Unless you’re living under a rock, we’re sure that you know by now about Facebook’s new ‘Reactions’. For the first time ever, users will be allowed to express their reactions using not only ‘like’ posts but also ‘love’, ‘wow’, ‘haha’, ‘sad’ and ‘angry’.
The new feature came about after Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced to the News Feed team that it was time to move past the simple ‘like’.The reactions were initially determined by analysing what one-word comments and stickers were most used when responding to posts. And while there is still no ‘dislike’ button, these extra five emojis have proven very successful during testing in Spain and Ireland according to Facebook.
“We understand that this is a big change, and want to be thoughtful about rolling this out. For more than a year we have been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most. We also looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer.” – Facebook product manager, [highlight] Sammi Krug [/highlight]
So, what do ‘Reactions’ mean for your brand?
Well, firstly it gives you far better insight into your customers. Reactions open up a multitude of new ways for users to express their feelings towards the content. Where previously they could only Like, Comment, Share or ignore it, now they can share more accurately how they are responding to the post.
“Reactions gives businesses a really crisp way of understanding on a multi-dimensional level how people are feeling about the things that they’re posting.” – [highlight] Richard Sim [/highlight] , Facebook’s director of monetization product marketing.
Brands will also now be able to see how many people ‘reacted’ to the post, rather than just ‘liking’ it. This will refresh and give more depth to Facebook insights and you will be able to see ‘Reaction counts’ within the page’s insights tool.
Lastly, it is predicted that the introduction of ‘Reactions’ will sharply decrease the amount of comments that are seen on posts as it makes it easier for the user to be able to express their feelings without typing a comment.
So, now that you know what Reactions are and how they can help you better understand your customers, here’s a quick demo on how to actually use the things:
Cover photo © [highlight] Bloomberg Business [/highlight]