Facebook has offered users additional reaction buttons next to the classic "Like," but the new feature failed to engage the communities as much as anticipated.
Reaction emoticons are underused, according to a study from Quintly that filtered 130,000 posts. The report shows that users rarely take the time to nuance their opinion about a post and prefer to simply Like it and scroll on.
In February, five new reactions were added to allow people to display a palette of responses. Marketers would benefit most from analyzing the different feedback that certain posts receive, helping them to better gauge their target audience.
For example, a post that gets an overwhelming score of Like and Love reactions is perceived positively, while one that harnesses many Angry reactions is a negative one. Facebook Reactions analysis enables marketers to easily compute the numbers to know which kind of post fares better.
According to the study, about 97 percent of interactions consist of likes, comments and shares. This simply shows how little the other reactions are used.
In order to have a consistently successful storytelling strategy, marketers need to know in high detail how users react to their content. The Love reaction button, for instance, allows marketers to understand that the impact of the post is greater than those who get average likes.
It is not only likeability that social media specialists are looking at. "Reactionable" content becomes increasingly important as such posts engage the public in a high degree.
The study indicates that Videos obtain up to 40 percent more Reactions than image posts. This means that an increased number of video posts will give marketers a better grasp at their communities. If a picture is worth a thousand words, videos are weighing in a few volumes.
Users tend to use the "wow" reaction much more when dealing with videos instead of static pictures or GIFs. The "angry" reaction was used twice as much with video content, when pitted against image content.
One conclusion of the study was that most users had a positive feedback toward reactions.
Before Facebook implemented Reactions, it was difficult for users to quickly express a negative reaction. Via the "angry" or "sad" reactions it is now possible to do so, but the number of users that take advantage of the two possibilities is low.
This comes to show that Facebook users are more likely to interact with content that is entertaining, funny, or positive.
