Reactions

The indicator indicates the target audience’s interest in the communicated content. Remember that since giving a reaction (like, heart, care, laugh, congratulation, etc.) is a fairly passive activity, it should be given lower importance than responses that require more effort, such as sharing a post or exploring a provided link. Furthermore, reactions do not necessarily mean that people will follow up on what the content communicates (e.g. taking a certain action). Therefore, the indicator should not be used as a key metric for measuring the results of a social media campaign.

Determine the indicator's value by using the following methodology:

1) Decide what social media content you need to measure. Are you interested in the reactions given to all the posts on all the social media used during your campaign? Or a certain selection only?

2) Decide what counts as a ‘reaction’. For example, symbols of likes, love, care, congratulations, etc., are all positive reactions. However, other symbols (e.g. anger and, in some contexts, laughing) are negative reactions that should not be interpreted similarly. If you do not want to exclude negative reactions from your analysis, consider reporting separately on the number of positive and negative reactions.

3) Count the number of reactions that different communication content generated.

4) To determine the indicator’s value, sum up the reactions of the different communication content.

Disaggregate the data by social media channels, positive vs. negative reactions, and other factors relevant to the focus of your social media campaign.

1) Receiving, for example, 200 reactions while your reach was 5,000 social media users is something completely different than when your reach was 40,000 users. Therefore, when reporting the number of reactions, also mention the reach.