Frances Knox is the founder of Frankly PR, a public relations and public affairs company. She's all about straight talking PR - so we asked her for the easiest 10 ways to get small business publicity.

Until recently, getting your message across to the outside world was a question of sending a press release to a journalist and crossing your fingers. Now, public relations has become truly public again.

The venerable institution that is the British School of Motoring has gone belly up. Rival motoring school, The AA, is picking up the hundred-year-old business for a nominal sum. But what caused the cash crisis? And what will happen to pupils learning with the firm?

Back in the early days of social networking, when Facebook was just beginning to flex its muscles beyond university frenzy, when LinkedIn was still erring on the geeky side of professional contact maintenance, and when MySpace was still big news, the cannier and more cynical among you will have asked of any given social media site: "Yes, but how does it make money?"

There have been a number of studies on the psychology of colour: Which shades make employees work longer hours; come up with more creative ideas; get along with their colleagues? Here are a few of the theories that have gained credence in the workplace.

The government has knocked up a handy reminder of employer's rights (below), with David Cameron promising to 'get to the real crux' of the issues limiting business and enterprise.

Here's an interesting bit of research from Ideasbynet.com, a UK-based promotional gift and branded products manufacturer. When times are tough and budgets are slashed, businesses spend more, not less, per unit on their promotional gifts. They also spurn the frivolous options in favour of practical, long-lasting gifts.

Elle Woulfe is  senior marketing programs manager at Eloqua, which automates marketing functions and helps drive revenue.

We work with hundreds of small businesses, and we recently conducted a planning and budgeting study of 572 marketers. We found the highest achievers have the following seven traits in common:

The rumour mill is a-churning that Facebook's first phone is just around the corner - City AM asserts release date is next month's Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona.

With limited recuitment budgets and fewer internal resources, small and medium-sized businesses are increasingly using interns to help bolster their businesses. Chris Winstanley, head of marketing at BaseKit, runs the internship scheme at the website-building firm. Here's why he thinks they make good business sense.

In 2007, Mitesh Soma took on the high street pharmacy giants launching a radical new e-commerce site, selling all the goods you'd find in your local chemist - at a fraction of the price. He soon diversified into new markets and product lines. Four years on, he's still innovating to stay ahead of the curve. Here are his aggressive expansion plans for 2011.