Facebook's New Reactions are the Best Thing to Happen to Social Media Marketers
You may have noticed our Facebook feeds got a lot more emotional. We are no longer contained to just "liking" posts. With the launch of Facebook's new reactions, we can truly experience how we feel about posts.
This is great news for those posts that never feel right to "like," such as, your friend's cat dying or sympathy anger for a friend's experience of poor customer service.
What does this have to do with marketing you ask? These new emotions are also available on business pages. Your followers now have the opportunity to tell you what they really think about your posts. If they don't like it, they can quickly click and tell you so. Likewise, if they love it, they can also click to tell you that. Therein lies the power.
As social media marketers, we strategize and collect data to make sure we are reaching the right audiences with the right content at the right time.
With these new reactions, content can now receive "loves" or "wows" above the standard "like." The content you create should aim to achieve these reactions. Share a blog post which gained a significant number of "wows," then better get to writing similar posts of value. On the flip side, did your post make people sad? Did it make them angry (we hope not), but if it did, maybe that content isn't right for your audience.
This might not seem very technical but social media is about connecting with your audience and building a brand community. As social media marketers, we now have a more precise way of measuring exactly how someone feels about the content we produce and share.
These new emotions are easily measured in the Facebook Insights right beside the likes. However, don't discredit the amount of "likes" as those will always be a strong metric as it is the easiest way for a fan to acknowledge a post.
We're interested to see if other platforms follow suit with increased ways to engage above a "like." What do you think about the new reactions? Like 'em? Love 'em? Hate 'em?
Original Article