Facebook is about to launch a new feature that's sure to be popular with charities and non-profit organizations. If you're a Facebook page administrator, this news about the upcoming post targeting tool should put a big smile on your face...

You probably already know that you can set a location or language when posting items on Facebook to ensure that only your followers in those categories see your update. This has been a feature especially useful for federated organizations working with multiple countries, branches or zones.

Facebook will soon be extending the characteristics available to you for targeting. TechCrunch is reporting the following segmentation options:

• Age
• Gender
• Interested In
• Relationship Status
• Education
• College Grad: College Name, Major
• In College: College Name, Major, Years
• In High School
• Workplace
• Plus the old options - Language, and Location: Country, State, City

Think of all the ways you already segment your direct marketing or email campaigns. You are probably using different copy, calls-to-action and images to target your direct mail database or your email subscribers. With this next update, Facebook is giving you the opportunity to extend that segmentation to your Facebook followers!

How might you choose to speak to your older followers? What calls-to-action would you use with that demographic? Would you use different words or images to reach out to your fans who are young adults or still in school?

Gender is another important segmentation tool. If your organization sells items to raise money for your cause, you can try targeting a post about your product to the right demographic in your group of followers. Similarly, if you have a special promotion with a corporate partner, consider if it's an offer that's only applicable for men or women (for instance, clothing).

Experiment with your posts and track your engagement metrics. Does targeting your posts result in greater engagement with your supporters?

One of the great things about Facebook is how easy it is to run simple and cost-effective experiments online. You might even want to test your next segmented e-blast or e-newsletter by noting how the subject matter is received by your target demographic on Facebook.

Segmentation is a powerful tool in any fundraiser's toolkit. We're excited to see upgrades like this available for page administrators.

Stay tuned for more great Facebook content coming up in this space all this month!