Category

social media

Ted Murphy
In

Q: What’s Better Than a Panchero’s Burrito?

A: 5 free Pancheros burritos!

I want to thank Joel from Pancheros for sending a little Pancheros gift package to me. Apparently he liked the post I did about Pancheros using Twitter and has put some of the ideas in motion. I already hooked Joe Sales up with a free Burrito card, we are going lunch tomorrow at noon. I am going to give the other 4 gift cards away to the first 4 (non-IZEA) people that meet us tomorrow for a little Pancheros tweetup at the downtown location. Show up and you may get a free burrito.

Pancheros Hookup!

Pancheros Hookup!

Free Burrito for Joe!

Ted Murphy
In

25 Social Media Peeps I am Watching in 2009

I am often asked who I follow in social media. While the individuals may change from time to time one thing remains constant; I always follow people that make me think. They may make me think about marketing, technology, social media, blogging, family or charity but all of them push me to reconsider what I am doing in business and life. Here are the 25 people I am watching in 2009 in no particular order along with their Twitter bios.

Tamar Weinberg

Social media consultant and blogger among other things.

Jim Turner

Founder of One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire, Daddy Blogger.

Aaron Brazell

I am a maverick.

Drew Bennett

I take a Photo-A-Day and have been for nearly 4 years.

Mark Ramskill

I’m an online marketing / social media specialist and addict, working for the mighty SubHub.com – oh, i’m a nice guy as well (I won’t lend you money though!)

Robert Scoble

Tech geek blogger @ http://scobleizer.com

Lucretia M. Pruitt

Random Muse – Social Media Strategist, Speaker, ex-CIS Professor, Geek, Mom, Wife, and Insomniac

Chris Pirillo

http://geeks.pirillo.com/

Jason Keath

Idea Guy – Social Media, Design, Blogging

Gary Vaynerchuk

I do this: http://tv.winelibrary.com and I care about this: The health and happiness of my Family and Friends. Keep it simple!

Chris Brogan

President, New Marketing Labs, a social media agency and education company.

Michael Gray

is a general all around trouble maker.

Mark Davidson

Promoter to The Stars. Internet strategy. Social media management. I’m a product promoter and people are my product.

Loren Feldman

I run 1938 Media.

Robert Nelson

Tech Blogger, Web/Internet Entrepreneur, New Media Junkie, all around geek, endurance athlete, proud husband and father!

Jeremiah Owyang

Currently employed as Senior Analyst, Social Computing, Forrester Research

Liz Strauss

Social Web Strategist – I show businesses & universities how to choose and use social media tools to make business growth faster, easier.

Paisano

Editor-in-Chief, Dadomatic.com. I.T. Professional, writer, blogger, inventor, artist, poet. Writes for Mashable.com and many others.

Erik Hersman

Where Africa and technology collide… and other stuff.

Chris Garrett

Web geek and co-author of ProBloggerBook.com.

Andy Beard

SEO, Blogging, Social Media, Online Marketing & other boring geek stuff

Owen Cutajar

Your friendly neighborhood geek.

Jeremy Schoemaker

Skills to pay the bills.

Saul Colt

Smartest Man in the World (and Head of Magic @ FreshBooks)

Sarah Evans

PR professional, social media freak, guest writer @Mashable, founder of #journchat & Top 50 Tweeples contest

There are many other people I am watching, some of them I don’t want acknowledge because they are my little secret weapon. If you are watching someone that isn’t on this list let me know, maybe we can trade notes ; )

Ohhhh and you can follow me on twitter too.

Ted Murphy
In

Are You a Winner?

Today at 4pm EST I will be announcing the winners of two different contests on TedTube.tv. Tune in to find out if you won my contest for Intel swag or if you won the IZEA contest for $500 Kmart gift certificates. Who knows… today could be your lucky day.

I want to thank everyone who participate in both of these programs, escpecially the trailblazing group of Kmart bloggers. Chris Brogan, Loren Feldman, Jeremy Schoemaker, Wendy Piersall, Michelle Madhok and Julia Roy you guys rock.

Ted Murphy
In

I am not a Journalist.

I am a writer. I am a photographer. I am a videographer. I am a creator. I am a cold beer on a hot summer day.

I am not a journalist.

I am a blogger. If you are a blogger you probably aren’t a journalist either. You are just some schmo like me sharing your ideas. You don’t adhere to the same standards as a journalist and you shouldn’t have to. It’s your blog. Your voice. I choose to read it. If I wanted to read content that was perfectly edited, unbiased and factual I wouldn’t be reading your blog. I don’t read TechCrunch because they are good journalists, I read TC because it is a good blog filled with drama, hype, politics, bs and plenty of human error.

There is a group of traditional journalists turned bloggers that believe all bloggers are journalists. They get uppity when bloggers don’t play by the rules they have set for themselves. Guess what? Those are your rules as a journalist. As a blogger I don’t have to play by them, nor do I want to.

I am an online personality.

I am much like a talk radio host. I make wild statements, jump from random subject to subject, and do whatever I want to do. Through it all I am open, honest and transparent with my readers. I don’t claim to be impartial and I disclose my relationships the best I can.

I don’t want to be Walt Mossberg. I want to be the Michael Jordan of blogging. Hook me up with sponsorships. Fly me out to the big movie premiere. Compensate me for my voice and following, just like Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh or Neal Boortz. As long as I can be transparent, open, and disclose; I am cool and my followers are too. You don’t have to be a journalist to be credible, you just can’t be dishonest.

My following is my currency. It’s what determines the value of this blog to advertisers. If I betray the trust of my readers by choosing the wrong advertiser or failure to disclose, I lose my currency (and the next deal). It is in my best interest to be forthright with my readers and acknowledge I am not a journalist.

You do your thing.

I will do mine. I am happy you chose to be a journalist. You should be happy I chose to be a rockstar. We play by different rules in the same medium, let’s leave it at that.

Update:

I am compiling a list of other non-journalists for a future blog post. If you would like to be included leave it in your comments below or tweet out #notajournalist.

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

Ted Murphy
In

Chris Brogan is the Chuck Norris of Social Media

My buddy Chris Brogan was the victim of an unwarranted Twitter attack this weekend and handled it like a rock star. I am by no means a stranger to controversy or personal attacks, it takes a special type of person to stay cool in that situation. Chris caught my attention when he tweeted “Remember: anyone can criticize. I cater to those who can teach.” When I clicked through in twitter search I had an epiphany. Holy crap… Chris Borgan is the Chuck Norris of social media…. he even looks like Chuck Norris.

Seriously!?! They could be twins.

Seriously!?! They could be twins.

Super Amazing Chris Brogan Facts

  1. Chris Brogan does not sleep. He waits.
  2. Chris Brogan can slam a revolving door.
  3. When Chris Brogan does division, there are no remainders.
  4. Chris Brogan once bowled a 300. Without a ball. He wasn’t even at a bowling alley.
  5. Chris Brogan can delete the recycling bin.
  6. Chris Brogan’s iPod came with a real charger instead of just a USB Cord.
  7. Chris Brogan can kill two stones with one bird.
  8. Chris Brogan can have both feet on the ground and kick ass at the same time.
  9. Chris Brogan can leave a comment without hitting submit.
  10. Chris Brogan can squeeze orange juice out of a lemon.
  11. Rosa Parks refused to get out of her seat because she was saving it for Chris Brogan.
  12. Chris Brogan can build a snowman out of rain.
  13. Chris Brogan causes the fail whale.
  14. Chris Brogan can touch MC Hammer.
  15. Apple pays Chris Brogan $.99 every time he downloads a song.
Chris Brogan - All American Bad Ass

Chris Brogan - All American Bad Ass

If you are not following Chris Borgan on Twitter do it now. Read his blog. Become one with the Chris Brogan.

Ted Murphy
In

Blog Design Makes a Difference

It’s been just over a month since I worked with the guys at Unique Blog Designs to launch this blog. I abandoned my old domain and started Ted.me fresh with no traffic and no inbound links. Nate Whitehill has been helping me periodically over the past month to tweak the blog and fix stuff when I break it (which I have done a couple of times). I can’t say enough good things about Nate and crew. If you are considering a redesign of your blog call these guys at 1.870.619.4550. I am a customer, I have no interest or ownership in UBD, I just like working with them.

More Traffic

I have been very impressed by the increase in traffic I have seen since I made the switch. Even though this domain is completely new I had a 8x increase in visitors and a 3x increase in pageviews from October to November. It’s still a pretty small number, but it’s a number I can start building on.

More Comments

Many of my posts on my old blog had no comments at all. This new blog enjoys a relatively steady stream of comments independent of the post topic. I enjoy the interaction and spend more time responding to people who leave comments.

Why is This Blog Performing Better?

The Design

The new design is appealing, clean, fun and user friendly. The comments flow nicely, links are easy to see and the font is big enough for virtually anyone to read. I am getting a bunch of people sending me emails about the design of the blog itself.

Design is the single biggest flaw I see in so many blogs. People have blogs that are just plain ugly. UGLY UGLY UGLY. If your blog looks like crap it is an instant turn off for me (and advertisers if you care about making money). If you don’t have the skills to create a good looking blog yourself buy a template or hire the guys at UBD to help you out. Don’t underestimate the importance of good design. It is the difference between an iPod and a Zune.

The Platform

I really enjoyed using Tumblr, but WordPress is where it is at. WordPress is easy to use and ridiculously extensible. I have installed a ton of plugins to make my life easier and my blog more user friendly. I have now used Tumblr, Blogger, TypePad, Moveable Type and WordPress for various projects. WordPress is hands down my favorite. If you are on one of these other platforms (except Tumblr) you can export all your blog posts and comments into a .txt file and import them into WordPress without losing any data. Do it, you will thank me.

The Content

Tumblr didn’t really lend itself to longer form content. I did a lot of mobile posts that were nothing more than a picture. Now I find myself writing less posts with more meat since the switch to WordPress. I put more effort into my posts and my readers spend more time on my site in turn. The whole cereal thing didn’t seem to hurt traffic either.

Ted Murphy
In

Gary Vaynerchuck Invades the Lamberson Household

Yesterday Tara and I went to the Apple store and bought her parents an AppleTV (I am a huge fan) as an early Christmas present. We are doing Christmas with my parents this year in Naples and Tara wanted me to hook the AppleTV up for them. I had it working in 5 minutes and showed them the basics ( I LOVE APPLE TV ).

I was working on my computer this afternoon when I heard a familiar voice blaring from her parents bedroom. I walked in to find Tara’s mom watching a podcast of Wine Library TV with my buddy Gary Vaynerchuck on her Apple TV. She found it on her own, while looking for content about wine.

What just happened?!? Are my worlds colliding here? Will I come back to Virginia next year to see her dad with an iPhone and her mom on Twitter? It’s only a matter of time before social media truly goes mainstream…. and I will have to find something new ; )

Ted Murphy
In

FSU Beats No. 22 Maryland : Social Media FAIL

Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the FSU vs. Maryland game last night. Those of you that have been following me via Twitter know that I got rid of cable a few months back. Tara and I were both very tired and didn’t feel like leaving the house last night, especially to hit a loud sports bar that would be carrying the game.

Photo courtsey of gtmcknight

I decided that I was going to get my fill of the game via the interwebs today. My hope was that social media could recreate the experience of actually being at an FSU Football game when I woke up in the morning. I hopped on Flickr and Facebook thinking I would see pictures of my friends tailgating. Nothing. Not a single photo from the game on Flickr from anyone (not just my friends). I tried an array of query strings, if the photos are out there they are not tagged or titled. Seriously!?! Where are all the half-drunken photos of people gnawing on sausages and chicken wings? Where are the photos from the stands? What about the post-game celebration?

I searched for some blog posts from actual bloggers. Nope. The only thing of substance I found was mainstream media and some hardcore sports sites reporting a recap of the game. I was able to find some tweets about the game via Twitter search, but you can’t get much from 140 characters.

For those of you interested The Florida State Seminoles beat #22 Maryland 37-3 on the road in an upset. FSU has won 17 of the 19 all-time meetings with Maryland.

I am happy that I was able to get the essentials from the mainstream, but I am bummed social media failed to deliver the experience I was hoping for. Social media has come a long way but it still lags behind traditional media in timeliness. Bloggers typically have no discipline, no rules, no deadlines. I am sure that photos, videos and blog posts will start to emerge later today (when people are finished with their hangovers) but I will have already moved on. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, I like updating my content when I feel like it. However, it does put social media at a disadvantage.

I believe the future of social media is going to be about speed of post and ease of capture. Who can share a full experience first? I am going to do a blog post about it later this week. I’ll show you how my post about the Burger King Wallet drove a ton of traffic to this site, not because it was the best but because it was the first.