After months of anticipation Facebook released a new way to interact with posts last week. Five new emojis, known as Facebook Reactions, now accompany the good old Like button. As someone who is in the business or tourism marketing it's important for you to keep up with the latest news in social media. You should know, contrary to predictions, Facebook did not release a ‘dislike’ button but instead chose to introduce: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad and Angry. So in total your fans can now react in six different ways to your content. And, they have the ability to use the function both on their desktop computer and mobile devices.

This means that you’ve a new way to see how our fans feel about your content, which is critical to any social media marketing strategy.

In this blog post, we’re going to take a closer look at Facebook Reactions and explore what you need to know as a tour and activity operator.

Facebook Reactions and Admin Pages

Now that fans can choose one of the six reactions to express their feelings towards your posts, you will start getting different notifications on your admin page. 

You, and anyone else, can also click into an individual post and see a breakdown of your fan’s reactions. It’s a great way to see what people are thinking about your posts. Facebook Reactions are very new, and not everyone understands them yet. But once they begin to take off, they will provide deeper understanding into your fan’s feelings.

At this point in time you can only use Facebook Reactions on the main post. This means if someone comments on your post, others will only be able to Like or respond to that comment. They will not be able to ‘angry face it’ or ‘haha it’.

On your Facebook Admin Page you will also be able to see a complete breakdown of the reactions on your post in the Insights section. Click on the specific post and you will see the stats like the post below.

Important note: As some of you might know, Facebook has the option for people to hide a post or report a page as spam. This is what someone who likes your page would do if they dislike or are offended by your post. This can negatively impact your standing with Facebook, if it happens too many times your page can be deleted. But if someone uses the ‘anger’ Reaction on your post it is not considered negative feedback and you will not be penalised. 

How to get the most out of Facebook Reactions for tour and activity operators

As Facebook Reactions are all new, marketers across the globe are having fun playing with and understanding them. Here are a few ways you can use them to boost your business.

1. Check out your competitor’s posts

Remember how in the above section we mentioned anyone can see a breakdown of the Reactions on any post? This means you can look at your competitor’s posts and see how their fans are reacting to their content. This is a great way to research what works and what doesn’t. Want to share a funny cat video but not sure if the fans will dig it? See if it worked for your competitor.

2. Ask your fans to give Facebook Reactions a test!

Social Media Examiner came up with a great way to test the waters. It’s so simple it’s beautiful. The author just asked her fans to give a reaction to a post. What does this do? It teaches your fans how to use Facebook Reaction but also gives your content a big organic boost.

Do you own a wildlife park? Consider posting a photo of a baby animal and asking your fans to react. “Facebook has released new ways to react to posts, why not give it a go now? What do you think of our new baby joey Bob? Let us know your feels.”

Simple.

3. Start experimenting with your content and fans’ reactions

Facebook’s basic justification for the new reactions is that: not everything is likable. So why not start putting out content to see how your fans react to it. Send out something that should make your fans angry, or even sad, and see if they’re reacting. Knowing how your fans react to content is invaluable knowledge you can use to forecast insights for a future campaign.

4. Market research

As people get more and more comfortable with using Facebook Reactions you could easily start testing your product ideas and your fans’ reactions to them.

Thinking about adding a cooking section to your upcoming tour? Why not see what the fans think? Of course this is only a sample of your target market research but, as in all market research, your fans reactions may surprise you.

5. Don’t stress about receiving unexpected reactions

In its infancy reactions can be confusing. People might accidently click on Angry and have no idea what they’re doing and not know how to fix it. There are always going to be anomalies in whatever you do - especially when something is new.

Here at Booking Boss one of our more recent posts had 150+ likes and two angry reactions - we’re not too sure why they were angry. We’ve put it down to a slip of the thumb, but we cannot be sure.

If you get a reaction to a post that you didn’t expect, don’t sweat it!

Final thoughts

Tour and activity operators have a lot of new opportunities to interact with their followers since the implementation of Facebook Reactions. We can see what our audience feels about new products, current offerings and the content we’re sharing with them. The more they interact the more we can understand what to create in the future.

The key is to keep your fans engaged and reacting!

To learn more about social media for tour and activity operators check out our on-demand webinar: 8 social steps to create the biggest impact for your tourism biz.

Booking Boss is an online booking system for tour operators and attraction providers. Trusted by many in the tourism industry, Booking Boss is about getting you out of the spreadsheets and into the sun. We provide free education resources for operators like you, to make your business the best it can possibly be.