I decided to make Ted’s Magic Turkey Chili Surprise today for a Superbowl party at my friends house. I realize that I shared the recipe on this blog before, but I thought a video may better demonstrate just how easy and fast it is to make chili. For those of you out there who are afraid to cook take a look at this video, it could not be easier. I am by no means a chef, but even I can make this stuff.
I had a realization earlier this week. Less than 3 months after starting this blog it already has some real value, traffic and monetization opportunities. I thought to myself how can this be? I don’t consider myself to be a good writer, other bloggers run circles around me. However, I have something that the majority of bloggers don’t have… branding skills. From the design of this blog to my hat and tongue in photos I have created a brand around myself and my personality. There is an image that people associate with my name, so much so that if I show up somewhere without my hat or fail to stick my tongue out in a picture people think something is wrong.
Branding is one thing, believing in your personal brand enough to invest in it and market yourself is another. You have all seen the twitter shirts I had made, but did you also know that I buy ads with my own money through IZEA to promote this blog? This week I decided to personally sponsor Barcamp Miami, that deal got me a link from their site and placement on the T-shirt promoting my Twitter profile.
First I developed a personal brand, then I spent time and money making people aware of it.
Some people ask me why I invest in the Ted Murphy brand when I am the CEO of a company with a corporate brand. It’s simple really… business is personal. In many ways my brand and the IZEA brand are intertwined. However, this blog allows me to create a connection with bloggers and advertisers in a way that I can’t under the IZEA moniker. This brand is my opinions, my thoughts, my life… me. (thus the ted.me domain).
It’s not brand building for brand sake. It’s about creating enough power and momentum with your brand to further your cause. My personal brand and this blog exist for three reasons:
I am happy to say I am doing all of these things with a good degree of regularity and having a blast along the way. What about you? Have you been able to establish your brand? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What are you trying to accomplish with it?
I have a couple of words of personal branding advice:
On my last trip from Las Vegas I was very vocal about my distaste for US Air. Imagine my surprise today when I received this email, completely unsolicited. I never complained directly to US Air, just Tweeted quite a bit. Is this the result of my Tweets? Are they monitoring customer feedback? Did everyone on that flight get one of these? I have been through ton of delays a lot worse than that one and have never gotten any sort of credit voucher. If anyone works for US Air I would like to know how this came together.
I am impressed with the customer service and have decided to give US Air another try.
Today I crossed a big milestone, I logged my 500th kilometer on my new iPod. That means I have averaged 6.6km (4.1mi) a day for the past 75 days. Not only that, but today I logged my fastest 10 mile run to date. The marathon is only 3 weeks away, I am fired up and ready to go!
Make it Happen! from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.
How about you? Are you sticking with your fitness goals?
I have been asked by multiple people to share the results of the IZEA / Kmart social media marketing campaign. Below you can see the case study, which I believe is quite impressive. The information shared below is all publicly available through one means or another. IZEA keeps other tracking data which we only share with the client.
There has been a lot of discussion in my local area about high schools dropping sports programs due to budget cut backs. I am not going to go into why I think this is wrong (which I do on so many levels), rather I am going to propose a solution.
Perhaps we should open up aspects of our school systems to marketers. It’s already common to see signs for local businesses on high school football fields, why not open it up a bit further and let marketers fund our sports programs in other ways? I am sure companies targeting our youth would pay top dollar to occupy the space where our young people spend the majority of the day. Let Lamar, Clear Channel and other outdoor advertising companies rep entire school districts and sell inventory with a professional sales force.
Sponsored Classroom
We should explore other alternatives before we kill high school sports and other extracurricular activities. I would rather have our teenagers exposed to a little more advertising on and off the field than have no field at all.
I mocked up both of these images (neither of them are real).
Duh! Right? Yeah, it seems so simple. Bloggers do a great job promoting their social media profiles. But most companies…. not so much. Today IZEA sent out an email to our customers with a little reminder.
Guess what? We are on Twitter! Not only that but we have five accounts, each with a person dedicated to them.
It’s elementary I know, but I can’t believe it has taken us this long to send out an email dedicated to our Twitter activity. If you run a business and are active on Twitter or another social media tool perhaps its time to let your customers know. Don’t stick it in a footer, shout it out!
If you don’t already follow me on Twitter check me out here.
I just received an email from Tara followed by a nervous phone call. It seems the brown color we thought we picked for the back house is actually more of an orange. Now we are faced with a dilemma; keep the house as is or repaint it something more brown. I am not sure if I like the color or not. I need your help asap! I have to tell the painter by the end of the day if I want him to finish or start over. It will run about $500 or so to repaint what he has done so far. Please leave a comment and tell me what to do.
I like the green....but what about the orange house?
Last month I wrote a post about Pancheros’ use of Twitter. In the post I described what I would do if I was tapped on the shoulder to help Pancheros develop an in-store social media strategy.
You should really read that post first.
Since then Joel from Pancheros and I have been tweeting back and forth, he even sent me some free burrito gift cards. I found out that Joel is heading back to school in the fall, but intends to make an impact while still at Pancheros
I am happy to report that Joel is making some real headway! Today I went to Pancheros to grab a burrito and was greeted by this sign.
FREAKIN’ AWESOME JOEL! It even looks similar to the design I mocked up for the T-Shirt (below).
As far as I know Pancheros has become the first national chain of fast food restaurants to integrate Twitter promotion with their physical store locations. I am pretty happy about it, I feel like I helped get the effort going. I wonder how long it will be before McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell follow their lead.
Keep going Joel! I want to see those Twitter screens soon : )
