While I liked learning about the Internet of Things and Enchanted Objects, predicting the future makes my brain hurt, so we’ll talk about the past today.
Recently Facebook announced it will be rolling out its new emoticons to go in addition to the “Like” button on Facebook. While this marks a momentous occasion for our Facebook users, how is this going to work in the favor of advertisers and social media marketers who already have a hard enough time keeping the negativity off of their pages?
Smallbiztrends.com discusses some ways to make Facebook Reactions work for your business. The article encourages businesses to invite customers to offer their feedback during the rollout of new products or advertising campaigns. I think this is a great idea considering the magical thing about social media marketing is it allows the brand to socialize and let customers identify with them. The goal is to build relationships so if a business is encouraging customers to be authentic with them, then they will definitely identify with the brand more. Me personally, I would have been happy with just a “Dislike” button.
So how was this posts? 
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I loved the emoticons that Facebook launched! I use them often and have been begging for a love and dislike button on Facebook for years. (I guess I’ll still be holding out for the dislike button).
When I saw the announcement, I immediately saw some challenges, in addition to the one you mentioned.
1) How do we track these emoticons in analytics? Knowing how challenging it is to track emotions, and images on social media, would these make it easier or harder to track? Luckily, using your Facebook Page’s Insight, you can see the full breakdown of reactions for each of your posts by finding the post and clicking on it.
2) How can we ensure that the customer really chose the right emoticon? When there was only a “like” option, it was simple. You either liked it or you don’t. But, I have seen many people misuse the emoticons and not realize that one meant “haha” or “wow”
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I think this is a strong move for Facebook and offers good insights for social marketers!
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It’s nice to know someone else’s “brain hurts” when all this new technology is thrown at us. I don’t think the new emoticons is really being utilized like I thought it would after it was introduced. I think it’s a bit confusing to those who are not familiar with it but it can be an effective tool for marketers in the future.
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I can certainly see the appeal, from a statistical research point of view, as to offering multiple expressions of emotion in a quick, easily quantifiable format. However, Zuckerberg’s decision to go with the emotion reaction icons reminds me of a brilliant marketing lecture from years ago. The professor explained the scenario that a team was tasked with developing a new product for a well-established power-tool producer. He and his team put in hundreds of man-hours researching and correlating. Making connections between customers, their purchases, and the types of construction projects being undertaken. The final product was a feat of technology. The tool incorporated gyroscopes, self-alignment gadgets, lasers, and I believe it made a great cup of coffee, too. It failed miserably in its test market. In the end he found out, people just wanted to be able to drill a hole. Facebook, please just make a dislike button.
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