Facebook Reactions for Brands: “Love” and “Wow”

The long-awaited Facebook Reactions launched this week, allowing users to go beyond “liking” a post. Reactions now include options for “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad” or “angry.” At this initial stage, users seem to enjoy the Reactions, but how will brands be affected by this update?

According to Wired, “Advertisers don’t like Facebook’s Reactions. They love them.” Seeing more specifically how users respond to ads and content can give marketers greater insight into what their consumers are looking for, which can be useful in creating future campaigns, new products and more social posts, in general.

Advertisers will now have exciting opportunities to analyze campaigns with the added insights of the emotions they evoke. Brands can experiment by posting a call to action for their followers to give feedback on different posts. We do want to mention, however, that advertisers should be aware of the context in which Reactions are used. For example, a user might select the “sad” Reaction to a brand post about a new product, only because they love the brand and wish the product were available in their area.

For now, all Reactions will be treated the same as a “like” in the algorithm. Facebook has noted that they will use the new emojis to learn more about what users like and their emotions, but it is unclear how exactly this will alter measurement and the newsfeed algorithm in the future.

Facebook is constantly trying to improve users’ timelines, and using emotions will give them a huge benefit in sharing relevant information over other social media platforms. Although all Reactions are treated equal, businesses can see the breakdown of Reactions to all of their posts on Facebook’s Page Insights. Currently, the Facebook API does not allow data gathering on Reactions, but a new GraphAPI (2.6) is expected in March or April, and we may see this additional functionality then.

If you do not already have Reactions in your Facebook feed, here is how to get them.

How do you plan to use Facebook Reactions? 

Featured image from Mashable.