Add a Noun/ Verb (Love), few adjectives (Sad, Angry) & few interjections (Haha, Wow) and you get the new ensemble cast of Facebook, ready to disrupt Social media, as we know it.
I am sure by now you are wondering what’s so disruptive about this minor enhancement that Facebook recently launched. Let’s see some data points…..the very reason why this launch assumes enormous proportion.
- Facebook has 1.59 billion users worldwide, highest for any Social media platform.
- 42% of marketers report that Facebook is critical or important to their business. (Source: State of Inbound Marketing 2012
- On an average, the Like and Share Buttons are viewed across almost 10 million websites daily. (Source: Facebook as of 10/2/2014)
- Every 60 seconds on Facebook
- 293,000 statuses are updated,
- 136,000 photos are uploaded,
- 510 comments are posted (Source: The Social Skinny).
- Most importantly, approx. 4 mn postsare liked by Facebook users every 60 seconds
- Add to this the average time spent per Facebook visit of 20 minutes/ day (Source: Infodocket)
So What’s new with these data points..…I agree with your thought..….these are just data points….errrr……this is where Facebook has played the smartest card so far.
Mark Zuckerberg describes new Reactions as “company's biggest design change to date” and went against his own philosophy of “move fast and break things” for this one. “We’ve been working on this for a while. It’s surprisingly complicated to make an interaction that you want to be that simple,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at a public town hall in Menlo Park, California, in September 2015, the first time Facebook publicly acknowledged it was working on a change.
Facebook stores more than 300 petabytes of data and has multiple algorithms to categorize various content/ comments on its platform into meaningful data points for marketers to leverage its network.
"We will initially use any Reaction similar to a Like to infer that you want to see more of that type of content," Facebook said in a separate blog post. The company said it will also use "Reactions" to track user behavior and for ad delivery.
If one looks at the recent Facebook initiatives of “Memories from past year”, 360 degree Video content, GIFs, Facebook for Work or the Upcoming Virtual Reality, all these have been aimed towards introducing new content types or mediums to engage with the larger community but none which indicates what one feels about that content. Yes, Comments section has existed since the launch but we all know that its adoption rate is just a fraction of “Likes” phenomenon. “Reactions” has the potential to make this phenomenon“Infinitely” better and provide great insights to how people engage.
7C’s framework (Context -> Content -> Customize -> Compare -> Connect -> Convenience -> Culture) to evaluate new “Reactions”
1. Context:
Notwithstanding the varying adoption rates across countries, in few years, Facebook will have tons of “Rich data” available for Marketers to leverage and micro target specific audiences. “Like” button, though still powerful, has lost its relevance courtesy Social media etiquettes.
Don’t be surprised if in few years Marketers start considering only the new five reactions in their internal metrics for true engagement rate and this forces other social media platforms to follow suite with similar launches.
2. Content:
Ask any Digital marketer on his/her biggest pain point and “Good content” is bound to be in the top 3 things to solve/ keep doing. Given the relative poor engagement (compared to Likes) of Comments section, new Reactions will provide key insights on which content is working well for the target audience & enable real time modification.
3. Connect:
Marketers have finally adapted themselves to the truth of organic reach of 1% - 3%. There is still no magic data cut available which guarantees conversion similar to that of search campaigns. Reactions & available data (when Facebook decides to share) would provide enough hope & optimism to generate similar ROI for social media spends too. Re-marketing itself to the select few with desired reactions will help increase ROI significantly.
Brand awareness campaigns will also benefit from this micro targeting opportunity.
Example: Political parties might not want to show a candidate’s ad on news feed of those people who have expressed “Angry” emotions for similar previous content. Alternatively, companies supporting niche sports would like to specifically target users who expressed “Love”, “Wow” for that particular sport, with increased probability of creating a more close knit community on Facebook.
4. Convenience:
Marketers would like this feature to be integrated on their digital platforms & would like to see the same feature being implemented for Comments section too.
Imagine companies flaunting xxxxx Hearts & yyyy Wow’s instead of text based reviews to attract existing customers & prospects alike for their products/ solutions on Facebook. Add the “Buy on Facebook” feature to this combination to further reduce the time from Active consideration to Actual purchase decision.
Unlike laptop/ desktop users, where these Reactions appear intuitively on hover, I foresee need for further simplicity (read periodic reminders) being introduced by Facebook for mobile users to aid its adoption.
5. Customize:
In today’s age of personalization, power to customize & choose should remain with the users. Marketers would love to customize these Reactions, either by choosing from the five that suit their content type or by creating their own Reactions from the list of pre-defined emotions by Facebook.
6. Compare:
Facebook has still not restricted users to view their competitor’s engagement activity on various reactions and that can be leveraged to suitably modify one’s campaign/ content.
It’s only time before the Social listening tools adapt to this change and puts combined pressure on Facebook to allow capturing these insights automatically & provide easy to comprehend comparisons for marketers.
In the coming months we could see the emergence of a new engagement rate where a “Love” reaction is equal to x “Likes” and an “Angry” reaction would mean minus y “Likes”.
7. Culture:
At a fundamental level, the new Reactions feature encourages a Culture of openness, enhances freedom of expression and makes it convenient & fun to use too. Peer pressure will now gradually force adoption from mere Likes to adopting the new Reactions to express one self.
In this context, it is heartening to note that Facebook didn’t yield to popular demand of adding a “Dislike” button and instead provided a variety of reactions which find relevance across the globe (would have personally liked “Yay” option too as that’s the language of millennial but nevertheless).
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction and so does for this new feature. We all know how Twitter is trying its best to manage Trolls which has been the bane of most marketers. In some sense the new “Angry” reaction on Facebook can also be potentially misused by trolls and keep the otherwise considered safe (marketers have option to disable/ delete posts/ comments on their page) Facebook medium risqué especially for new entrants.
Add to that the growing privacy concerns and this new found expression data being misused by Facebook itself to wilfully manipulate its feed (remember the famous experiment few years back) or by unscrupulous marketers, we will have to wait and watch whether the promise of not sharing this data remains intact or is introduced with certain pre-conditions.
Summary:
For all those Facebook users who either hesitated or found posting comments inconvenient to express their true emotions, new Reactions will come as a breath of fresh air. We will soon see other social platforms mimicking or adding more customization features to lure marketers & users alike.
While increased revenue potential is at the heart of this change from Facebook & Marketers perspective, as a normal Facebook user, let me enjoy the most convenient way of expressing how I feel, just as you would for this article. Go, check it out now!
