After months of testing in a few countries, Facebook has finally rolled out globally their new Reactions globally on the 24th of February.
Since then we’ve had enough time to get used to these six reactions (like, love, haha, wow, sad and angry) and analyse how they can influence the relationship between brands and their consumers on Facebook.
First of all, by allowing users to ‘react’ in six different ways to the content they see and interact with on Facebook, the social media platform provides now a more in-depth feedback that allows brands to better understand the type of responses their content elicits. This can be extremely valuable as companies can gain a more nuanced understanding of their customers’ response to their brand and use it to refine and improve the content they share on Facebook.
Whilst at the moment each reaction is counted as having the same value as a ‘like’ in terms of the algorithm used by Facebook to prioritise the posts that will appear in a user’s news feed (for example an ‘angry’ reaction has the same value as a ‘love’ one), this might change in the future. However, Facebook page admins have the ability to analyse each post individually and get a break down of the different reactions it has received. Brands should thus monitor the ‘reactions’ they receive closely and see which posts perform better in order to initially gain a better understanding of their audience and the type of reactions that they want to focus on and then develop a content strategy that focuses on achieving these particular reactions.
Facebook advertisers can also make use of the reactions their ads receive and test different ad variations in order to determine what type of content will work best in this new environment and then tailor future ads according to these insights.
Social media has become extremely important for any business, whether they’re B2C or B2B, that wants to thrive and grow online and as Facebook’s reactions show, social media platforms are becoming increasingly complex and they can provide valuable feedback and insights about a company’s target audience, besides acting as another channel for customer service or driving traffic and sales.
If you’re interested in harnessing the power of social media for your online business, contact our social media specialists today on 0116 326 1116.
