What Does The Launch of Facebook ‘Reactions’ Mean For Businesses?

Since the start, very little has changed with the mechanics of engaging with a post on Facebook. Likes and comments have always been the objective data used to measure engagement and the introduction of ‘sticker comments’ definitely slipped under the radar.

Has anyone ever posted one?

The social network giant is now looking to roll out a new feature called ‘Reactions’ – which aims to introduce more meaning than the ambiguous ‘like’ button.

You will now be able to respond to posts with one of the following emoticons: ‘love’, ‘haha,’ ‘wow’, ‘sad’, ‘angry’ – as well as old reliable, ‘like.’

But what does this mean for businesses?

Well first thing’s first, we now have 5 new types of engagements to report and measure. What reaction are you trying to provoke with your content? With the existing system, engagements can be skewed quite heavily when delivering bad or upsetting news.

It can often seem insensitive to ‘like’ a sad post, but we’ve never had any other option of quickly showing our condolences without commenting. With the introduction of ‘Reactions,’ we can better understand how audiences respond to content – shaping what and how we deliver it.

Emotional Marketing

Engaging with our audiences on an emotional level is proving to be very powerful in the digital age. We live in a time where everyone knows everything about everyone. We have a world of information at our fingertips.

These 5 new engagement tools have given Facebook and advertisers a whole load more ammunition for targeting. It’s no longer just our physical interests that play a part in what content we see.

Our emotional interests will now be a huge consideration and will begin to shape our online experiences. It shouldn’t be long until posts on our newsfeeds are prioritised in order of how we may respond to them.

We’ve written before about the introduction of Facebook’s new organic targeting tool – but just think of the new possibilities if it incorporates data from ‘Reactions’. The opportunity to target content specifically to those who have ‘loved’ your content before could be very fruitful.

Further Information

If you would like to learn more about social media marketing or content creation – why not attend one of our training courses?

From Social Media Strategy and Online Marketing Strategy to Content Creation – we will help you understand how to understand your market, create an online strategy, identify which social media platforms to use and how to create marketable content.

Contact us online or give us a call on 01202 684 009 to find out more and to book your place.