The current rage—the whiz-bang, change-the-world way to market your business—is social media.

Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, you could spend your entire day being lured into it all. And there are many bloggers and business consultants out there touting the big benefits to social media. They’ll tell you that if you’re not using social media, you’re missing the boat.

There certainly are benefits to social media, but let’s be clear—its not the big solution to the problem that is paramount in your mind—How the heck do I drive more traffic, close more deals and make my business thrive?

That’s not to say that some small businesses aren’t successful using social media tools to help market their businesses. The New York Times recently published a story about a few small businesses using Twitter to alert people about deals, specials, etc. And, I know of a few small businesses here in Colorado that are using Facebook and Twitter to stay in touch with customers. Here’s the thing though: All of them have a web site where they are hoping to drive traffic to. They use social media as one way to drive that traffic.

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As mentioned here last week, marketing a small or medium sized business through the local search results is an effective and smart way to generate new leads and sales to your business.  As a local business owner getting your web site into the local business results on Google, also know as the 10-pack, can bring substantial new business for no direct cost.

In the past, once you had set up your local search listing on Google there was not a whole lot of visibility into how exactly those local search listings were benefiting you, other than corollary data in Google Analytics and the perceived increase in web based inquiries coming via phone calls, emails, or inquiry for submissions.

About two months ago, Google opened up Local Business Center reports, which give local business owners a detailed look into what is going on with their local search listings. These listings not only show small businesses marketers what they have done well, but also can show areas for improvement in their local business listing.

Let’s take a look at what’s included in the Google Local Business Center reports.
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