Want your Facebook posts to reach more people? Likes will no longer help you as much as Loves.
Facebook’s algorithm is now rewarding posts that get more Reactions – whether it’s Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, or Angry – with more visibility in users’ News Feeds. Getting more Reactions (all five are weighted equally) will give your content a slight edge the News Feed rankings.
“Over the past year we’ve found that if people leave a reaction on a post, it is an even stronger signal that they’d want to see that type of post than if they left a Like on the post,” according to Facebook. “So we are updating News Feed to weigh reactions a little more than Likes when taking into account how relevant the story is to each person.”
Reactions indicate a deeper level of engagement, according to Facebook. Users have to select a Reaction rather than simply hitting the boring old Like button. That’s why Facebook considers Reactions to be more important than Likes.
Whenever users choose a Reaction to express how they feel about a post, Facebook will use that information to determine which content should rank higher in their News Feed.
Facebook said Reactions have been used more than 300 billion times by users so far. The five new Facebook reactions were revealed just over a year ago.
Love was the most popular Reaction during that time. The heart emoji accounted for half of all reactions.
This echoes the findings from a Quintly study SEJ’s Caitlin Rulien reported on last May, which found that Love was the most popular reaction even though Reactions were rarely being used.
This means, potentially, advertisers may someday be able to cash in on emotions, with some sort of reaction-based targeting, as speculated in Lisa Lacy’s SEJ post, 12 Ways You Can Use Facebook Reactions. For now, however, Facebook will continue to treat Reactions and Likes equally in advertising.
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