Leveraging social media to give one’s business a boost and create a sense of community among audience members, followers and potential consumers is becoming increasingly important and popular among social media marketers. But despite the importance of social media within the social media marketing world, constant changes that allow social media platforms to keep up with transforming technology ad hungry consumers can be difficult to keep up with. The latest update for social media giant Facebook has the potential to allow consumers and businesses to interact more than ever before with the multimedia they share.

Pictures and images have long time been important to improving conversion and interaction with clients, audience members and followers on Facebook and other social media platforms. With the importance of images and multimedia like photos among social media users and shares comes a disconnect with how audiences interact with those photos.

With the purpose of social media lying within its name, Facebook recently launched a new way of garnering even more interaction from social media users with the creation of shared photo albums. With the new shared albums, social media users, companies and pages have the ability to interact on a deeper level, with the images and photos in such albums. For businesses this allows an even greater level of interaction, further promoting the sense of community that is so imperative to those businesses taking advantage of social media outlets in an effort to create a closer relationship with users and potential clients.

Then Vs. Now

Although users could previously only add to photo albums they created, now Facebook changes have allowed the creators of the albums to control who, if anyone, they would like to allow to add to their photo albums. As a result, creators of Facebook photo albums can decide whether only they can continue adding images, whether their “friends” can add photos to the album or whether they would like to make them completely public. Giving album access to the public allows anyone to add and contribute to those photo albums. In addition, contributors are able to add up to 200 photos to these shared albums.

What Shared Albums Mean for Marketers

With the importance of community in the way that marketers and companies reach out to consumers and audience members using social media, Facebook’s recent update allows yet another way for consumers to contribute to businesses and pages, further nurturing the relationship. Giving consumers a hand in the information shared, pictures highlighted and events they’ve attended allows the creation of a deeper relationship and sense of community than merely interacting with them on a one-way level.

Instead, by taking an interest in photos, information and resources shared by one’s fans, businesses can show consumers that they enjoy and care about the way their target audience interacts and shares with them rather than just regurgitating information and pictures that have little meaning to followers. As social media continues to change with the needs of users, many opportunities become available that give marketers and businesses more opportunity to interact and listen to their clients: an aspect that creates trust and nurtures current relationships while keeping brands in the minds of those within that community.