You News Feed just got more expressive. After months of tests, Facebook released recently “Reactions” – a feature meant to give users the ability to express themselves beyond the “Like” button.
What does this change mean for Winnipeg social media marketing and your business? How is this new feature going to affect your social media strategy? Will it impact your reach or engagement levels?
Don’t fret because this article will explain everything you need to know about the mechanism of Reactions and how they change the game.
- How Do They Work?
For users, it is quite easy – they must simply hover with the mouse over the like button, and they will be able to choose from new six Facebook reactions. Specifically, they can react by being angry about a post, liking it, being sad, loving it, being wowed or laughing. For mobile users, the feature is slightly different meaning that they must keep the like button pressed to see the reactions. Some users have claimed that they needed to restart their phones to see the new feature on their phones.
Apparently, according to Facebook, the reactions are treated like “Likes”. Specifically, if someone selects the “angry” button, Facebook will consider that the person is interested in that topic – thus, it sees it as if it would be a Like. The reason for which Facebook would consider an “angry” as a “like” could be given by a study conducted by Jonah Berger, cited by socialtriggers.com, in which it is stated that the content which triggers angry reactions is much more likely to be shared than the one that simply makes people anxious, for instance. That means that people want to be challenged online and thus see things that get them out of their comfort zone.
Social media marketers will see the change a bit differently than a regular user. The first noticeable thing is that notifications will look like this “X reacted to your post”. On the post, there will be a range of icons that represents the reactions. When clicking on the link, you will see who exactly reacted to what.
One important aspect regarding business pages is that everyone can see the reactions to your post, but you can also see the reactions from any page. There is a clear advantage here when it comes to competition
- Insights
Sadly, the general trends of reactions cannot be seen on your business Page anymore. Instead, you must open the insights page for the specific reaction that you want to analyze. Another aspect is that the numbers aren’t separated into paid versus organic, and thus, you can’t know which are the reactions influenced when boosting a page versus when you simply let it grow organically. If you wish to see the insights in a post, then simply click the reach number. Next, a screen with numbers for each reaction for the post and its shares will appear. You can also reach Insights by going to the navigation bar from your Page and select the posts in which you are interested. By clicking on a certain category of reactions, you will see exactly which people reacted and how.
- How Can You Benefit From Them?
Firstly, don’t be shy and ask your fans to use them as much as possible. By doing so, you will receive very good feedback on your content, and you will also raise the overall engagement of your page and its organic reach.
Also, if you wish to stimulate the offering of a specific number of reactions, try to organize a contest in which you offer a gift if a certain number of “loves” for instance is achieved.
Furthermore, they can be used to reduce the number of some bad reviews. More exactly, if you know that there will be a malfunction to your website, for instance, announce it on Facebook and hope that people will be more tempted to use the “angry” button and skip the part where they leave a nasty comment.
Finally, perhaps one of the biggest benefits that you can get from the reactions button is that you can now spy on your competitors more easily, and see how people react to their content.
To conclude with, you can rest assured – Facebook is preventing marketers from getting bored. Whether this new feature is good or bad, only time can tell. However, for now, there are certain palpable benefits from which anyone can gain something.
