Can Facebook reactions make or break your business? Adding emojis to your content is a great way to connect with your audience and ensure that your message is communicated effectively.
We’ve long known emotions affect sales. People don’t want a list of features. What people want is the feeling that your product or service provides, whether that’s relaxation or joy. Even though marketers use emotion in their campaigns, it’s not always easy to measure your audience’s mood.
Facebook reactions give your audience more options than just liking your post. They can express emotions like anger, support, or shock. You can use Facebook buttons to learn about your audience, optimize digital campaigns, and improve engagement.
Facebook reactions
Facebook reactions are emojis available by hovering over the “like” icon on posts, advertisements, and individual comments. The Facebook reactions are love, haha, wow, sad, and angry. You can express how you feel about something by choosing from a variety of emojis.
If a Facebook user likes, reacts, or comments on a post, they will automatically start following that post, unless they manually unfollow it. This ensures that fans are made aware of any new reactions or comments, providing users with more opportunities to interact.
What this means is that instead of the Facebook like icon being the only way to measure if a post is popular, the algorithm reportedly now gives more weight to other reactions, such as the love, haha, wow, sad, and angry reactions. This means that people who use the reaction buttons on Facebook may see more content that is relevant to them in their news feed.
Best practices when using Facebook reactions in your social media marketing campaign
If you want to get more reactions to your posts, either use emojis or follow these best practices for social media. This will help to keep your posts and ads relevant and effective.
1. Test and optimize posts
Should you use emojis when posting on Facebook or placing ads? The only way to know for sure which of two options is better is to perform A/B testing. When used appropriately, emojis can be a helpful way to communicate with your audience and won’t negatively affect your brand.
Emojis can be used to make text stand out, show how you feel about the topic, or get somebody’s attention to your message. Some brands create a list of emojis for their company that best represent their company to avoid using.
Perform a split test to see if your use of emojis increases or decreases Facebook reactions by:
- Creating two identical posts, except add an emoji to one of them
- Sharing the posts on similar days and times
- Reviewing responses to see if engagement differed between the posts
Don’t forget to use emojis in your headlines, body copy, and link descriptions! You should test out all the options and see which one gives you better results.
2. Don’t tell your audience what emoji to use
A Facebook reaction is an emotional response that your audience feels. You can’t presume to know their feelings. Nor should you. Instead of telling your followers to like or love your post, show them what you want them to feel by liking and loving other people’s posts.
Words and images that evoke an emotional response are more likely to be well-received than those that don’t. Also, share the emoji you would like them to copy.
If your Facebook marketing campaign isn’t going as planned, take a step back and look at your target market, your marketing strategy, and your analytics.
3. Generate overall insights
Reactions aren’t the end-all to social media marketing. There will always be a few people who laugh at serious topics or get angry over them. This metric can be paired with others to get a clear understanding of your audience.
Reaction metrics (e.g. likes, shares, comments) can be used alongside other analytic tools to help determine the relevance of a post or ad, customer sentiment, and conversion rates. tools that allow you to see if your posts are being well-received or falling flat with your fans.
4. Engage with fans using Facebook buttons
Are you putting in the extra effort to show you care about your fans’ posts and comments? Sometimes your followers need a little encouragement to start using Facebook’s reaction buttons.
When a fan offers support, tap the “care” button. Laughing and crying are both normal reactions to hearing something funny or sad. If you show a range of emotions in your posts and comments, users may be more likely to engage and add their own emotions.
5. Don’t haphazardly pick new emojis
This means that some icons are more effective than others at delivering a message. Some people have interesting backgrounds that may not be suited for your brand.
Not everyone knows the meaning of every emoji, so you might want to be careful about which one you use. If you use the wrong emoji, people might think you’re giving them the middle finger.
6. Collect more emotional data
Reactions are a type of emotional data, which is a part of a larger trend of ad tech collecting emotional signals from sources like facial expressions and emoticons. This data will eventually be used for improved targeting.
What if we could use technology to understand our emotions and the emotions of others? The success of an advertisement is not only dependent on timing, but also on the context in which it is seen.
Similarly, Bryan Segal, CEO of social technology firm Engagement Labs, said that the integration of these emoji-like buttons provides more qualitative emotional intelligence from Facebook rather than simply quantitative information, such as the number of likes.
7. Adjust its algorithm so sentiment is a ranking factor
Oren Greenberg, the founder of digital marketing consultancy Kurve, agrees that Reactions are an easy way for Facebook to dip its toe into sentiment analysis and said he expects Facebook will add Reactions to its algorithm as a ranking factor, which, in turn, will impact the posts users see.
According to Mike Jacobs, managing partner of media at boutique ad agency Proper Villains, separating out likes, loves, and the negative response gives a much clearer view of consumer response. He believes that Facebook will follow by adding to the scoring of its algorithm.
A more detailed view of user responses could allow for better post optimization, as well as better data on what content is most popular with consumers. This could result in better content and more visibility.
8. Better segment users
By classifying emotions, Facebook will be able to get a better idea of users’ moods and preferences, and that they will be able to segment users based on these reactions. Facebook can show different types of content to different users in order to better match their interests.
By using insights into users’ emotional states, Facebook could figure out what kinds of posts and ads to show in users’ News Feeds.
9. Offer emotional targeting
The social network could use emotional data for ad targeting, which would allow advertisers to zero in on users based on their reactions to a type of content, said David Erickson, vice president of online marketing for public relations firm Karwoski & Courage.
He stated that conservative political campaigns could target Facebook users who reacted angrily to articles about Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, or President Obama. The same could be done for liberal candidates, but targeting users who reacted angrily to articles about conservative politicians.
10. Better serve more relevant content in news feeds
Data from Reactions could be used to improve the content users see in their News Feeds.
Adam Binder, the founder of Creative Click Media, has said that the Like button on Facebook was originally put there to help Facebook collect data about what kinds of content users are interested in, so that Facebook can then show them more posts like that in the future.
This new development of six Reactions gives Facebook more data to work with in order to better serve users with content that is relevant to them. According to Binder, Facebook will eventually use this information to show users only the content that is most useful and intriguing to them.
If a user reacts to a lot of posts with the “Haha” reaction, Facebook’s data analysis will eventually result in the user’s News Feed being filled primarily with posts and ads that are likely to be humorous.
Mike Coughlin, who founded the advertising agency Digital Blue Creative, said that being able to use data to customize what is delivered in the News Feed results in a better user experience. This, in turn, could mean that users will spend more time on Facebook.
11. Offer ads served next to posts that elicit positive responses
Additionally, Facebook reactions give advertisers the potential to show ads next to posts that have generated positive reactions.
Even if an ad is not related to the content of the post it is next to, it could still have a negative effect on the viewer if the post is making them mad or sad. People who are in a good mood are more likely to be persuaded by an ad, while those in a bad mood are more likely to be skeptical.
Analyzing Facebook reactions as engagement metrics
If you want to improve the performance of your digital campaigns, it helps to understand how your content makes people feel. You can use social media management tools and Facebook Insights to get data about how your audience uses the Facebook reaction buttons.
You won’t fully understand your audience by just looking at Facebook reactions. Use engagement metrics and other KPIs, in addition to social media monitoring tools, to get a clear picture of audience sentiment.
To find out how your social media advertisement or post was received, follow these steps.
1. Review Facebook insights
When you create a Facebook Business page, you get access to Facebook analytics, which is called Page Insights. Click on “Insights” and then “Reach” to access data about reactions. There are two ways to view reaction metrics:
- Reactions, Comments, and Shares: Each of these engagement metrics get lumped together to form a graph showing your overall engagement.
- Reactions: This is where you can see a breakdown of emojis used during your selected timeframe.
This information provides a broad overview of your performance and customer sentiment, but you may get more detailed insights by using social media software.
2. Run a report in your social media management software
Sprout Social is a program that allows users to see how positive or negative a message is. This report gives you a breakdown of each reaction per post. The data in your software program can be examined or exported for further analysis.
3. Check Facebook ad sentiment
View campaign-specific reactions using the Facebook Ads Manager. To adjust which columns are visible while working in a campaign: 1. select the campaign 2. click “View” 3. tap “Customize Columns” To add the “Post Reactions” column, check the box next to it and hit the “apply” button.
You can’t then see how your view broke down by reaction type unless you click on the breakdown. This will show you reactions to individual ads.
4. Develop insights
All this data is great, but what does it all mean? What are the key ways people engage with your brand? What can Facebook reactions tell you about your audience?
Use your social media metrics to learn about:
- Conversions: Identify posts leading to conversion activities, whether that’s a click-through to your website, an email sign-up, or a purchase. Is there a correlation between emotions expressed on these posts versus lower-converting posts?
- Negative sentiment: Do posts with “anger” emojis have anything in common? It may be a topic, headline, or content-related. Double-check the conversion rates of these posts, as for some industries, anger increases sales. But if that’s not your industry, you may be able to create a list of terms, phrases, or subject matter to avoid.
- Brand ambassadors: Do certain people click “care” or “love” on your posts? If so, this person may be a brand advocate and open to further engagement opportunities.
