Facebook launches Facebook Reactions!

Today Facebook launched Facebook Reactions, a major update that will certainly change the way people interact on the platform.  Starting now, you have more options than to just ‘Like’ a post; you can select from Love, HaHa, Wow, Sad and Angry. Like is of course still an option.

There were many times where ‘Like’ didn’t seem appropriate, for example when a friend was expressing a personal tragedy, or perhaps the loss of a beloved pet. But what we can safely assume from a marketing perspective is that this will also change the way we analyze engagement with our social communities.

While we will still look at overall engagement numbers, we are going to start analyzing community sentiment with regard to a particular post, and you can expect to see a wave of different metrics evolving to gauge this as well as different software and services to measure it.

So while this will mean a more focused look at engagement, it will also mean that it is one more thing to analyze and take into account when you are developing your content strategy.  It is a good excuse to dust off your social media goals and evaluate how they fit in with the new Facebook Reactions options.  Keep in mind that this change also makes it easier for your community to express their displeasure with your posts, so you will need to monitor that as well.

In today’s Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg https://www.facebook.com/zuck?fref=ts says that so far Love is by far the most popular reaction so far.  We love it too.