Social media marketers who are looking to engage online audiences with their brands will be happy to learn that Facebook has enabled a new photo tagging feature that lets users tag brands.

Facebook has announced a new photo tagging feature that social media marketers may like. Starting today, users can tag Pages in their Facebook photos the same way they can tag friends.

The social giant says this allows friends to “share richer stories with their friends about the things they interact with,” and it also gives brands the chance to gain social referrals. Pages can be tagged by people who have Liked a page and general Facebook users.

The privacy settings for photos will be maintained. Still, marketers with tagged Pages will likely get their brands recognized among groups of friends, and pictures shared with “everyone” can serve as Facebook-wide referrals. Public photos will be published in the photos tab of branded Pages.

Page administrators can choose to disable tagged photos from appearing on their companies' Facebook accounts if they would prefer to maintain control over the images that appear on their Pages.

Still, brands might want to think twice before disabling this feature (unless they believe people are abusing it to spam their Pages). Facebook social referrals are powerful; as Brafton has reported, the company's Sponsored Story ads see high CTRs. Plus, user-generated content makes Pages look active.

It seems the feature is still being rolled out, as some of the 520 users who have Liked this new photo-tagging option at press time claim they aren't able to use it yet.

In addition to enabling users to tag their brands to drive engagement, Facebook marketers might drive loyalty, leads and sales through the search giant by consulting with the company's recently released social media marketing guidelines. Notably, using fresh content to fuel social conversations is one of Facebook's top social marketing tips.

Katherine Griwert is Brafton's Marketing Director. She's practiced content marketing, SEO and social marketing for over five years, and her enthusiasm for new media has even deeper roots. Katherine holds a degree in American Studies from Boston College, and her writing is featured in a number of web publications.