Now that Facebook has announced that it’s going beyond simple Likes to offer a series of “Reactions” emojis for content, marketers are debating how they should (or shouldn’t) treat this new feature, and the data asset it creates. In a nutshell, the new Facebook Reactions options give brands (and individuals) some granularity in gauging the sentiment of their posts. The options include “Love,” “Haha,” “Wow,” “Sad,” and “Angry.”
It’s worth pointing out that in the Facebook interface, only one total count of Reactions is displayed — including the sum of Likes and the other Reactions — versus a reaction-by-reaction breakdown. As shown in the screenshot below, you can see the total number of Reactions (including Likes), but to see how many people used a particular one, you have to hover over the relevant emoji.
The response from marketers has been mixed but everyone agrees there are more questions than answers at this point. Will Reactions drive a decrease in Comments? How could they factor into the newsfeed? Imagine if a consumer is overly prone to react with “Haha” or “Angry,” would their newsfeed be over-populated by content that elicits similar responses from other users?
Or is this really Facebook’s response to Twitter’s Brand Hub? Imagine if you could segment your audience by propensity to react in a certain way to certain topics or content formats…. And then target them (perhaps via dark posts) with exactly that kind of content…. This starts to feel quite powerful, especially for brands who may want to target certain demographics more likely to engage via emotion-specific Reactions.
In the meantime, TrackMaven customers have asked if we will include the other Reactions as engagement signals in our analysis. TrackMaven uses Facebook’s API to collect engagement data, including not just Likes, but also Shares and Comments. TrackMaven already analyzes and reports on each of these separately for more granular engagement insight.
Currently, the count of specific Facebook Reactions other than Likes are not surfaced through the API. Facebook hasn’t announced when the counts of other Reactions will be exposed through their API. Assuming the feature is successful in the native interface, it would make sense for Facebook to update the API accordingly, but no timetable has been announced at this point.
In the meantime, we will continue to stay connected with Facebook, so that if and when they update the API to expose counts of specific Reactions beyond Likes, we can incorporate that into the TrackMaven analysis.