It has been days since Facebook Reactions are being introduced. Now, Facebook users, in addition to like a post, can express other emotions too.

The utilization of these Facebook Reactions for things shared by your friends is simple. You see a recent stuff posted by one of your friends or a video that has been viral at the moment, you react consequently, and everyone scrolls down.

But the question is, for brands out there, what all of this mean? A deep exploration was made and following results were discovered.

To elaborate how fans tend to use Facebook Reactions on posts of brands, let’s first begin with explaining the Reactions:

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Together with the Like button, you can access some more human emotion including Angry, Sad, Wow, Haha and Love. You can choose only one emotion among them to react on a post; you need to decide whether you like a post or you love that. You cannot choose the both options together.

10 of the popular brand Facebook posts from 25^th February to 5^th March were explored. These involved posts from US Cellular, Little Things.com, Rebel’s Market, Arby’s, Armani Beauty, Giorgio, LG Mobile, Windex, Bertolli, Mini Babybel and Nissan.

The numbers of Reactions are not provided publicly by Facebook’s API, every post was checked manually in order to fetch the numbers. This is the point where we came to know an interesting malfunction.

In this post, the areas of interest are highlighted in red rectangular boxes. You can see that the post overall receives 92,000 reactions and likes, but when the details were checked, it was found that Facebook just recorded 12,000 interactions. Facebook did this with every post which receives more than 10,000 interactions. This hypothesis was reached based on the facts that the number of break down interactions did not add up correctly for Arby’s, LG Mobile and Windex, but it added up exactly for Mini Babybel, because it had less than 10,000 reactions. Now, as the Reactions’ numbers are detailed and only the numbers of Likes are rounded up, the assumption was made that the remaining numbers of Likes are being ignored by Facebook; it is not counting the rest of the Likes.

When this research was further stretched, it discovered the following findings:

Among all the reaction shown by Facebook users, 93% are still likes. Only 4.6 percent users reacted with Love. It was assumed that the reason behind this huge different may be the order in which Reactions are shown, but this assumption became void when it was found that Wow was used more commonly than Haha.

Here we are presenting some possible logics and theories behind why these numbers are depicting these results:

• It takes an additional microsecond effort to hold and swipe for expressing an emotion. It might be a source of discouragement for some people and they prefer the single click effect that can be done effortlessly. It appears to be most reasonable justification to the huge difference in the number of likes as compared to other Facebook Reactions.
• Another reason might be the fact that old habits are difficult to get rid of, and users are habitual of ‘liking’ things as compared to ‘reacting’.
• Another reason can be the undesired or accidentally happened ‘reaction’ that happened while stalking a particular account on Facebook and they, in no means, were intending to interact the post.
• Or it might be due to the fact that Reactions are still new and users need time to get habitual of them.

The research continued.

The above methodology was used again and 10 top most engaging posts were selected in between 6^th March– 15^th March,. These posts were from Portillo’s, IHOP, Disney Cruise Line, Fresh Step Litter, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Samsung Mobile USA, Rebel’s Market, Hillshire Snacking, Nissan and Frost.

The researchers were expecting that the Reactions would tend to gain more popularity and would be used more frequently; but once again the number of likes went up while those of Reactions reduced. Yes, this might have been happened because of the jaggedness of samples, but anyhow, the numbers do not lie.

Now, what all of this means for your business:

This is the fact that it will take time to make users more convenient with the use of Reactions, but one thing obvious, they are not going anywhere. Facebook still needs to boost up the analytics regarding Reactions, but it is sure that soon they will become a standard metric for content creators and social media analysts. Here is what these new Reactions meanyou’re your businesses:

You will be able to grab a better idea about how people tend to interact with your posts. By using the new detail in feedback, you can greatly tweak the content strategy of your brand.

For the service industry businesses, the ‘Anger Reaction’ carries a vital importance. Don’t get annoyed on it. Though, Facebook yet treats a Reaction as a like, therefore if people show ‘Anger’, their newsfeeds will keep showing them your content. There is a need to take the negative reactions way more seriously and design a customer service strategy to manage any condition that might worsen.

At the moment, Reactions data is available on post basis, therefore you will need to manually check each of your posts to know the Reactions breakdown.

By evaluating these reactions, you can refine the paid social media strategy of your business. With respect to the guidelines of your brand, you can identify posts that receive the most anticipated reactions and promote those.

On the other hand, you can use the negative Reactions to anticipate any forthcoming PR crises.

So in this era of influencer-driven marketing, your business can mark the fans who “love’ your brand and the users who are ‘angry’ at them. Brands have already in a state to acknowledge the Reactions and have started making campaigns accordingly.

Regarding anything new in this social village, the most valued benefit provided by the Facebook Reactions is the capability to further discover the feelings of your customers and devise your strategy consequently.