All Posts By

Ted Murphy

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

The $98 Social Media Campaign

One of the biggest challenges that companies face in social media is getting participation from fans and creation of quality user generated content. I believe that WeReward provides a scalable, low cost solution to this problem. To prove my theory I put together a little experiment for Nike, one of my favorite brands. This experiment was done on my own dime and is not an official Nike promotion.

The idea was simple. I wanted to create a complete social media awareness and user generated content program for less than $100. As a marketer the results blew me away. I have worked on many campaigns designed to generate photo submissions and fan participation. Most of those cost the client tens of thousands of dollars or more. Ideation alone can cost a few grand and take weeks. This campaign took less than 30 minutes to setup and manage the entire approval process.

So… if I was a brand what would I do with all this data and content?

  • I would post the best photos to my Facebook fan page or website to keep my content fresh.
  • I would reach out to the people that participated to thank them through Twitter or FB.
  • I would create new promotions to keep these people constantly engaged with my brand.
Ted Murphy
In business

Get Your Ass on The Dance Floor

When I started MindComet ten years ago one of my dreams was to have a big fancy office. I worked for many years toward that goal, treating myself to a bigger and bigger office as the company grew. Four years later the company became big enough to build its own building. I designed the space and hooked myself up with a mac daddy office, complete with interactive white board, wet bar and personal fridge.

It took several years to complete construction of the MindComet building. By the time it was done something crazy had happened… I no longer worked there. In the middle of all the construction madness IZEA was born. Turns out that I never worked a day in that fancy office I built.

Ground Breaking For MindComet

MindComet Building

Ditch Your Personal Office

I was now at a new company, in a new location, working with a bunch of people that I just hired. I made the decision that I wouldn’t put myself in an office at first. I thought it would be better to be “out on the dance floor” with my new team members so I could get to know them. Four years later I can honestly say that it was one of the best things I have ever done as a CEO.

ted_murphy_izeafest_howlMy experience has made me a huge believer in open work environments. At IZEA nobody has an office. It took some time for the management team to buy in to but once we all adjusted the benefits became clear. Personal offices constrict communication, draw a physical line between management and other team members and generally serve no purpose outside of feeding management ego. Our open structure makes our management team available to all team members. It allows us to monitor the pulse of the company and more openly collaborate with others.

I’m not watching the dance floor from my cushy seat at the bar, I am out there dancing my ass off with the team. (As you can see from the picture I try to apply the same principle to our customers).

I know what you are going to say. “I need privacy… I work on sensitive materials”. Yes, most management does. I am not suggesting you make your desk visible to every passer by. You can be on the floor and place your desk strategically, you can also invest in some locking file cabinets.  Take your old offices and transform them into shared privacy rooms for important phone calls or projects. I know it sound a little scary, but you can do it. I promise you will thank me later.

Ted Murphy
In life

I Will Grant You Three Wishes

ted_genieThis morning I woke up and found myself blessed with super natural powers. Anything I wished for suddenly became a reality. I wished for a coffee… and the lady at Starbucks handed me one. I wished for silence… and my radio broke. I wished for freedom… and looked down to see I wasn’t wearing pants.

Amazing? Yes.

I am pretty much like a genie… but I hope I smell better than a genie because I imagine genies smell pretty bad from being couped in a bottle for so long.

Anywho – I want to share my powers with you. Simply leave a comment on this post with your three wishes and I will do my best to grant them. I cannot promise that all wishes will be granted… but if you don’t leave a comment I can promise it won’t be granted (by me anyway).

Ted Murphy
In gear

The ICON A5

Oh man. I am not sure if I am going through some sort of mid life crisis or what but everywhere I look I see new toys that I want to buy. The latest is the ICON A5. I saw it for the first time at JetBlue terminal 5 and instantly fell in love. A 2 passenger plane designed for water that is small enough to be pulled behind my truck? Hell yeah!

ICON a5

Icon in water
Icon at Boat Ramp

New FAA sport flying requirements mean you only need 20 hours of in flight training to fly an A5. At $139,000 it’s expensive but not absolutely ridiculous. For just $5,000 you can reserve one for delivery in 2013. Of course by then you might be able to buy all of Greece for just a few dollars more.

Ted Murphy
In life

The New Chick Magnet

Before you read this post let me say that I am happily in love with Tara. Sorry ladies… I am taken : ) I am simply trying to help out my single buddies.

Last week I finally got my iPad.

I picked it up from the office Sunday night so I could have it with me on my trip to California. From the second I got it I couldn’t put the thing down. I suddenly needed even more email, more tweets… more web content. I was alone on my trip and had a lot to do so I took it along with me when I went to eat. The first place I went the waitress said “ohhh… is that an iPad?” and proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about it. I didn’t think much about it until it happened again at a different restaurant the next day. I chuckled and thought to myself it must be a California thing.

Then it happened again.

Yesterday Tara and I went to grab a burrito at Tijuana Flats. I brought my iPad along because we wanted to do some planning together (and Evernote for iPad rocks).  The waitress walked up to deliver our food and BAM! “Is that an iPad!?!” — No freaking’ way! I told Tara what had happened earlier in the week. Who knew that the ladies would be so amazed by a little computer. It is the ultimate conversation starter.

puppies_ipad

Single guys do all sorts of stupid things to meet girls. We all know the puppy trick… but that is so 2009. If you are a bachelor and really want to meet girls I say get yourself an iPad. I am going to have to hide mine so I don’t feel awkward.

Ted Murphy
In art

Faces of Love

I have put my second work of art up for sale (see the first here). I started this piece in January and it has taken me until now to finish it. I worked on it little by little each night (I was home anyway) and I am really happy with how it came out. If you like Where’s Waldo you will like this piece. Hidden in the detail are 100 faces… some happy some sad.

Ted Murphy
In gear

The Quadski

quadskiQ: What do you get when you combine an ATV with a Jet Ski? A: The most bad ass thing I have ever seen. Check out the Quad Ski by Gibbs Technologies. This puppy is capable of traveling at 50mph on land and water and makes the transition at the flick of a switch. They aren’t available for purchase yet but I have added this to my wish list (along with a jet pack).

quadski

quadski_2

Ted Murphy
In business

Startups : Beer Can Show You The Way

I am throwing a party at my house at the end of the month (woot woot). May is going to bring some bring news for IZEA and it is time to celebrate! I started putting together my pre-party check list and came to the topic of beer. At my last few parties the beer has gotten kind of warm, the keg lines were long and there was too much foam. I went online and did a search for “keg coolers” to keep the beer cold for my guests. I clicked on the first link and landed on a site called Keg Works.

jockey_box
WHAHAHAH?!?! This is an entire site dedicated to serving beer at home and parties. It’s not your ordinary e-commerce site, it is filled with tutorial videos, tips, detailed product descriptions and comparisons. These guys know how to serve beer. I spent a good 30 minutes engrossed in the site before I made the leap and bought a jockey box kit. I had no intention of making that big of a purchase when I started searching, but the content on the site compelled me to do so.

Problem : Warm beer, long lines and too much head.
Solution : Jockey Box
My guests : Happy

Own Your Niche

How did they sell me? Every product listed on the site is beer related, which is one of the reasons that they ranked #1 when I did a search. When I landed on the site they had what I thought I needed (a keg cooler), but other (more expensive) items that offered a better solution. I was able to do research, find easy instructions and feel comfortable purchasing a product that I hadn’t planned on buying.

Massive e-commerce stores like Amazon are great if you know what you want to buy, but they tend to fall short when you are looking for a more specialized product. If you are a web entrepreneur that represents a huge opportunity. Chances are you won’t be able to compete with Amazon on selection, but you can compete with them by focusing on a niche and serving that niche better than they can.

Ted Murphy
In life

What News REALLY Matters?

In the social media age everyone thinks what they are doing or saying is newsworthy (guilty as charged). We are shouting our news through our Twitter streams, blogging our hearts out and vying for attention from anyone that can validate the worthiness of our announcement. The problem is that 99.999% of this “news” doesn’t really matter in the long run. It isn’t going to change the world and it is inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Will anyone care social media marketing 10,000 years from now? Will it change the way in which all of us live that far into the future? Maybe…. but probably not.

longnow-explain

You want news? How about this?

  • It’s estimated that by 2050, the number of centenarians worldwide will reach nearly 6 million. And some say that half of the babies born in the U.S. today will live into the 22nd century.
  • Today, humans speak to each other in nearly 7,000 languages; it’s estimated that 90% of those languages will be gone by 2050, displaced by English, Spanish, or Chinese.
  • In 1971, President Nixon declared “war on cancer.” In the forty years since, the U.S. has spent some $200 billion on research, but we’ve only cut the death rate by 5% (measured since 1950). Cancer still accounts for 13% of deaths worldwide.
  • In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000.

The above news is from longnews.org, a site dedicated to sharing the news stories that will still matter fifty, one hundred or ten thousands years from now. In other words it is the news that REALLY matters.

 

Ted Murphy
In gear

Time is Money

Anyone who has worked with me knows that I am not a huge fan of meetings. I like my meetings short, sweet, small and productive. I think my distaste for meetings came out of my experience running agencies. In the agency business time is literally money. Every minute you spend is either billable (costs the client) or non-billable (costs the agency) and both scenarios can be very expensive. When you have ten people in an meeting for one hour billing an average of $175 per hour your meeting just cost $1,750. You better make damn sure you all needed to be there and actually accomplished something.

Time is Money

Enter Bring TIM!

I stumbled on this product this weekend and immediately placed an order. Bring TIM is a meeting cost calculator. You bring it to a meeting (I am going to leave it in the conference room), dial in the average hourly rate and number of people and hit start. You can see the cost of the meeting in real time so everyone is aware of just how expensive the time is. In my opinion this is a must have for any business, especially those that bill clients based on time (I want to get my lawyer one).

I have no doubt that this will freak out some of my team members but I can’t wait to put it into action. You can order your own here for $24.99.