Facebook today officially rolled out its new augmented “like” button, which includes a set of six “reactions” users can choose from. The six emotive icons Facebook has chosen are: “like” (which we all already know), “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad” and “angry.”

Here’s what Facebook had to say about it:

“We’ve been listening to people and know that there should be more ways to easily and quickly express how something you see in News Feed makes you feel. That’s why today we are launching Reactions, an extension of the Like button, to give you more ways to share your reaction to a post in a quick and easy way.”

To add a reaction to a Facebook status update, hold down the Like button on mobile or hover over the Like button on desktop to see the reaction image options, then tap the one that best represents your reaction to the post.

Are you rolling your eyes and thinking – who cares?

Well, if you’re a marketer with a page for your business on Facebook it’s worth taking the time to explore this shift a bit more. Here’s why.

• Starting today, your audience can very quickly and easily communicate the emotion they’re feeling when digesting your content on Facebook. It opens up the door for a whole group of people who would typically not engage with your content at all to start becoming more vocal on your page. In the past there was a large “silent” audience – those people who didn’t “like” the content and weren’t moved to comment on it. Now, with a much wider choice of reactions available, this large group has a whole new way to identify with content in their newsfeed.
• The new reactions will help you better understand your audience and refine your content accordingly.
• This feature also unlocks a big opportunity to not only understand what consumers are feeling, but why they are feeling it. Why is this important? Because – emotions are HUGE when it comes to branding. As AdAge summarized so aptly in this article “emotional experience accounts for almost half of customer loyalty to a brand, while cognitive loyalty accounts for only about a third.”
• Lastly – this new feature gives you a chance to better express empathy with those people who follow you. And isn’t that what we all ultimately want? To have someone UNDERSTAND what we’re feeling and why? Timely and empathetic engagement is a critical piece of the customer experience.

If you’ve got questions about Facebook’s new “reactions” and your social media programs, don’t hesitate to reach out to us! It will make us 😄 . (See what we did there?)

Inga Rundquist

Inga Rundquist is a Public Relations Arsonist and Co-Owner at MindFire. When she’s not dreaming up ideas that will generate publicity, you can find her knee deep in the social media world, also known as the next PR frontier.