For all small to medium size businesses looking to leverage Facebook to attract, engage and increase brand awareness with their customers, Facebook has just made it easier and more cost effective with their new ‘promote’ bottom.

According to a post by Brittany Darwell of Inside Facebook, ‘Facebook is rolling out its new “promote” button for pages with more than 400 fans in the U.S. (see Facebook Marketing page).’

‘The social network began testing the feature last month to make it easier for pages to increase the reach of their posts without going through the ad dashboard. Although the promote button simplifies the process, some page owners will resent the idea of having to pay for distribution to fans they’ve already acquired. Facebook seems to be becoming more aggressive about monetizing pages, but the rise of Sponsored Stories and promoted posts also stems from the reality that there is an increasing number of stories competing for placement in News Feed. Pages, like users, are not able to reach all of their followers organically.’

So what do you think?  Do you see the new ‘promote’ button as a valuable marketing tool for your business?  Click here to read the complete post.