I was cleaning up my hard drive this week when I stumbled on some old RockStartup episodes. For those of you that aren’t familiar with RockStartup it was a reality show I produced when IZEA first started. We did 48 episodes in total and I really enjoyed the entire experience. You can find the series in HD on iTunes.
RockStartup #47 from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.
If you follow me on Twitter you know that last weekend IZEA organized an exclusive hard hat tour of Manta, a new roller coaster at SeaWorld, with a small group of bloggers. Manta is simply amazing. It combines an unique cave-like aquarium and flying roller coaster into one awesome experience like nothing else on the planet.
I am most excited about the coaster aspect of the attraction. You ride laying down, attached to belly of a giant Manta, creating the sensation of flight. It was so cool to hear directly from the people that conceptualized and managed this massive project. You could tell that they are genuinely excited to share their creation with the public. I never realized how much goes into building an attraction like this; it makes me appreciate Manta that much more.
IZEA and SeaWorld have teamed up to create a wicked contest called Manta Mania. One person will win a trip for four to SeaWorld including airfare, hotel and two full days at the park. Not only that… you will get priority access to ride Manta! I also have an awesome SeaWorld prize pack to giveaway that includes some cool schwag.
How to Enter
You can enter up to three times per person via these three methods:
Blog Comment:
Leave a comment sharing why you want to take your family or friends to SeaWorld to ride Manta.
Twitter Tweet:
Tweet out why you want to go to Seaworld and ride Manta in 140 characters or less. Be sure to include “http://urlbrief.com/b4e25e“, “#mantamania” and “@tedmurphy” somewhere in your tweet to be registered.
SAMPLE TWEET
RT I have #mantamania! I love roller coasters @tedmurphy – tweet for a chance to win a trip to seaworld http://urlbrief.com/b4e25e
Blog Post:
Write a post about why you want to take your family or friends to SeaWorld and ride Manta. Be sure to leave a comment on this post with the URL if the trackback doesn’t show for some reason.
Important Stuff
The Manta Mania Contest is open to anyone who is a legal U.S. resident and legal residents of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, or Dominican Republic and is at least eighteen (18) years of age. The contest ends at 11:59 p.m. EST on March 10, 2009. Please be sure and read the full contest rules here.
If you dig dolphins you should also check out Dolphin Bubbles, a SeaWorld blog all about dolphins.
I thought it was genius when I first saw the Krispy Kreme “Hot Now” sign outside their stores. The only thing better than a doughnut is a hot doughnut. What if the marketing folks at Krispy Kreme used that same concept on Twitter?
Each store could have thier own Twitter ID, maybe something like @krispy(store#). You could follow the store and know every time hot doughnuts were ready. I can taste the magical glazed sour creme doughuts already.
Last week I challenged two local Orlando restaurants to further their adoption of twitter and allow me to tweet my order.
Orlando Ichiban stepped up within the hour and said they would start accepting orders via DM only. While I commend this step (you guys are awesome!) I also think it completely misses the boat from a marketing standpoint. You want orders to be public, front and center. I have 5,700+ people following me on Twitter and many of those live in Orlando. Why wouldn’t you want me to share my order with all those hungry potential customers? This is a huge opportunity for a food order to go viral and inspire others to purchase . Think about it:
By forcing me to use a private DM channel you negate that effect completely. No viral. No awareness. No gain. Yes, it’s better customer service, but you lost all the marketing potential.
Ichiban explained to me that they don’t have a device that allows them to get tweets real time in the restaurant. However, DM’s go directly to their cell phone via SMS, allowing them to respond. Guess what? It’s time to upgrade. Get a computer, iPhone or some other device that lets you interact with your customers in an open and public way in real time. Social media should be social, that’s the whole point. If you want me to DM you I might as well send my order via fax, carrier pigeon.
I really don’t like the DM idea so I decided to circumvent the system. I ordered my food yesterday via regular tweet, giving them enough time to spot it and respond. I am hoping I can do this without the delay sometime in the near future.
The food was fantastic and very well presented (even for a takeout order). The only thing I wish I would have seen was some mention of Twitter on the menu or as a little insert. I decided to add my own for the photo above : )
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.
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.
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 : )
The people at the Limu Company invited me to help launch their new energy drink Blue Frog. I gave a presentation / pep rally on social media and I have to say it was the best audience I have ever presented to. There was a tremendous amount of energy in the room and I felt like it was all being channeled through to me. I managed to snag this awesome picture while on stage with my X-Shot.
It was no small stage, my mug was being blasted on the screens on each side. The entire event was recorded, I will share the video when I get a copy of it. Apparently people liked it : )
Over the past few weeks IZEA has developed a relationship with the fine people at Busch Entertainment. Busch operates SeaWorld, Busch Gardens, Aquatica and other adventure parks around the country. We are working on a variety of initiatives together, the first of which is an exclusive blogger hard hat tour of Manta next month.
Manta Roller Coaster at SeaWorld
Manta is a brand new roller coaster scheduled to open this Summer. Riders will journey face-down, in a horizontal position, underneath the belly of a coaster train shaped as a giant manta, with a wing span of 12 feet. I had the opportunity to see a pre-release video of the Manta experience and I have to say it looks incredible. If I had the money I would build one in my backyard and invite you over, but it may just be easier to go to SeaWorld together when it opens.
I was asked to select 5 bloggers to participate in a hard hat tour the first weekend in February. These bloggers will join me in Orlando to go behind the scenes and discover SeaWorld like few others have:
Alex Schek – http://www.faywerwayer.com (@aschek)
Lucretia Pruitt – http://www.geekmommy.com (@geekmommy)
Julia Roy – http://www.juliaroy.com (@juliaroy)
Wendy Piersall – http://www.sparkplugging.com (@emom)
Sarah Austion – http://www.pop17.com (@pop17)
In addition, SeaWorld was kind enough to provide me with tickets for all IZEA team members last Friday. We had the chance to explore the park and familiarize ourselves with all that it has to offer. I had an absolute blast! I saw sharks, dolphins and penguins… not to mention I got to ride Kraken.
Finished Riding Kraken from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.
All that other stuff was cool, but without a doubt the highlight of my day was the video below. I don’t want to ruin what happened, just remember it was 40 degrees outside and I was wearing a cotton shirt.
Soaked by Shamu from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.
I am extremely excited to be working with SeaWorld on the Manta hard hat tour and other projects not yet announced. They are great people to work worth, are eager to get into social media and most of all they have seen this blog and they still like me : )
If you haven’t already you should join SocialSpark and get on IZEA‘s radar. Who knows… maybe you will find yourself at SeaWorld with me some day soon.
