After so many clamors, it is finally becoming a reality. Facebook is considering a dislike button. And this is not a drill. In an article by the Chicago Tribune, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that the popular social media company is now working on alternatives for its famous Like button during a public Q&A held at the Facebook headquarters at Menlo Park, California. Zuckerberg stated that the team will be delivering “something that meets the needs of the larger community.” Furthermore, he stressed in an interview with time that the move was due to users wanting the ability to express empathy.
Just hearing the word “dislike” is enough to make any online marketer (be it content, SEO or social media) tremble down to their toes. In fact, Paul Rand, the CEO of Zocalo Group remarked that it could be a problem for companies who are using Facebook as their marketing strategy. One could simply say that the dislike button is a new way of creating a filter on what you want to see over the ones that you don’t want to see.
However, some are saying that the planned Dislike button may be a good thing for social media marketers.
In fact, Robert Henzi, a senior strategy direction from “We Are Social” stated that the planned Dislike button will do wonders for social media marketers especially since you will now have to be careful and considerate on what you post online. “It could result in better content. I think people in general—regular users and brands—will think twice about what they post.”
Futhermore, marketing consultant David Deal stated that the Dislike button will be able to help brands track the effectiveness of their product. This is further backed up by Rick Miller, the Vice President of Customer Insights in Networked Insights, saying that one’s target market will be using this button to express whether they approve or not of a brand’s content in the social media website. For example, you’re an SEO trends marketer from Arizona and you think your new blog content is great. However, you realize that you still have to work on a few things after seeing that there’s more dislikes compared to your likes.
You can say that the planned Dislike button will be a great tool to help companies dish out important and relevant information for the target market. That is something the industry needs.
