Last week Facebook significantly changed the way businesses can use its social network.

By adding new features to its business pages, Facebook now allows brands to participate more interactively with their fans and other business pages. But in this uber-social online world, is hiding behind a brand a good thing?

Considering Facebook was invented for Harvard student use only and spent much of its formative years preventing commercial entities from using its services, these new brand-friendly features show how far it has come from its origins.

Many users threatened to leave Facebook when it introduced banner advertising back in 2007, but now this “social advertising” is accepted as a necessary evil needed to fund the free service.

Essentially brands can now use Facebook on more equal terms with users, leaving comments and “likes” on users’ profile walls and other business pages.

They cannot initiate posts on profile walls, they can only comment on or like existing posts and users can prevent this from happening by adjusting there security setting – but few people will.

This means businesses can now proactively use Facebook, participating in conversations it thinks are relevant to its products and services in an attempt to raise brand awareness.

But who wants to have a conversation with a brand? Not me. One of the business benefits of using social media is that it allows consumers to penetrate large, often faceless organisations and deal directly with individuals.

Empowering your staff to use social media to interact with consumers is a powerful way to build customer loyalty.

Thanks to social media the old adage that “people do business with people” has never been more accurate.

So I would recommend signing any comments you make on behalf of your brand personally.

Facebook has made many other changes, both cosmetic and functional, to its business pages, so now would be a good time to review your Facebook presence.

And now that Facebook has given these pages a significant new power, now is a good time to review your entire Facebook marketing strategy.

* Chris Tomlinson is managing director of social media and PR agency Friend Digital