How will Facebook’s Reactions buttons impact brands?

We knew it was coming and now it’s here across the planet on desktops, tablets and mobile devices. The five new emotions – Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry – animatedly pop-up when you hover over the Like button on a desktop or hold it down on a mobile device. We want to express our emotions when reacting to a post, don’t we? Well reaction to the new Reactions is mixed with some users saying – all we wanted was a Dislike button.

How will Reactions affect brands?

Well there’s been a lot of chat about what impact Reactions will have on brand reputation. Users will be able to interact with news and developments posted by businesses and also their advertising using Reactions. Firms aren’t able to block users from marking its posts and ads with Anger so it’s bad for brand reputation, right? Possibly, but there are many ways in which Reactions will empower brands.

• Advertising insight – Reactions clicked on in response to adverts will offer greater insight and help brands fine-tune their message and inform future campaigns.
• Segmentation – if Facebook allows brands to have a full breakdown of Reactions data, advertisers could run an advert gather the data and then target only those users who had previously clicked Love or Wow for their next ad.
• Customer relations – if a user has posted a complaint about a product or service and it’s getting a lot of Sad or Angry Reactions, then the brand can reach out to those people directly in a similar way to how customer services departments use Twitter.
• Angry mitigates comments – users already did voice their displeasure by writing a comment and now many will only express their anger with a Reactions’ emoji.
• It takes out the guesswork – you never really know how customers felt about an ad campaign. Instead of just hoping for a particular response, you will have the data to confirm it.

Successful advertising campaigns elicit emotion from consumers, and Facebook is giving customers a way to register their emotions instantly. And the more we understand how our customers feel, the better.

If you’d like to find out more about how social media can benefit your business then get in touch. We offer social media and content marketing packages to suit all businesses.