I’VE GOT A GREAT WEBSITE… BUT I GET NO TRAFFIC!

So you are a business owner, and you are trying to increase your sales by offering your products or services on a website. You spent a pile of money paying a designer and a programmer to get your site up and running. The day finally came that your site went live, and after all of the fireworks fizzled, you discovered the fact that you have a little bit of a problem… YOU HAVE NO VISITORS!

The buildup and letdown described in this scenario is a common occurrence with brick-and-mortar business owners that are trying to increase their cash flow with web-based sales. Most will turn to SEO “expert” consultants or other marketing consultants and spend yet another considerable amount of hard-earned money to fix the problem and bring the much-needed traffic to their website. But the fact is, they are overlooking the most effective and cheapest solution to the problem… Twitter marketing.

Twitter just happens to be the fastest social media community on planet earth for attracting and retaining new potential clients within a specific geographical area. There is no other way to accomplish such a feat on any other platform on or off the internet. When properly implemented, a Twitter marketing campaign can start bringing in targeted customers within days of getting started. To tap into the ever expansive reservoir of potential clients dwelling within the Twitter community, follow these simple steps:

1. Create A Friendly Twitter Presence – If you don’t already have an account, get one now. Post your picture so people can identify with you as a person. Make several well thought-out tweets to introduce yourself to the community, and tell everyone about yourself and why you are there.

2. Create An Inviting Profile – Your profile should be clear about your business intent, but it should also let people know that you are a human being who likes to interact with others, have fun, and give back to the community.

3. Link To A Custom Landing Page – Create a special Twitter landing page just for your Twitter visitors. Focus on selling yourself before your products or services. By doing this, you will create long-lasting relationships that will translate into sales from life-long customers instead of one-time buyers.

4. Use Twellowhood.com To Find New Prospects – Use www.twellowhood.com to find people in your local target market to follow. Introduce yourself and get involved! This will create the bonds that you need to grow a loyal following of new clients for your business.

5. Post Every Day - Don’t let a day go by that you don’t post to Twitter. Give more to the Twitter community than you take by sharing meaningful information and interact with your followers. This will give you the best long-term return for your investment of time!

For advanced ideas on aggressive Twitter marketing, check out my Twitter Turbo program at my blog site, www.carltonzone.com!

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TWITTER DOMINATES THE NEWS AS SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CONTINUES TO RISE

For the past few weeks, it seems that Twitter has been dominating news reports, television & radio discussions, and even household discussions. We have finally arrived at the point that it is a difficult task finding someone who has not at least heard much about Twitter. Television stars, radio show hosts, network news reporters, and even top athletes are being turned on to Twitter at an alarming rate. Chad “Ocho Cinco” has even made plans to post a tweet during an NFL football game as a touchdown celebration!

But what does the future hold for Twitter and social media marketing as it relates to the business world?

I think this marks the beginning of what I predicted last November (2008). The groundswell is about to start, and we will see a tidal wave of change in the business community. We’re on the cusp of that 6 to 18 month “gestation” time that we talked about. This is where it will begin to be an exciting time for everyone.

I’m going to step out on a limb and tell you that social media may be one of the few sectors that has a positive effect on reversing the current economic trend. It has the power of leverage, and is generating the excitement needed to attract investors from all levels. The reason I say this is due to the fact that the valuation of the major players has risen to astronomical levels (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube). Facebook is sitting on a market value of about $15 billion. Twitter could be worth a few billion. Both companies are starting to attract suitors.

We saw Youtube get purchased by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, only 2 years after the site was launched. I believe Twitter is next. And I also believe that Google will be the purchaser, and they will pay a premium. I’m not sure how much it will be, but I look for it to be more than the Youtube purchase price.

This major investment talk is going to trickle down to the business community quickly. When local businesses, both small and large, see the seriousness of the potential buyout, they are going to start paying attention to the power of these social media websites. It’s bound to happen.

Until then, I am going to focus on helping to educate small business owners and professionals on the potential of social media marketing. I have a free audio offer (you just have to pay the cost to have it shipped to you) entitled ”The Seven Secrets of Revolutionizing Your Business Through Social Media Strategy” which is located at http://carltonzone.com/seven-secrets.php. Get a copy of this audio and heed my advice!

To your continued success,

Carlton Flowers

Marketing Strategist

573-893-9498

carlton.flowers@gmail.com

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“The Seven Secrets of Revolutionizing Your Business Through Social Media” Audio CD

Two months of hard work has finally paid off! My new audio CD is now available for local business owners, sales professionals, and company marketing managers. The Audio CD program will be available free of charge for a limited time just for the asking.

In this 9-track audio program, I reveal some of my best-kept secrets about social media marketing and why businesses and professionals are turning to this platform at a rapid rate. Here are some of the significant points that are covered:

• the single most critical marketing factor that will cost you your business edge if you don’t pay attention to this marketing trend
• the undesirable result of not taking action if and when your competitors learn of these before you do, and what you must do to stay on top in your field
• how to hack down your advertising & marketing budget, and replace it with something that gets measurable results
• the low-cost and highly effective alternative to “grapeshot marketing”
• a new free service that the majority of households are now discovering and accessing while you continue to dump money into “Stonehenge Media” sources
• a new trend that most large businesses have not discovered that is becoming the most effective form of advertising and brand-building
• a new way to increase your exposure and add potential clients in rapid-fashion like never before

Business owners and professionals in the Central Missouri area can call (573) 893-9498 to request a copy of the audio CD which will be delivered in-person at no charge. For all others, you can get your copy by covering the postage & handling fee of $5.75 and it will be delivered via US Postal Service First Class Mail. Click here to jump to the secure ordering page!

All the best,

Carlton Flowers, Marketing Strategist

573-893-9498

carlton.flowers@gmail.com

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Could One of Our Oldest Habits Be Close to Extinction?

Times are changing, and technology is blazing forward at an astronomical pace. So fast, that our behavior as a society is changing along with it quite rapidly. One of our country’s oldest reference manuals could be headed for the mothball treatment… the Yellow Book.

The big fat Yellow Book has been the mainstay of our soiciety. When we wanted pizza, we dug out the Yellow Book. It stayed in the kitchen, close to the phone. Back in the days of my youth, all phones came from the telephone company. It was a monopoly. Telephone brands and variety did not exist. You had 2 choices… a wall-mounted phone, or a table-top version. About the only exiting thing that came along for a while was the advent of the “extra-long” cord. With this great invention, teens could go around the corner and take their private conversations into the next room without everyone in the kitchen or family room hearing any of the juicy details. But with this “tethered” phone, we also had a tethered Yellow Book. My mother used to attach a string to the book, and tape it to the phone so it wouldn’t be misplaced.

Years later, after the arrival of cordless phones and even “cellular” phones, the Yellow Book was still the staple for searching out local stores for needed goods and services. It’s hard to believe that the internet didn’t even jump on the scene until 1994, which was four years after I graduated college. This marked the beginning for numbering the days of the Yellow Book’s livelyhood.

What shocks me is the fact that it took another fourteen or so years for yet another innovation (other than the Internet itself) to seriously challenge and threaten the kingmanship of the Yellow Book. What was it, you ask? It was Google Local Search.

What took so long for the Internet to threaten the Yellow Book? Simple… typing in a search for “pizza” in Jefferson City, Missouri, would bring results for restaurants in Cleveland Ohio. Even if you typed “pizza” along with your home town and state, the results were still shoddy. This made searching out local services on the net just about worthless… until Google Local Search came along, that is!

The brainy nerds at Google headquarters spent years working on this problem, and came up with the local search system. Even if I type in “pizza” without “Jefferson City Missouri”, I will STILL get a section on page one that is labeled “Local business results for pizza near Jefferson City, MO”. Under that heading, about 10 pizza places are shown ranked by letters “a, b, c, d, e…” along with the business name, phone number, and even a corresponding map to the left side with a pinpoint of each letter to match the result!

What does this mean for the Yellow Book? It means it’s time to get the mothballs out and retire them. With this search feature, why even go to yellowbook.com to search for businesses when you can get them straight from Google with this degree of accuracy? There isn’t. Add to that the fact that we as a society have turned the name “Google” into a verb, which means “to search out on the internet”, and you can just about hang it up! Children, teens, and  adults are using the verb “Google” almost unconsciously now. You even see it on TV, and hear it on the radio… “just Google us for directions to our store, and for our website!” they say. It represents one of the finest examples of branding and name recognition ever created. When your brand name becomes a commonly used verb, you are guaranteed to be a smashing success.

All this spells trouble for the Yellow Book and the Yellow Pages, who both charge some fairly pricey fees for local businesses to advertise in them. Soon, the big thick newsprint version of the Yellow books will turn into a “Stonehenge” of sorts, for advertising media anyway. But what will be most interesting to watch will be the length of time it takes for the big law firms and car dealerships to figure out that people are “Googling” their competitors instead of finding their own companies in the ancient Stonehenge media guide.

Time will only tell.

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CARLTON FLOWERS IS BACK IN THE GAME!

It’s been roughly 3 years since my last significant speaking engagement. I went on a speaking “hiatus” while chasing my dream to own and run my traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. But now that I have moved on and stepped away from my forray into entrepreneurship, I am returning to the activity that drives me the most, and is a part of my core being… motivational speaking.

As I set out to make my return, I have made a personal vow to change the lives of my clients through high-energy and emotional motivational speaking. My method of creating a lasting impression with my recipients is to deliver my message through three essential steps. First, I immediately captivate my audience. Next, I motivate and encourage participants to desire change in their lives. Lastly, I transform their thinking through personal discovery and enlightenment, with the goal to create a long-lasting effect on future behavior.

Covering a wide range of topics, it does not matter how general or technical the subject matter may be. Participants will leave refreshed, energized, and motivated to take something back to their teams, organizations, or workgroups. I believe that it is the job of a motivational speaker to shake up his or her participants, no matter how mundane or exciting the topic is. My commitment is bringing a transformational effect to those who participate.

There are no limits to where I will travel to bring energy and rejuvination to an organization or group. No borders will hinder me, and I will be at the behest of those that call and express a need. For general information about the subjects I specialize in, my experience, and fees, please visit www.carltonzone.com/keynotespeaker.php. Then contact me when you are ready supercharge your team and break the boundaries like never before!

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THE POWER OF DECODING THE CUSTOMER BUYING IMPULSE

It’s no surprise that we are in the middle of an economic slump right now. The majority of the retail sector has taken a beating. With major corporations like Circuit City filing bankruptcy and calling it quits, it is apparent that consumers are gripping their wallets tightly.

But right in the middle of the doom and gloom, certain niche markets are exploding. While most retailers feel the pinch from their once-loyal clientele staying at home and not spending money, those same people are spending money like there is no tomorrow in other areas. What is it that motivates these same cash-strapped individuals to run out and spend their money on certain other things as if money is no factor at all?

Its due to the fact that someone figured out their buying impulse hot button. When you hit the buying impulse hot button (BIHB), the wallets fly out and the purses snap open at super subconscious speed, almost in an involuntary reaction manner. The people who decode the buying impulse and then push the BIHB are the ones stuffing money in their pockets while everyone else whines about the recession. It’s a fact.

But this is nothing new. In fact, the Bible tells us that there’s nothing new under the sun. This same concept has been used for good and evil since time began. The snake in the garden used the BIHB to get Eve to eat the apple. Moses used the BIHB to get his people to follow him when he led his people out of captivation. Hitler used the BIHB to convince his formerly WWI war-torn citizens to follow him on his quest to world domination. I could go on and on, but you get the point.

Activation of the BIHB is what is behind people spending money to buy things they can’t afford, even when it is to impress people they can’t stand. Something drives them to impulsively and subconsciously come to an immediate buying decision regardless of what logical thinking would say otherwise.

If you decode the customer buying impulse (CBI) for your target market, and then act upon it by hitting the BIHB, you will stuff MONEY into your pocket.

More on the CBI and BIHB later. Stay tuned. You won’t want to miss this.

Carlton Flowers
Social Media Marketing Consultant

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THE “LOCAL SEARCH” SECRET – LEARN IT, OR GET LEFT IN THE DUST!

Social Media Marketing is catching on in Central Missouri. There are
companies in Jefferson City who are now capitalizing on snatching up
the attention of the local market. Why? Because of the hot new trend
among consumers, which is LOCAL SEARCH.

What is “local search”, you ask? This is what people are doing instead
of picking up a copy of the Yellow Pages. We used to flip through the
big phone book to find a dentist, doctor, chiropractor, or local auto
repair shop. But now, studies show that people are sitting down in
front of their computers to find local businesses by typing in the
keyword terms along with their local township, and state.

For example, a person looking for a local chiropractor would type in
“chiropractic doctor Jefferson City Missouri” to find a practitioner in
our home town. This now yields targeted results, and Google even
provides a map right there on the search results.

With local search becoming a new habit for consumers, it is no longer
necessary to spend thousands of dollars to optimize websites on a
national scale. Instead, local businesses can optimize their sites by
doing basic SEO work (that stands for “search engine optimization”)
along with a social media marketing campaign strategy to land on page 1
of their local market.

The “Web 2.0 SMO Guide” is coming out soon, which will provide local
business owners and professionals a top-secret step-by-step process
that will allow them to secure page 1 of Google within 24 hours. But
time is of the essence. The best results will occur for those that
snatch up the search terms in their sector before their competitors.

Personal training will be provided along with my proprietary guide to
help your local business get the results you need to conquer page 1 on
Google for your market. But remember, it’s the leaders that will stand
to benefit the greatest!

If you have questions or would like more information, call me at (573) 893-9498
or write carlton.flowers@gmail.com and I will be glad to provide you
with a free analysis and consultation for your business. I look forward
to hearing from you!

Carlton

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HOW TO CRUSH YOUR COMPETITION USING SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING & SEO

Missouri small businesses, organizations, and corporations, I have good news for you… I have added yet another weapon in the arsenal. In addition to social media marketing strategy, search engine optimization, and the SMO 2.0 guide, I now have an expert programmer and SEO guru!

My “special agent” is a highly intelligent young man with a strong programming background, possibly one of the best in the country. He can program in all major languages, including the new popluar “PHP”. He also is a seasoned veteran in search engine optimization, website redesign, website construction, servers, hosting, and just about anything else related to technology.

But back to the subject… crushing the competitors in your sector. I can’t stress enough how critical it is that business owners optimize their web presence through SEO. Equally as important, you MUST back up your optimized site with a strong social media campaign. If you do this now, you will leave your competitors in the dust.How so, you ask? Let me give you an example…

When I mention athletic shoes, what is the first brand name that comes to mind? If you said Nike, you answered like 90% or more of the general population. Putting aside marketing, advertisements, quality, design, and everyting else Nike has done to perfection, what is the main reason that they have top-of-mind brand identity? It’s simple… they were the FIRST ON THE SCENE.

There’s nothing anyone will ever be able to do to unseat Nike as the first to pop on the athletic shoe scene, becoming the first household name in this field. As long as they don’t have a major meltdown and screw up their image and reputation, they will not be unseated.

YOU have the same opportunity right now, more than ever, to set your mark as the “top-of-mind” source for your product or service in your sector. The greatest news is the fact that most people are resting on their laurels, waiting for the masses to make a move.

This is the exact time that leaders leaders take full advantage. It is what sets them apart. Fairly soon, most of your competitors will be rubbing their heads wishing they could turn back the clocks and establish themselves as the leaders on the social media forefront. But by then, it will be too late.

This is your 1-shot chance to dominate! Stay tuned for my real-world example of how I have capitalized on this opporutnity for my very own business. Until then, action is the word!

Carlton Flowers
573-893-9498
carlton.flowers@gmail.com

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Twitter Marketing Hits the Radar of Missouri Businesses

Since the fall of 2008, I’ve been doing a lot of my own social media marketing prognostication. But now it appears that the predictions of the social media experts are starting to materialize, albiet slowly. The corporate “groundhog” is finally peeking his head out the hole, looking for his social media shadow. The result? He didn’t see it, because the impending social media marketing boom is shining down so brightly. That means the arrival of the social media marketing revolution will come earlier than we thought.

In the corporate world, people are now talking at the water cooler. They are asking each other, “what in the world is this ‘Twitter’ thing all about? Don’t we need to be learning how it could affect or enhance our business?” Twitter has been in the news so much recently that you would have to be hiding your head under a rock not to realize that it has infiltrated corporate america and society as a whole.

But now that corporate employees and leaders are scratching their heads wondering what to do next about the fact that a social network like Twitter can mean the difference in dominating their market, the fun truly begins! Previously, talk about Twitter and social media marketing fell upon deaf ears, even though many Fortune 500 companies like Dell, Apple, and Amazon.com have long since proven its viability and positive impact. But that day has passed. Any competent business leader will have to admit that social media marketing is a must, even if they have very little knowledge of how to implement a workable campaign.

I have paid special attention to the local scene as this trend develops, particularly in Central Missouri. Among the Missouri corporations doing some serious head-scratching, for example, are companies like State Farm, and Shelter Insurance, neither of which have made the first move to conquer and corner the social media market for their sector.

I’ve recently been blogging about my very own creation, “Twitter Turbo”. Its a seminar product geared towards local businesses, corporations, and sales professionals on how to capitalize on the impending paradigm shift in marketing. Twitter Turbo is not only a grassroots fundamental social media marketing guide, but additionally gives highly advanced techniques that gives the trainee the ability to conquer their competition and own their market or sector.

We now see that phase one of the social media marketing revolution has passed, which is the general awareness of its existence by professionals and business owners. We now enter phase 2, where we will see the bold pioneers of each sector jump out to stake their claim in the social media frontier, thus leaving their competitors in the dust.

As I sit, I wonder, “which corporations will be the first to ring my phone for help?”

Only time will tell, but I already have a feeling who the leaders will be…

Stay tuned to find out!

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