Cast your minds back to February 2016, and you’ll remember Facebook introducing new reactions to posts, in response to increased demand from people wanting to express themselves with something less binary than simply ‘like’ or ‘dislike’.
Mark Zuckerberg and co responded instantly. Yet instead of more button text, introduced reactions – love, wow, haha, sad and angry – in the hope that they would increase user engagement and satiate the masses.
More importantly, Zuckerberg also wanted business owners to better understand how people were interacting with their content.
Below we’ve outlined the results of his pioneering move in the social media sphere, as well as how the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn have changed the industry forever allowing people to connect and associate with content in increasingly innovative ways.
So, without further ado…
An Increase In User Engagement
Since the release three years ago, the prognosis has been positive, with user engagement on Facebook on the rise. And the stats prove it, showing a 2.4% rise in engagement with new reactions in 2016, to 12.8% in 2018.
This particular update has had the most powerful impact amongst millennials, with four out of 10 preferring to engage with an image rather than reading a text – a trend that other social media platforms began to pick up once they realised the marketing profits that could be made.
The Follow-on Effect
LinkedIn became the first to follow suit in April when they emulated Facebook’s tactics and introduced four new reactions of their own: celebrate, love, insightful and curious.
These were utilized by users to great effect across the platform, whether that was celebrating a promotion, showing support to an ex-colleague in their new job, promoting educative content, or engaging discussions on thought-provoking topics.
However, unlike Facebook, LinkedIn didn’t introduce a negative reaction, potentially because of the nature of the platform that advocates professionalism, work-life balance, support and educational insight.
Yet if they were to release a negative reaction, it could still be used positively by businesses to suss out initial reactions from their audience.
This could be a useful feature that might be released in the coming years, so keep your eyes peeled!
What Does This Mean For Advertising?
So clearly social media platforms are heading towards a more interactive experience, the users are loving it.
Gone are the days of scrolling through and aimlessly pressing ‘like’ – we’ve now got a range of reactions to share. But what does this mean for businesses?
Given that more and more companies are beginning to push relatable, human content out over the more banal block text posts, this can only be a good thing. Yet, in order to capture your audience’s attention, you need to stand out from the crowd.
Here are our top tips for advertising on social media:
- Create a video campaign. As we know, millennials love imagery. Researchers have found that after watching a promotional video, 64% of users are more likely to purchase the product.
Add images to every post. Big blocks of text just don’t cut it anymore – users are more likely to scroll past and find something more visual. - Turn data into graphs. Make informational posts more digestible by adding graphs and fact sheets to encourage your audience to engage.
- Create polls and surveys. You can receive instant feedback to campaign ideas by simply asking. This way, you’ll cut out the guesswork and can focus on making your customers happy.
- Interact with your audience. Replying to comments adds a touch of personalisation in this over-saturated world. Take the time to engage with your customers and make them feel special.
All in all, more and more users are warming up to the concept of using images and reactions as a way to connect to content over the traditional block of texts. So if you want to remain seen on social media platforms, follow the useful tips above, jump on the trend and sit back and watch as your conversion rates rise.