Finally, after wondering “why have they not come up with this yet”, Facebook announced on Monday that it is rolling out a new “reply” feature, allowing users to directly reply to comments left on their pages.

This is a big deal for businesses who use Facebook as an important communcation tool for their customers as part of their overall social media marketing strategy.  Not only can page owners now reply to customer service posts directly and individually (as responses will be posted right under the original comment), but it’s also going to be a great (and easier!) tool to start  and maintain conversations and dialogue between businesses and their customers/followers.

Facebook will also prioritize comments based on their engagement ratings:  the most active and “liked” posts will surface to the top of  users’ homepages, and posts marked as spam will move to the bottom.  Pages with thousands of followers are going to benefit in a huge way from this change (and if a site already has over 10,000 followers, comment threading will automatically be turned on), and your pages can too, if you follow these steps to set it up:

1. If you are a Page Admin, go to the pages admin panel and click “Edit Page”

2. Click on “Manage Permissions”

3. Select “Turn on Replies” (at the bottom of the form)

This action is instantaneous, and users can start replying to comments posted on your page as soon as it’s activated.

How do you foresee this will change and improve the way you do your Facebook marketing?

**One important thing to note:  this feature is not currently available through Smartphones; you can currently only access it through desktop use.