It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Facebook. Here’s a quick recap:

• Facebook goes public
• Public offering suffers from bad karma
• Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg marries his college sweetheart
• Mark Zuckerberg falls off list of 40 richest people in the world
• Facebook launches promoted posts

I really just want to talk about the last bullet item on the list. The average Joe probably doesn’t realize that only about 15% of their posts are actually seen by their friends (Gizmodo pegs the number at 12%). When I asked Facebook directly, they told me that the number was somewhere between 10% and 20%, so 15% works for me.

The same is true for brand pages of course. Companies are spending a lot of money creating and posting content to Facebook fan pages. Unless it’s really compelling and engaging content, they have to come to grips with the fact that in most cases, about 85% of their fans will never see their posts.

So, what’s a brand to do? Well, good content always trumps the Facebook edge-rank algorithm. On some of the pages that I manage, I have seen a reach of 45% or more. Even Facebook admits that this is a REALLY high number. Their response has been to release a nifty new feature called “Promoted Posts.” This is not to be confused with “Sponsored Stories,” which is one of the Facebook ad offerings. Promoted Posts, introduced last week to Facebook page admins with pages that have more than 500 fans opens up the flow on the edge-rank algorithm. The garden hose gets a little wider and more people will see your posts. For a (small) price.

The photo below is from one of the pages that I manage. As you can see, Facebook has added a “Promote” pull down menu on the bottom right-hand corner. I can choose to promote my posts now, and reach more people.

I think that this is a pretty cool feature, and I’m talking to a number of clients about it. I think that it has obvious application if you have a retail business for example. Running a special offer at your restaurant this weekend? Then promote that post and make sure as many of your fans see it as possible. As you can see from the photo above, you can set a budget for as little as $5. That’s pretty compelling to me. I’d definitely be willing to try that out and see if it works.

And this is hot off the presses. Facebook is hosting it’s own Facebook webinar on promoted posts on June 7. Sign up.

There’s a lot going on at Facebook, and some of it is pretty cool!

Topics: Facebook, Facebook IPO, Facebook Promoted Posts feature, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chen, social media marketing tips