Facebook Business pages are becomingly increasingly popular with businesses that use these as part of their marketing plan. But as any web marketing consultant will tell you, not everyone uses these to their best advantage. But if used correctly, a Facebook Business page can be a very effective form of marketing.

There are a variety of tools available that allow you to run competitions on your Facebook profile. These encourage your customers to interact with your business and spread the word amongst others.

Over a third of SMEs use social media on a daily basis to promote their businesses, new research has revealed.

A survey of 269 companies conducted by Daryl Willcox Publishing found that half (54%) used social media – and 35% of these said they posted updates every day to platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. A quarter of companies updated every few days, while 17% used social media platforms weekly.

Google is rumoured to be preparing to distribute millions of custom mobile devices to small businesses around America in order to compete with services like Facebook, Yelp and Foursquare. These devices will let customers check-in and rate the businesses. Customers may also be able to purchase items via Google Checkout.

The number of devices to be distributed could be as high as eight million, and if the plan is successful the scheme could be rolled out to the UK.

In today’s cutback economy of slashed budgets impacting marketing capacity, the question of spending priorities becomes acute, writes Daren Bach on Business Scene.