Facebook users have now been given the ability to tag brand Pages in their photos, in the same way they can tag their friends. Once fans have tagged the can of Coke they are holding or celeb they spotted, it will appear on the photo tab of the brands page.

Currently this feature is only available for pages within the Brands & Products or People categories brands, however Facebook has said they hope to expand this functionality to more Page categories over time.

There has already been a lot of concern over whether or not this new feature will make brand pages more vulnerable to spam, and although it will certainly create new work for moderators, it also has great potential.

The ability to tag pages could become an important part of brand discovery and growth of pages, as brands increasingly struggle to cut through the noise on Facebook.

Facebook are essentially changing the dynamics of their platform in order to bring new advertisers into the market and really try and establish themselves as a leading platform for online advertising.

During their keynote on Social Design at Internet World earlier this week, they revealed that advertising messages that include content from a user’s friends who are already affiliated the brands products have a:

• 1.6x lift in brand recall
• 2x lift in brand awareness
• 4X lift in product purchase

This is particularly interesting as Facebook’s ad platform overall yield per ad impression remains low. In fact their click-through rates remain similar to standard online ad formats such as banners. So is this a move on Facebook’s part to try and start making Pages more attractive to marketers?

Knowing the impact that that peer recommendations have, I can only start to imagine what kind of impact tagged user-generated content will have. It essentially allows brands to generate free advertising through WOM and fan advocacy.

The big question is will fans actually tag brands in their images without incentive, or will it just turn into another competition mechanic?

Laura Scott is a digital strategist at Addiction Innovation www.addictionworldwide.com