A few weeks ago, Facebook finally changed its “like” button after years of complaints from users wanting a “dislike” button. Facebook decided to go the extra distance and created “Reactions.” It’s a more in-depth way of telling your friends how you really feel about that post with the cat video with like, love, haha, wow, sad, or angry. It’s easy to change the reaction — just hold down the button until the appropriate reaction comes up. Or you can be lazy and just hit the like button and ignore the other reactions.
Right now, the Reactions doesn’t change much in the Facebook algorithm (also known as the reason why many of your followers can’t see your page on Facebook’s news feed). Like before, if a post on your page receives a Reaction, Facebook will consider this content to be of higher quality and post it on more of your followers’ walls.
However, expect this to change in the future. According to Facebook product manager Sammi Krug, Facebook plans to learn how the Reactions will be used in order to weigh how important the content is and hopefully “do a better job of showing everyone the stories they most want to see.”
So is the Reactions just another human behavior experiment for Facebook? Perhaps. It wouldn’t be the first time that Facebook manipulated our News Feeds. But if Facebook is truly using the Reactions to improve user experience, then maybe this is a good way to gauge how well your posts are doing on your wall. For instance, if many of your news articles are getting angrys or sads, maybe it’s time to drop the news posts. However, topics that are getting likes or loves, you know you’re on to something there.
If you need help with your social media, we can lend you a hand. Contact ENX2 Marketing for a free 20-minute consultation now.