The past two months have been busy at Facebook.

In September, it unveiled the largest set of new features since it launched the Facebook API platform in 2007, introducing a new ticker and new personal profiles among other features.  In October it extended the Facebook Platform to allow social media App developers to bring campaigns to the 350 million people (44% of Facebook’s user base) who use Facebook every month on a mobile device -- including iPad/iPhone, Android, as well as Facebook’s own mobile Web site -- using HTML5 mobile-web development tools.

These updates were designed to further improve the experience for Facebook users — but they also open up opportunities for media agencies and brands.

If you are a brand marketer, Facebook suddenly can do a lot more for you.  But it will take work -- and creativity.  Here are some ways in which you can capitalize on these Facebook changes:

1) Motivate Fans To Share Your Message  

The goal is to turn a fan’s personal experience into an action directly related to your brand’s business goals. When a friend recommends something, friends listen.  What gets friends to “listen” to a brand?  Clever, tasteful humor; poignancy; and generally thoughtful content.  Seasonality and topicality help; is your brand appropriate for a holiday tie-in?  Can a campaign for your brand reflect current viral themes and memes?  Is a photo-sharing app relevant to your brand?   How about a cause-related campaign?

2) Engage, Engage, Engage...Wherever

Whatever the theme of the campaign, one thing is paramount: to be engaging. Engaging content gets shared. Engaging content gets commented on. And engaging content becomes more visible in the Newsfeed.  However, to engage users brand marketers have to have the right tools and technologies wherever their users choose to engage.

The HTML5 development was a watershed event in allowing brands to engage their target audiences.  Today, if you really want to reach -- better still, connect with -- people in the desired demographics, you need to stay in contact with them in restaurants, bars, sports venues, etc. Previously, a brand’s Facebook applications were hidden in the mobile newsfeed screen.  Now by incorporating HTML5 elements into branded apps, campaigns can for the first time truly come to life on a mobile device.

What does this mean for you as a brand marketer?   You now can successfully integrate social games, if brand-appropriate, into your campaigns.  You can save on time and effort:  Instead of deploying as many as three or more teams to develop separate campaigns for the desktop, the iPad and the Android (for just three examples), you can enlist a single development team to produce a multiplatform campaign.  And yes, every marketer has at least one App these days -- but now you can make virtually all your apps “social” -- and be better able to measure the level of engagement you’re getting with your target audiences.   

3)  Get “People Talking About” You

Facebook’s Insights upgrade in September featured the new metric "People Talking About," allowing brand marketers to track the productivity of a brand's page.  It addresses a key marketing concern by taking Facebook campaign measurement beyond the “Like.”   It doesn’t just measure commenting; it tracks all activities Facebook considers conversational.  This includes: “liking,” posting on a page’s wall, sharing, commenting, RSVP’ing, photo-tagging, checking in, and sharing. Net-net, it provides you multiple additional layers of measurement to present your CEO when you want to illustrate a campaign’s success.

Which takes us back to points 1 and 2.  Just as with other forms of “media,” in social media “content is king.”  To move the “People Talking About” needle you need content that is entertaining, informative and/or interesting.  This is how you’ll get more people to participate -- whether on a desktop or mobile device.  The higher the quality of content, the more engagement among fans.

So ask questions. Run polls. Share tips. Share interesting, related articles.  Tell fans something they don’t already know.  Elicit a chuckle.  Offer fans something that gives them an excuse to reconnect with an old friend.  Now, they just may be able to make that re-connection instantly, virtually regardless of where that friend happens to be.