How B2B Marketers Can Use Facebook Reactions

Last week, the world of Facebook changed forever. Facebook’s Like button that we’ve come to know and love has expanded to include five additional options that they’re calling Reactions. These Reactions allow you to express your feelings about a post more distinctly than before. The five new Reactions include Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry.

This is exciting news for marketers and especially so for those in the B2B tech space. It can be challenging for B2B tech brands to be creative on social because we don’t always know how new topics and types of content are being received by our target audience. Reactions may be just the insightful boost we’ve been looking for.

So how can marketers best use the insights gained from the new Reactions feature?

What Reactions Mean for Marketers

When he first introduced this new feature, Mark Zuckerberg explained that Facebook developed Reactions in response to the community’s demand for a way to express and share a wider range of emotions. Reactions allow Facebook users to engage with posts and other users in a more nuanced way, subsequently allowing marketers to better understand how they’re engaging with their audience. The insights to be gained from Facebook Reactions are richer than those we had before and can therefore drive marketers to make better, more informed decisions.

Here are a four ways B2B tech marketers can use the insights gained from Reactions:

• Communicate with the target audience in ways that make sense while still producing results. Tailor content and posts based on previous posts that resulted in the most desired reactions. For example, if a campaign’s goal is to elicit shock and surprise, marketers can use Reactions to determine which posts drew the most Wows.
• Take advantage of the insights from Reactions by applying them to bigger picture marketing and business goals. For example, if a recent set of announcements about product updates results in mostly positive Reactions, marketers can use that as an indicator that the company is headed in the right direction.
• Catch and respond to issues before they become big deals by paying close attention to Sad and Angry Reactions from customers.
• Spot potential evangelists and promoters by keeping track of fans that don’t simply Like, but rather Love, what the brand has to say.

Reactions provide a direct line to understanding what a target audience really thinks. By strategically responding to takeaways from these Reactions, B2B tech marketers can increase social reach and engagement, driving more relevant traffic to their websites. From relevant traffic come high-quality leads. And who knows where we can go from there. Maybe world domination.