It’s clear that many sites are using Facebook for marketing purposes. The social network has given businesses many new ways to communicate, brand, engage, and more. In fact, recognized search expert Bruce Clay called the popular Facebook “Like” metric the new link.

Facebook is making changes that make it easier for businesses to manage their Facebook presence and get customers to engage. InsideFacebook reports that Facebook has confirmed with them that it has started bringing Facebook Places functionality (including Check-In Deals) to …

Numerous reports have been coming out that Facebook is taking down Facebook pages that are accused of infringing upon copyrights. The keyword there is “accused”. Apparently, Facebook does little (or nothing) to verify the legitimacy of the claims before taking …

There’s an interesting report out today from Buddy Media, a company that’s built a business out of creating Facebook tools for businesses, and counts major brands like Target, Johnson & Johnson, and ABC (to name a few) among its clients. …

Since last week’s sweeping changes to Facebook Pages people have been scrambling to unearth all the little tricks that the new format affords.

One of the bigger changes from a look a feel standpoint involves the placement of five recently updated images along the top of the Wall page. The images are now one of the most prominent features of the page and marketers are analyzing ways to take advantage of this new placement. (Personal profiles have had this look for a while now.)

 A couple factors come into play when considering a marketing use of this real estate.

Maybe you remember a couple of months ago when Facebook accidentally rolled out some changes to fan pages, giving all of us a sneak peek of what was to come. Well, now those changes are actually here.

Facebook announced some new changes to Facebook Pages today that effectively make the Page design more like the recently re-designed profiles. 

For one, you can now navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook. "This means you can choose to receive notifications about fan activity, Like and comment on other Pages as your Page, and get your own News Feed where you can engage with the latest and most important news from other Pages you like," the company explains. 

Facebook has a new ad product that may be its most promising ad unit yet – the sponsored story. These ads are simply brand-related stories that users have already shared, but then paid for by the brand mentioned to appear in the ad space, as to attract more attention and engagement. 

Will you be promoting your fans’ engagement with your brand? Let us know.

A few months ago Facebook officially did away with the idea of adding “boxes” of custom content to Facebook pages and instead forced users into adding “applications” as the primary way to add custom layouts, tabs and content.

While this change is old news and has been covered widely, Facebook continues to tinker with the interface and so I’ve been getting lots of questions again about the steps involved in adding custom content and thought I would do a quick tutorial.

At this point, most businesses have probably come to the realization that they are missing out on some serious opportunities if they do not have a Facebook presence.

Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine’s real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google’s real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries.

A Facebook Page can be a great way to build your fan-base, inspire engagement with customers/readers, and generally build upon your brand. However, if you want to do a promo on one, that’ll cost you.

I don’t think there’s any question that you need a web presence to survive in today’s business climate. But do you still need a traditional website, or has the web moved on in that regard?

Do you still need a website to be successful online? Share your thoughts.

I don’t have to tell you that Facebook can be a tremendous source of web traffic. There’s a good chance that most of the people you know are on it, and the ones who aren’t may be eventually. The social network is consuming more and more of people’s time, and thanks to mobile devices, it is always accessible. If you don’t have a Facebook Page, you may be missing out on not only traffic to your site, but a chance to engage with customers and ultimately help your brand’s reputation.

If you run a Facebook Page, you may be very interested in some new features that are rolling out for admins. Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook has discovered that some admins are starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression.

Facebook has gotten tighter with its policy on page verification. There is now a form that Facebook requires page-owners to fill out in order to verify that they are indeed the rightful owner of a branded page. They have even been sending the form around to some of the larger page owners.

The new form asks users to verify that they are an "authentic representative of the entity" the page represents. Here’s a look at the form itself.

There’s no question that search engines can be a tremendous source of traffic. Social networks are also proving to be big traffic generators for a lot of content producers, and Twitter is one of the big ones.

However, it is Facebook and Digg that are driving the most repeat readers according to a study conducted by online ad network Chitika. Traffic is great, but traffic that returns is even better.

Facebook is in the process of releasing a feature for Facebook Pages that allows the page’s admin to automatically post updates to Twitter simultaneously. The feature is only for Pages and not for individual profiles.

Google recently launched its Facebook Page. Now they have launched one specifically for AdSense.

Google refers to this as one-stop shop for up-to-date info. It will be synched with the AdSense blog and Twitter account, and will also contain optimization photos and videos that are found on the AdSense YouTube channel.

Google quietly launched an official Facebook page this week. Although that quiet didn’t stop the page from attracting over 264,000 fans already so far.

There is always plenty to discuss about Facebook as the site continues to grow rapidly. However, there are a few items of interest floating around the blogosphere currently that I wanted to highlight here.