Facebook launched its new Reactions last week. For more than a year, Facebook has been conducting global research including focus groups and surveys to determine what types of reactions people would want to use most. Facebook looked at how people are already commenting on posts and the top stickers and emoticons as signals for the types of reactions people are already using to determine which reactions to offer.

Now, instead of just ‘liking’ a post, you can also now tell your friends, coworkers, and family how you really feel with six varied emotions: Like, Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. Marketers have always struggled with sentiment analysis on social media. It is difficult for machines to understand human context and tone. I am intrigued  by the potential of Facebook Reactions in Market Analytics.

In the near future, Facebook analytics will be recalibrated to take into account this development, which will provide invaluable insight for brands. Marketers will be able to see the breakout of the different reactions at a post level. For example: Brands will be able to determine the percentage of angry reactions on a base of the total reactions a post garners. This is phenomenal for data driven marketing decisions on how consumers are reacting to specific content about a particular brand or product.

As customers fine-tune their digital expressions with a brand through Facebook Reactions, marketers will be able to understand their audiences better using sentiment data. This is an opportunity for brands to make the digital engagement process more strategic, informed and meaningful.