes it down. Yes or no, roughly how many, never in the first line. Then nobody debates it again in an approval thread.

The time saved goes on the habits that do separate the strongest writers: fewer hashtags, a shorter opening line, fewer posts that close on a question. When a team cannot see which of its own habits are working, a social audit is the place to start rather than another round of style changes.

How NBK thinks about LinkedIn style

Style choices are easy to argue about and hard to measure. Emoji are the clearest case: a visible habit with a tempting raw number and nothing underneath it once you compare like with like.

What we would hold to is consistency. A post that sounds like the person or brand behind it, published on a rhythm, inside a LinkedIn content system, is where we would put the effort before any rule about decoration.

Next step

Pull your last thirty LinkedIn posts and mark which open with an emoji. If they do, rewrite the next few openings in words and keep the emoji, if you like them, further down.

If your team is posting regularly but still feels stuck, NBK can help find the constraint in the system.