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sales & marketing

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Invest in Your Personal Brand

CerealI 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:

  1. Make money for IZEA.
  2. Support charity.
  3. Express my creative spirit.

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:

  1. List out your objectives. Answer the questions above for starters.
  2. Don’t skimp on design. If you are not a designer hire someone to establish a personal ID for you. Remember your ID may go beyond a logo, it may include how you physically present yourself.
  3. Create a marketing budget. I know it is hard in these economic times but you need to invest in marketing on an ongoing basis. (PPP has some budget friendly options ; )
  4. Invest the time. It’s not going to happen overnight, you need to spend 2-3 hours a day everyday interacting with others online.
Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Can Marketing Save High School Sports?

Sponsored School Bus

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.

classroom_ads

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).

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Let Your Customers Know You Are on Twitter

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!

twitter1

If you don’t already follow me on Twitter check me out here.

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Twitter Logo TShirts

The custom Twitter logo tshirts I designed were were a big hit at CES in Las Vegas. I had random people stopping me on the convention floor asking me where they could buy them. Even though it’s fun being the only person with a custom Twitter shirt like this it is more fun to spread the love and help others to grow their followers.

Photo courtesy Juliesjournal.com

How to get your own Twitter T-Shirt

I have decided to share the EPS source file for the Twitter design I used on my shirt. You can use this file to easily create your own shirt by following these simply instructions:

1. Download the EPS Twitter logo t-shirt design.

2. Open the file in Illustrator and customize the text block with your name. Be sure to convert your text to outlines to avoid any font issues. The red background is only there for preview, delete it and save the file out as an EPS.

3. Go to Customink.com and choose a t-shirt style. Upload the file through their design tool. The video below brings you through step by step.


Custom Twitter T-Shirt from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.

4. Pick your sizes and quantity and you are good to go!

I hope you enjoy your new t-shirt. If you order one please be sure to leave a comment here with a link back to your photo.

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Pancheros Gets Twitter … Kinda

Earlier this week Joe and I went to Pancheros to grab a burrito. I had not been in several months, I love the food but Pancheros is a ten minute walk from IZEA and normally isn’t top of mind. When I returned to the office I tweeted about my burrito and was amazed when somebody at Pancheros quickly responded to me.

Obviously Joel at Pancheros understands the power of Twitter. He is probably using Twitter search to identify people speaking about their company then responding in real time. I loved that he reached out to me and followed me, so much so that I have returned to Pancheros two more times this week, spending $20 in additional food and beverage. I want to praise Joel and Pancheros for their use of Twitter, but challenge them to think bigger.

Pancheros 2.0

Imagine this. It’s January 1, 2009. Joel just tapped me on the shoulder to consult with Pancheros on a social media strategy (which I don’t do). My first order of business… Twitterize everything.

Get Employees On Board

I told both the cashier and the owner of my local Pancheros that I tweeted about Pancheros and they both had no idea what the heck I was talking about. Pancheros should encourage these people to participate in Twitter and enlist them to help spread the word while at the restaurant.
Pancheros Twitter

Spread the Word

It’s great that Pancheros is on Twitter, but I would have never known it. I just so happen to tweet about them and be followed back. If they are going to be on Twitter they should make a commitment to promoting it now, while Twitter is still relatively young. Don’t let McDonalds or Burger King “eat your lunch”. Connect with the early adopters and they will create a snowball of followers. Make it clear you are on Twitter, don’t make your fans seek you out or stumble upon you.

Pancheros Twitter

Encourage Conversation

Pancheros has big screen monitors broadcasting irrelevant cable television programming to their customer base. Why not turn those into Twitter search feeds, showing everyone the conversation around the Pancheros brand and the food they love so much. Seeing the conversation will encourage people to participate and drive free brand exposure on a massive scale.

Pancheros Twitter

Drive Demand Through Special Offers

Pancheros should use Twitter to tweet out special offer codes for Panchero followers. I would suggest doing these tweets a couple times a week, around lunch and dinner. If they tweeted out “come to @pancheros in the next hour and mention promo code TACONOW to get 20% off a taco” I would be there… a lot.

Embrace The Twitter Community

How about holding a Tweetup with free or discounted product at Pancheros in each city they have locations. Perhaps people could get a free taco by Tweeting out a phrase like “@pancheros hooked me up with a free chicken taco at the Orlando tweetup”. Utilize the network effect of Twitter to spread the word at low cost.

Tweet and Mortar

Pancheros and other businesses with a physical location have an incredible opportunity to integrate Twitter in everything they do. Those that move first and build an army of followers now will have a distinct advantage over their counterparts that arrive late to the game. Joel is heading down the right path, I hope he can get senior management to see the bigger picture and be the first fast food chain to embrace Twitter in this way

If you like this post feel free to follow me on Twitter.

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Good Logos Start in Black and White

Personal branding is all the buzz among bloggers these days. While there are many elements of a personal brand one of the biggest is your logo. Most bloggers are decent writers, but terrible designers. They don’t understand the basic principles of creating a logo for branding purposes. On the other hand I am decent designer, but a terrible writer : )

There are a few rules I have when creating a logo:

  1. Logos should start in black and white.
  2. Logos are not just a word in a fancy font.
  3. Logos should not contain pictures.
  4. Logos should be sharp, unique and distinctive.
  5. Logos need to be readable when printed at 1″

If you think of any major brand logo they follow these same rules: Nike, Apple, AT&T, FedEx, Microsoft, McDonalds, WalMart, you name it…

I have created many logos in my life, but the IZEA logo is one of my favorites. It is a strong logo that meets all of the above requirements. It works big or small, in black and white or color. It works screen printed in one color on a t-shirt just as well as it does animated in video.

I know what you are saying…. “Ted your logo on this blog can’t be done in one color and it uses a picture”. Yes…. but just because I am a jackass doesn’t mean you should be. It’s way harder to create a good black and white logo than it is to slap some text effects and a photo together. I took the shortcut. Now I am quite frustrated with my logo, I am going to have to redo it when I have some time. I can’t print it on t-shirts (without expensive full color) and you can’t read it when it is small. Not to mention it kinda sucks and is not my best work.

If you are going to invest time in branding yourself I suggest you take the time to do it right. Start in black and white, you will thank me for it later.

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

My Interview with The Engaging Brand

I had the pleasure of doing an interview with Anna Farmey of the The Engaging Brand a few weeks ago. It looks like the podcast has now been published on here blog. You can check it out here. A couple things we talked about

  • Do blogging and advertising really go together?
  • What value does advertising have for the blog reader?
  • How PayPerPost can work for your brand, and what is the risk of paying people to talk about your brand negatively!
  • Cloudshout….Are we moving from adverts to sponsored web walks, people can see the sites I visit and if I bring people with me, I get paid?
  • Are bloggers almost in danger of exploiting the consumers just like firms did with “in your face” advertising?
  • Is the recession great news for web companies, does it give you the “excuse” to start monetizing the web?
  • Why I believe that advertising in social media is a great return on investment for companies.
Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Flash Sucks For SEO

Last week I had a discussion with someone about the redesign of their website. Their current corporate site is in HTML and very well SEO’d, but they are looking for something more interactive…they want to build the site in Flash. I am totally against Flash-based corporate sites (not RIAs), not because I think flash sites aren’t cool, but because the SEO and usability tradeoffs are just too great.

Continue Reading
Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

The Iraq War is Over!

Well… not really. It seems that a group of pranksters handed out free fake copies of The New York Times this morning in Grand Central Terminal and other locations around the country. The papers were distributed by the Yes Men, who issued a statement about the prank:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

They also launched a website mimicking the NYT.

All politics aside someone should hire these guys to do their marketing. It was brilliantly executed.

Ted Murphy
In sales & marketing

Free wallet from Burger King

Randy and I were having lunch in downtown Orlando today when someone appeared to have dropped their wallet. People shouted out to the person who dropped the wallet and Randy ran over and picked it up. When he tried to give it to the person who dropped it they said “Keep it. It’s on the King”.

Burger King Wallet

Burger King Wallet

The wallet contained a special BK $1 bill (legal tender), a $5 BK gift card and other random BK stuff. By the time we got back to the office a few others had found wallets too, everyone was talking about them. I love clever marketing, this was some very well done word of mouth for Burger King.

Burger King Wallet

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