Facebook Reactions for PR
Your newsfeed is getting emotional. Facebook's latest milestone has seen Reactions introduced to its interactive repertoir, ricocheting throughout online communities and influencing brand engagement. Just like a tired toddler or tumultuous teenager can require careful management, how can public relations see soaring social media and organisational growth, without growing pains?
Facts
There are five Reactions: Love, Wow, Haha, Sad, Angry.
Chosen for their cross-cultural resonance around the globe.
How do you react? Select by hovering over the 'Like' button with your mouse or holding it down on touch devices.
Why can't you 'dislike'? Zuckerberg has said many times that he feels a "dislike" button could convey too much negativity.
Facebook’s product manager Sammi Krug said "We understand that this is a big change, and want to be thoughtful about rolling this out.
"For more than a year we have been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most.
"We also looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer."
1. Understanding Audiences
CEO at renowned Social Media agency Laundry Service, Jason Stein says,"Over time, likes on Facebook became a lightweight, proxy metric."
While Socialbakers’ communications manager Ryan Hatoum says Reactions will give brand managers more insight into their audiences.
“(Brands) are going to have a lot more data to play around with when it comes to understanding how their content is performing, and how their audiences are receiving it," he says.
2. News Value
Reactions could affect how publishers prioritise content. For example, the Huffington Post in February 2015 released a global editorial strategy called "What’s Working", inspired partly because positive news tends to be more widely shared on social media.
Editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington said, "You’re not as likely to share a story of a beheading, right? I mean, you’ll read it".
However, now readers on Facebook can quickly engage with such stories and can choose to respond angrily. Just like with a like button, that interaction sends a boost to the algorithm. So perhaps bad news will lead online.
3. Strategy
“It puts another level of complexity around how marketers strategize around looking at Facebook. A marketer can’t develop strategies around specific clicks or actions,” ListenFirst's Klein said. “Facebook is a dynamic landscape, and the best marketers are aware how dynamic it is.”
4. Engagement goes backwards
When people have too many options, choice overload can occur, causing consumers to avoid making a decision at all. Not all Facebook users speak emoji as a second language. The invasion of emojis could baffle and alienate some demographics. Social users share, like, or comment on content because it supports or aligns with their sense of self. They are telling the world who they are and what they believe in. They are shaping the way others perceive them. When you consider these psychological reasons for interacting with content, those six Reaction choices become a bit more weighted.
Do all users want to be seen as the kind of people who use smiley faces? Consumers might fear that using the Love emoji too frequently makes them look childish and overeager, or that the Sad emoji reveals vulnerabilities that they’d rather not share. And what happens when consumers don’t know how to respond to something? If a video makes them feel several emotions at once, do they opt for Haha emoji or Sad emoji? Or do they just keep scrolling without engaging at all?
5. A picture, not an emoji, says 1000 words
When a consumer uses the Angry emoji, for example, marketers will need to determine whether this anger is directed at the brand or the content. It could be either one, or both. If Facebook Reactions existed when Cecil the lion was killed, a brand sharing the news would likely have received dozens of Angry emojis in response. Though consumers aren’t upset with the brand here - the anger is clearly directed at the content. This makes it difficult to track and compare data trends meaningfully, especially over extended time periods.
Another thing that will make Reactions hard to measure is the fact that sometimes, an emoji just won’t cut it. A brand’s content might inspire so much fury that an emoji - with its cute round face - just isn’t an accurate representation of how they're feeling (and for certain people, nothing compares to cursing in all caps).
6. Novelty
For some users — particularly those who are anti-emoji — the Like will continue to be the default form of acknowledgement. For users excited by the novelty of choice, the Like might become neglected, at least initially.
7. Algorithms
How will the Newsfeed algorithm adapt? Initially, Facebook plans to count any Reaction as a sign that the user wants to see more content of that type. As demonstrated above, negative reactions in particular are not always that straightforward. Unless Facebook can find a way of determining the intent behind the Reaction, it can’t be sure that an Angry emoji means “I’m angry this is happened, but I’m glad I read the article” or “I’m furious at this brand and I don’t want to see this stuff again”.
8. Measurement and Analysis
Facebook Insights is basic and limited enough as it is. If it’s going to handle a range of Reactions, the dashboard is going to need some work. Reaction data will only be valuable if we have a way to use it.
On the other hand, Facebook topic data might be more equipped to handle Reactions. Where sentiment analysis is concerned, this could be a gold mine. But topic data is still in its infancy, and is only available via a selected number of DataSift’s partners. This isn’t something that the majority of small businesses are able to budget for — at least not yet. In the mean time, they'll need to find their own ways of dealing with the data.
User Guide
Washington Post humbly submits the following Facebook Reaction rules...the jury is still out on whether they'll catch on.
Like: The understated white bread of Facebook reactions, this says more about the likers than it does the posts they like. Likers are indifferent both to Facebook changes and — in all likelihood — to your post, as well. Their thumbs-up acknowledges that they have seen it, but that they couldn’t really be bothered to work up much of an emotional reaction. Likers are cool, distant, dispossessed: They know better than to be earnest on the Internet.
Love: Deploy the heart when you really like something — this is the “like,” but with feeling. “Love” is patient, kind and unironic. It is an unbridled show of positivity. In instances of tragedy, one imagines, the “love” button will also double as a signal of empathy and support. But in general, expect this to be the high-pitched “omg, love it” of reaction emoji.
Haha: LOL, LMAO, ROFL, call it what you will: Use this reaction when something has made you laugh, whether out loud or in your head. The “haha” occupies a difficult space: Many of the things you find funny also provoke amazement (wow) and appreciation (love). Keep your audience in mind for this. You don’t want to be the ones dropping hearts in an “lol” kind of crowd.
Wow: Broadly applicable to fake news articles, overshare-y personal rants and most of the things your relatives post, the wow will — I suspect — become Facebook’s much-needed wordless expression of muted disdain and skepticism. This is “wow” in the “… are you serious?” sense, and not “wow” as in r/EarthPics. It is a good way to signal your disapproval for something without coming across like a complete prig.
Sad: Given Facebook’s cultural and algorithmic preferences for everything positive and upbeat, it’s difficult to imagine too many scenarios where the “sad” will be needed. You could try it on those personal announcements — deaths, divorces, etc — that have historically seemed inappropriate to “like.” But isn’t an emoji kind of disingenuous, there? We think the heart goes a lot farther in telling someone you care.
Angry: A little too aggressive for direct confrontation, the angry face is ideal for expressing righteous solidarity — as in, “I am EQUALLY outraged by this ridiculous news article/political gaffe/stupid and unavoidable meme.” Use it when you agree with the poster, not when you yourself are angered by what he posted. Otherwise you come off as passive-aggressive and kind of impetuous.
How will your Reaction's align with your brand?
Gaby x
