What Are These New Facebook Reactions and
What Do They Mean for My Business?
A few months ago,
Mark Zuckerberg treated his staff to a movie night. The film…Pixar’s Inside
Out. The Facebook staff watched in confused amazement wondering who these
emotions were and more importantly, where is the big, blue and white
like-button thumb? A few individuals voiced what everyone else was
thinking…wouldn’t it be swell if Facebook allowed people to have more than
one possible emotional reaction to the things they see and read?
A legendary hack-a-thon ensued, spanning an entire month. The result? We
now have the choice to not just like something, but to LOVE something,
laugh at something, or express shock, sadness and anger. To express our new
emotions, all we have to do is hover over the traditional blue and white
thumb and six new emojis emerge. For mobile users, simply hold down the
thumb and your new emojis will appear.
From a social standpoint, we are all feeling liberated at our ability to
express more than one emotion without the necessity of typing out a
complete thought. But what does this mean for businesses and people
marketing on Facebook? Quite a bit actually...
Aside from the obvious point that you can now identify and quantify how
many people feel about your post, there are some handy things you can now
do as a business owner that may give you an upper hand with your
competition. Because these emotional responses are public, you can do some
recon work and check out how people are reacting to your competitors'
content as well. Based on your gathered intel, you can now customize your
content to better reflect what people are interested in.
This new functionality can also enable you to get more bang for your buck
while advertising on Facebook. If you go to your Insights page on Facebook,
you can access data on people’s reactions to each post. If one or more
posts are engaging more individuals or are loved by more individuals, you can
choose to boost that post for a fee. This takes the guesswork out of
deciding where to spend your advertising dollars.
We are all well aware of the reality that it’s just not realistic that
you're going to “like” every post that makes it into your feed because
sooner or later the content will be about some atrocity that’s being
committed that you want to stop. So, instead of liking the post, you, like
most people, just keep scrolling. It’s not that the post was not engaging,
it’s just that people don’t want to “like” the content. With the new
reactions, people can express sadness or anger at the content of the post,
letting them know that it was read and stirred some emotion. The upside for
your business is that you can post more meaningful content about issues
that are important to them and not worry about losing points for attention
because all of the reactions count as “likes” on your page.
Have you ever had one of those days when your server goes down or your
payment processing company is having issues? It can really derail your day
and cause some ruffled feathers with your customers. People love to go
negative on social media if they feel they’re not being heard. The reaction
emojis can now help you avoid negative comments in your feed if something is
not going quite right with your company. Next time this happens, try
pinning a post to the top of your page explaining the situation and perhaps
offering a discount to anyone who was inconvenienced by the event. Ask them
to show some love to your company by clicking the heart emoji and watch a
potentially negative experience turn into an opportunity to engage in a
positive way with your customers.
As these reactions catch on, you can be sure more creative ideas will begin
to flow on using them to benefit your company. You may even try holding a
competition for a free giveaway while also showing people how to use the
new reaction emojis. Ask people to show some love in exchange for a free
product or service that you offer. Not only will you boost your likes, you
will also make people loyal fans. Get creative and have fun. After all,
it’s what the new emojis are all about.
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