In October of last year, Facebook announced it would be introducing Reactions, a new way for users to respond to posts on the platform. Last month, Reactions launched and was immediately embraced by Facebook users. Those in social media marketing were just as excited. For marketers, Reactions represents a number of exciting new opportunities…
How Reactions Works
Prior to reactions, Facebook users had two basic options for interacting with posts on their timelines. Users could leave comments describing their reactions or could click a small “thumbs up” icon, registering a Like.
The problem: not all content is Likable. Whenever users felt uncomfortable Liking post and couldn’t put their reactions into words, they had no way of interacting with that post. Reactions gives Facebook users five new one-click icons they can use in place of a Like: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. These options allow users to express a fuller range of emotional responses.
Understanding Your Brand’s Reactions
More than anything else, Reactions represents a chance to understand how your brand’s fans – and social media users at large – respond to and interact with your content. With Reactions, it’s now possible to see what kinds of emotions different kinds of posts are inspiring.
Social media marketing experts are already finding ways to use this data to better understand what kinds of responses drive more meaningful brand interactions, as well as what kinds of users are more predisposed to those responses.
Unfortunately, Facebook Insights currently makes it hard to accumulate and sort this data for your social media marketing campaigns. To see posts’ Reactions, users have to examine each post individually, with Insights offering no centralized way to compare data. Many within the social media marketing field expect this to change soon. In the meantime, some marketers are getting a jump on understanding Reactions by compiling and analyzing data independently.
Harnessing Reactions for Social Media Marketing
Reactions is new enough that it’s impossible to say for sure exactly what this feature will offer, but there are already exciting ways to integrate this feature into social media marketing campaigns.
With Reactions, your social media marketing team can…
- Find users who truly “Love” your brand by identifying fans who regularly Love your content. (These users can make great brand evangelists.)
- Track which responses drive strong fan engagement, so that you can produce more of this kind of content.
- Discover exactly what kinds of content cause people to fall in love with your brand.
Want to learn more about how you can get the most out of Facebook for your brand’s social media marketing efforts? Call Qiigo today at (404) 496-6841 to find out how our team will make your brand more Likable than pandas and more Shareable than French fries.
