It’s official! Carlton Flowers is ready to help local businesses in Jefferson City Missouri (and surrounding areas) who want to capitalize on the power of social media marketing. Did you know that social media sites and local search engine use has now trumped the Yellow Book?

Traditionally, the Yellow Book has ranked an uncontested #1 as the lead source for people searching for general business categories. But now that local search results and Google Maps (and Yahoo Maps, etc.) have developed, the search engines are actually getting more use than the Yellow Book for the first time in history.

Is your business set up to benefit from the thousands of seekers on the internet? Make sure that your business shows up strong in the local search engine results by contacting Carlton Flowers for high-tech marketing consulting that gets real and measurable results!

For an interesting article I wrote on Twitter, click this link.

For more information on Web 2.0 Social Media Optimization, click the image below:

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GANG,

You may have heard by now that I am taking the law into my own hands! I’m in the middle of creating a vagabond band of renegade writers who will help me to hijack the traditional Stonehenge Media giant’s slice of the money pie.

As you know, I’m furiously working on my first large-scale seminar product entitled “Fast Newsletter Cash”. I’ll be blogging about it from time-to-time as it develops. The gist of it is, I discovered a way (very crafty, sneaky way) that you can write newsletters and monetize them with ease. I tested this out years ago using a simple internet site that had a golf game, and now I have ressurected the method but with a better vehicle to the money-making portion.

Local businesses are the target market. Right now, they use newspapers, glossy over-priced magazines, radio spots, and television commercials to promote their products. That’s the old stone-age way of doing things, hence the term “Stonehenge Media” that I have just coined.

To advertise via Stonehenge Media, or SHM sources, it does cost quite a bit of cash. But with my Fast Newsletter Cash method, you will be able to crank out a hot newsletter that will snatch local advertisers away from the SHM giants. You can ask any local business owner and they will tell you that they prefer to invest their hard-earned money on other local businesses and consultants isntead of the big media giants (SHM giants, rather… please forgive me).

HOWEVER, before I even get close to launching my Fast Newsletter Cash seminar project, I am going to teach every average “Joe Freelancer” how to become an effective writer. I want you to know how to write with style, emotion, action, and relevancy, so that once the seminar product is available, you will be able to take it to the streets immediately and turn it into a decent respectable income in the quickest manner possible.

Therefore, I now present to you, my esteemed freelance writers, my free writing series. When it is ready, I will send out one lesson per week. They will not be verbose. They will not be 100 pages long. They will more than likely be ONE PAGE LONG (2, tops). My goal is to make brief, straight-to-the-point hard-hitting lessons that give you the firepower you need to be an effective writer.

So stay tuned, and jump to the Newsletter Cash page and sign up for the mailing list to start receiving your free lessons!

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Let’s face it folks… I love to write. It started in college. I went to Mizzou (home of the Tigers) from 1985 to 1990 to major in Civil Engineering. For those of you who do not know, Civil Engineers are responsible for designing and maintaining your infrastructure. Think of me the next time you are driving through a highway interchange, a structural steel bridge, that multi-level parking garage, or when you wonder where your water comes from and ends up. These things and many more come from Civil Engineering.

I thought Civil Engineering would be all about math, science, physics, and crunching out calculations. I found out that a big part of Civil Engineering is honing your ability to communicate. You can design the greatest highway on earth. But if you can’t communicate why it should cut through the back yard of several retired citizens, then your project may never be built. This was an actual experience of mine. It was either cut through the yards of several houses on one street, or continue forcing the fire department and ambulance service to have to respond through a school zone when needing to race out for emergencies.

Being swift with the calculator and geometric highway design software wasn’t good enough. Writing a convincing summary of the project to be presented at a public meeting and sent out to the local newspapers was the only way this project was going to gain approval. It’s for reasons such as this that Civil Engineering invovles several writing-intensive courses.

This is what gave me the burn to write. I graduated and went on to work 8 years for the highway and transportation department, and 10 years at the Department of Natural Resources, where I continue to work and utilize my writing skills.

I think the reason I truly love to write is that I love to talk, relate to people, and teach others. I’ve been a training seminar speaker now for 15 years, and I write the majority of my materials. When you get a chance to use your writing in a face-to-face manner, it is even more enjoyable. But either way, whether it is writing a technical letter to a regulated manufacturer telling them how to comply with certain EPA regulations or writing a speech or training session for my job, I just love to write.

Something that many people don’t know is the fact that I truly love writing humorous or flat-out silly pieces. What I have noticed is that you have a better chance of getting your point across and affecting peoples’ lives when you tickle their funny bone. This winter, I hope to launch a new newsletter called “Cube Life” which will help employees deal with living in cramped quarters 8 hours a day and 52 weeks a year by writing satirisitic and humorous stories that make an underlying point.

You can look for it soon. I’ll be blogging about it here once it is ready to roll out. It will be sent out in PDF format to state agencies in Missouri, and a few of our high-population corporate employers. I plan on having a lot of fun with this project, and I have a feeling that the readers might enjoy it even more than I do!

Let me encourage you to write. It doesn’t have to be professionally done. Just write something. You can write about your life experiences, things that you are passionate about, or even the history of your life and family. Go to a free blog site like Blogspot (www.blogspot.com) and start expressing yourself with words. Just think… somebody’s life might be changed because you were willing to share experiences of your own!

That’s all for now. I’m putting down my pen and turning off the calculator for the night.

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People have often admitted that I know a whole lot of stuff about technical computer-related subjects, and also motivational speaker/trainer stuff. But recently, someone asked me why I have proclaimed myself as a Social Media Expert. I’m glad this person asked, and ready to share the answer with everyone!

Besides the fact that I spend way too much time studying social media until  all hours of the night each and every day, imagining all the different ways that businesses and professionals could be doing twice the volume of whatever it is that they do if they just woke up and noticed the social media revolution, there are also two other very important reasons that I have become an expert, and a few more reasons to boot. That said, let us now cover the reasons.

2 Reasons why Carlton Flowers is a Social Media Expert

plus 4 bonus reasons…

1. Carlton learns from the best – the only way to build credibility in any business is to associate with those that are experts in their field, and wisely choose the best possible mentors. Carlton’s main mentor of choice is Dr. Ron Capps, better known as “The Niche Prof”. Dr. Capps taught at the University of Wisconsin, and currently teaches at Northwest Missouri State University. He is an expert in communications, sales, education, and everything Web 2.0. He speaks at conferences and events all over the country on the subject of social media. Carlton uses Dr. Ron Capps’ guides, studies, articles, and training materials as he consults businesses on leveraging their market penetration via social media.

2. Carlton is a student of SMUG – Social Media University Global is a consortium of the best individuals in the field of social media worldwide. They offer top-rate course materials, and are constantly growing in this brand-new field. Only a handful of the world’s best are students of this new media learning institution.

BONUS REASONS

B1. Carlton is a former computer geek - he had a computer business for ten years up to 2001, and has extensive experience in computer hardware, software, programming, and multimedia production. It is a naturally strong foundation for social media.

B2. Carlton is a motivational speaker and seminar trainer -  He teaches on a wide variety of subjects ranging from Championship Customer Service to Transformational Leadership. Again, a naturally strong foundation for the new social media revolution.

B3. Carlton is a former business owner - having owned an auto repair shop, a body shop, and a retail tool store, Carlton understands what businesses are going through, and how important it is to be on top of creative marketing techniques. Social Media only enhances his ability to put his former marketing experience to work for his clients.

B4. Carlton is an audio & video production expert - having produced his own local television show for 4 years (and coming back soon), Carlton is swift in the field of video & audio production. Knowing how to crank out professional-looking video content is a definite advantage in creating social media campaigns.

B5. Carlton is a schmoozy, likable guy – you can’t help but fall in love with Carlton the minute you meet him. He has a contagious laugh and energizer-bunny enthusiasm. He is known for his ability to inject his natural zeal for life into helping his clients. What more could you want in a consultant?

So there you have it. That’s what they say about me, and that is why I am officially a self-proclaimed social media expert.  Are you ready for me to optimize your business? You better call me soon, because I am getting busier by the day. The word is out on the streets that I have the best social media optimization solutions, and good news travels fast!

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Twitter is steamrolling the social media society. In my opinion, it is the hottest social site on
the internet today. What started as just an idea to get attention on a broad scale has morphed into a possible tool that can be used to enhance local prospects for entrepreneurs.

With all of the new Twitter accessory sites popping up on a daily basis, you have a plethora of tools that can be used to actually help develop a business, and even do market research. But what I find most interesting is that practically nobody in my local area is aware of this.

Jefferson City Missouri boasts about a dozen twitter users to my knowledge. I only see one politician (Peter Kinder), and one business owner using the service to their advantage. It appears that the market is wide open. But once the word gets out, there will be a mad dash by local area businesses to gain the biggest influence from using the social sites. I predict an overnight explosion of small business Twitter use.

What I really find exciting is the fact that the first business in each particular sector will stand to gain the most by jumping into the social community before their competitors. The first movers will reap the biggest rewards. All others will have to fight long and hard, and use creativity to put a dent in the market influence of the first movers.

What is really intriguing is the fact that the first movers will be able to establish themselves as the reigning authorities in their field of expertise, just by their own designation. It’s human nature that we follow the ground breakers and give them respect as authoritative experts, simply because they arrived on the scene first. That is why companies like Nike and IBM still sit atop the roost to this day, because they were of the first to break through in their fields.

I’ve been studying the social media phenomenon on a daily basis, but my focus has mainly been on the benefits of using these sites to expand and conquer market share with a small business. I have found that even some of the Fortune 500 companies have successfully implemented social media campaigns to launch new products and services. For example, Cisco just completed a long social media campaign to launch their new routers nationwide.

What these large companies have effectively done is to set the groundwork for small businesses to reproduce their positive results. It’s jsut a matter of having the right strategy for each individual sector.

Do you have a question about social media use in business that I can answer? Comment on this posting, or send an email to carlton.flowers@gmail.com and I will be glad to look into your question and provide an educated answer!

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There’s a new huge market emerging, and very few people know about it.  It’s been a long time coming, but it looks like getting local search results has finally become  something that small businesses are taking notice of.

Up until now, businessess that only serve a local market had nothing to gain from spending time and money developing an internet site. That’s because the search engines would not return local results over national results. That just changed. With the advent of Web 2.0, the dominance of Google, and the change in the algorithms and spiders which index internet sites, results are generated in a different manner. With this change, searches can produce results that cater to the proximity (or closeness) of a business along with relevancy.

Combine that with specific strategies on the website optimization end of things, and a local business all of the sudden has access to a ton of new prospective customers from internet searches that they didn’t have before!

With the tightening economy, any strategy put in place to drive sales to local business is time well spent. Want to know more about this? Post a question and I’ll do my best to answer!

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The Social Media revolution is completely out of control.  It seems like a new site is popping up every single day that hits a new niche, or a new way to put people in touch with each other over a common subject. How many new sites will we see over the next year? Is this a fad? Will most of these sites disappear, only to leave a couple of giants like Google or Yahoo are to search engines?

As crazy as it seems, I think not. The social media revolution is only in its infancy. I don’t see it slowing down any time soon, because there are just way too many niches left to be tapped. The possibilities are endless. And what makes me really think that the party hasn’t even gotten off the ground yet is the fact that the majority of friends and professionals that I talk to still don’t know what “Twitter” is.

That could only mean one of two things… First, that the social media explosion is a fad, and will not make a significant impact on our internet society. Or second, that we are on the front end of hitting critical mass, and the best is yet to come as social media sites become household names.

It’s like the social media phenomenon is a rocket on the launch pad that has just ignited, and has barely lifted off.  What’s even more intereting is the fact that we don’t even know what the possible uses and applications of social media will be once the rocket has entered into full orbit.  The only question is how high will it go, and how fast will it happen?

In my home town, most businesses, agencies, and professionals are sleeping on this rare paradigm shift in how we interact.  If they truly knew what was happening, they would all be racing to secure the biggest chunk of social media following that they could before their competitors.  I predict that there will be an explosion of social media useage by businesses and professionals in my home town almost overnight.  We are getting so close to the “critical mass” point.  It will take everyone by surprise when it happens, and it will demand lots of traditional media attention.

Who knows… maybe even the traditional media will wake up when they realize their secure market share could be planting their crops in the more fertile social ground!

Only time will tell.

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