As virtually everyone knows by know, Facebook has rolled out their new ‘reactions’ on both the desktop and mobile app versions of the social network. The reactions are alternatives to the ‘Like’ button, which has been around for years. People have been begging Facebook for additional options for a very long time, but Facebook didn’t want to move too quickly.
After years of thought and months of testing they settled on adding the following new choices along with keeping the traditional Like button. The reaction options are, “Love, HaHa, Wow, Sad and Angry.” These new choices will add a significant amount of diversity to the options people can respond to a post with, which may be very nice for marketers.
While it has only been a couple days since the launch, it seems that the move is being well received by Facebook users. Of course, people are having fun experimenting with the different options and how they can be used. From my personal experience, however, it does seem that everyone is already starting to settle into the proper use of each of the different reaction options.
Most people are continuing to use the Like button for most things, which makes sense. When people are talking about controversial things (maybe sharing a story about Donald Trump’s latest antics, for example) people are using the “WOW” and “ANGRY” reactions. The other reactions are also getting a nice amount of use.
While there hasn’t been any major surveys or studies on this yet, it certainly appears that the new options are a major success for Facebook and their users.
For marketers, it is likely going to be a great option as well. This change will give us additional data, which is always helpful in planning out an effective strategy. While it is definitely too soon for a study to look at something like which reactions lead to sales or signups, these will almost certainly be coming out in the coming months.
For now, however, wise marketers are taking a close look on what reactions their posts are getting and what they can learn from the data.
