Here’s something you might love: You don’t just need to “like” Facebook posts anymore.
Almost one year ago Facebook announced that users would soon be able to express a wider range of emotions through emoji, now they are delivering on that promise by rolling it out to all users.
The new ‘Reactions’ give you buttons for ‘Like,’ Love,’ Haha,’ Wow,’ ‘Sad’ or ‘Angry’ and to use them you just need to hold down the Like button (on mobile) or hover over it if you’re on a desktop.
How to Add Reactions:
To add a reaction, hold down the Like button on mobile or hover over the Like button on desktop to see the reaction image options, then tap either Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad or Angry. For the mobile app, you’ll need to download Facebook’s latest update.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don’t like their posts. People want to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions.”
How It Impact Businesses:
In the company’s press release, Facebook Reactions is also touted as an opportunity for “businesses and publishers to better understand how people are responding to their content on Facebook.”
How the responses will affect which posts show up in your News Feed is still to be decided — should more posts marked “love” be bumped up, or posts marked with “angry”?
It’s something new to measure, and definitely more diverse than a tally of Likes, but I’d like you to strongly consider how you’ll actually use the insight you get from spending time and energy analyzing the types of reactions used. Will this help you drive more business from social? Will it help you gain a better understanding of your audience?
As the co-founder and CPO of Smiply Measured, Adam Schoenfeld wrote over a year ago:
“Focusing exclusively on Likes, replies, and basic engagement metrics won’t tell the whole story.”
And while emoji responses are fun, as a marketer, you should be focusing on something much more impactful than the type of smiley face someone uses on your post.
But for now, you can release all those emotions you’ve kept in for so long on Facebook. Let us know how you feel about the new options in the comments below.
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