But this success story isn’t new. This happens daily and, in my opinion, represents the real ROI of Social Media, the conversation. If you knew that spending 15 minutes on Twitter chatting about your own menu would drive these results, would you do it? Probably. But what if I told you that this 15 minutes could happen anytime? Maybe at 6am, maybe at 11pm, you wont ever know. Can you be ready to stop what you’re doing at any point and engage in a conversation over twitter and essentially be on-call? Well, if your business is going to be successful in your Social Media campaign then you should be. The payoff is there, you just need to work for it.

Lucky for you, we are here. We manage accounts and seek out these conversations on behalf of our clients. Sometimes we talk breakfast at 7am, sometimes we talk drinks at 11pm, but all your patrons will know is that your business is chatting with them. We build the personalities behind your businesses accounts and create conversation to bring you more customers. Simply speaking, this is how you get an ROI from Social Media.

Interested in our services? Please call us for a FREE consultation. 602.790.7392

With that said, one of our clients received this Direct Message through Twitter the other day. While we agree that this conversation is a reflection of our clients business, Get Outta My Head has been managing this account which lead to our client receiving this compliment.

So here we are, taking credit for some of the hard work that we do for our clients. Well, kind of.

Interested in having your Social Media strategy managed by Get Outta My Head?  Call us for a FREE consultation. 602.790.7392

One topic that we have been debating lately is the notion that, if your business isn’t using Social Media, you will be left behind. As a Social Media advocate, I feel that this statement warrants some truth but is mostly part of the Snake Oil used to grab your attention and join in.  So, where is this separation between truth and snake oil? Well, this comes down to opinion but I imagine that digging deep down, the ethical Social Media advocates would find some similarities with my thoughts.

So, your business has been approached by someone who claims to be a superstar professional with Social Media. They propose to you that if you don’t get on the bus, you will be left behind. They promise X amount of Facebook “likes” per day and flaunt their extensive network which has X amount of connections that will boost your Twitter followers. It simply sounds amazing and is so full of catchy buzzwords that there is just no way you could pass up on this offer. But wait, isn’t that what a salesman is supposed to do? Get you to buy in on something that you don’t currently have… or may even need. Are you surprised? So to this I say, don’t believe the hype! The Social Media hype! Don’t let someone tell you that you need this. Don’t let someone tell you that without Social Media your business will fail.

But wait, didn’t I also suggest that there some truth to the thought that your business does need to be part of the Social Media explosion? The simple answer is YES, you do need Social Media! The more complex answer is, YES, you do need Social Media… but only if you are prepared to do it correctly. The reason why you should not let someone tell you that you MUST use Social Media is simply because, if you don’t understand it, it’s not going to work for you. In fact, it could even hurt your business. Imagine if you saw the same commercial on TV twice in a row. How about three times in a row. Now the commercial has been going non-stop for the past 20-minutes and you can’t change the channel. How would you feel about that business? It’s probably not the businesses fault but chances are you would have found a way to shut it off and had a bitter taste about that business.  And sadly, you probably would have never thought about how it was the company that was asked to play the commercial as being the problem. This, I’m afraid, is some of the same style tactics that are being done by too many of the Social Media “professionals” that businesses are outsourcing to. And guess what, people are shutting these businesses off just as fast as that never-ending commercial. Why, because the business owner didn’t know enough about Social Media to understand how it should work. Now, I don’t mean to suggest that each person becomes a Social Media guru before they can have a successful campaign. What you do need to understand is enough to ask; Why it is important for your business. How can you follow-up on its progress. Why is slow and steady not a bad thing. But most importantly, you need to take an interest in it. If you are not at least interested in your Social Media campaign, you may as well not start one until you are. And hopefully, this is before the bus leaves and you get left behind.

Social Media may not be here to stay but it’s here now. Now is what we live in and now is the time to start. Call us to a free consultation on how Get Outta My Head can assist your business with creating your Social Media strategy.

Hey that's cool, I do Social Media stuff too!

Get Outta My Head was created to be the personality behind your Small Business Social Media accounts.  We are not marketers, we are not sales, we are the voice.  We originally labeled ourselves as Social Media Managers because, well, there wasn’t anything else that made sense a year ago.  Now, with all of the other Social Media Managers that are out there, we are all becoming lumped together.  Over the past year we have met some amazing talent in the Social Media industry. (We have also seen a lot of amateurs claiming to be professionals.)  We have seen people take classes to get “certified” in Social Media and we have seen “professional” companies that don’t even respond to their own Facebook pages.  Yes, we are all falling into that same group.  So to break out of that mold we need to all show our successes and our clients successes to prove that we are part of the A-team.  But this doesn’t work for Get Outta My Head.  We are the people with no face, in the shadows, behind the curtain.  We are… The Wizard of Oz?  So really all of our successes aren’t actually ours, they’re our clients.  We don’t want anyone to know that Get Outta My Head is the potentially the voice that you have been talking to on Facebook or Twitter because it would ruin the illusion.  Since our success may not be transparent, how do we catch new clients in a sea of qualified and unqualified Social Media managers?  We have to change their prejudged minds about what we do.  Sure, we still manage Social Media accounts (aka Social Media Managers) but should we be lumped into the same group as the strategists, the marketers, or the professional amateur?  Not really, considering that we all provide different services.

So what do we call ourselves then?  If Social Media Manager has become so vague with what it conveys then its time for Get Outta My Head to separate ourselves from the herd.  So, while we begin the process separating ourselves from the Social Media Manager title please remember, when all of your Social Media training is completed, after all of your strategies have been created, and when you get caught up in running your business, we are here to keep you Social Media accounts active.  When your clients feel that Social Media doesn’t work, when they say they just don’t have the time, and if your company doesn’t have the time to create content and supply timely responses for clients accounts on their behalf, we are also here to be outsourced to.  We are the personality behind your Small Business Social Media accounts.  We are not marketers, we are not sales, we are the voice.  We are the Wizard of Oz!

BAM, what’s that? You now can get something special if you are the Mayor of a location?  What locations are doing this?  I am a mayor of about 15 places but nobody is showing they have a special.  *google search* Hmm, they all seem to be somewhere outside of the state.  We need to fix this!  Why aren’t businesses using Foursquare?

BAM + a few months, what’s that?  Starbucks is now offering a special if you are the Mayor of a location?  Shoot, I am the Mayor of my Starbucks, let’s do this!  Within 2 weeks from that point I had lost my mayorship.  I gained it back a few times but lost it for good awhile ago.  My pride was shattered. (not really)

This is where Foursquare started to become much more well-known.  My 15-20 mayorships sunk to about 5 and those were mine because I own the locations. Specials were no longer unique and you could see that your current location had about 3 specials nearby.  Cool stuff but 2 of those 3 were either a link to print out a coupon or spend $100 to get 5% off.  Who cares.  Even still, some businesses were starting to see the light but most were lost in the dark.

I started Get Outta My Head for those lost in the dark.  Foursquare was just one of the tools that I introduced to businesses that I wanted to represent and was by far my favorite.  Sure we saw Gowalla look amazing, we have seen SCVNGR have its great gaming side and we saw Whrrl with the best reward system I have seen come to challenge Foursquare.

Now its a year later and Gowalla still looks amazing, SCVNGR is still fun, Whrrl has gone away and the noobs like Foursquare Places and Google Latitude just seem to suck.  And as for Foursquare, it still rules.

I truly believe that Foursquare is The Next Big Deal.  Some of the experiments that use Foursquare and its check in abilities just make the gears in my mind crank.  I would love to have the ability to code and create some of these ideas but until then I can only imagine.  So when I see a new platform or concept that incorporates a better, more capable version of the small spark of idea that I had in my mind come alive.  It just reaffirms my feelings.  Foursquare is not just about checking in, not anymore.  It’s not just about specials to drive people to your storefront, it never really was.  It’s about more!  It’s about knowing your patrons.  It’s about taking care of your customers.  And it’s about them knowing that you know that they are there.  It’s Social Media.

I have been representing businesses and their Social Media accounts for nearly a year and running my own personal accounts since chat rooms were the new thing.  Running your personal Social Media accounts are easy, running a business account, not as much.  A personal account you can sign in at any time, say your peace, respond if you like and move on.  You can spend 5 minutes or you can spend 14 hours, what ever your free time allows.  With a business, you need to remember that your audience has the same personal freedom and will want to be social on their own schedule.  Just because you checked your Twitter feed before you opened up shop doesn’t mean that the tweets have stopped while your business is open.  You should be checking your feeds often and if your business is being talked about, you should be responding fairly quickly.  We are in a time when responses in minutes are normal and expected.  If you are taking too long, your audience has probably forgotten what they even said to you in the first place.  If you are running your own business and not already used to being on Twitter throughout the day, you may need some help with running your accounts to get the most out of them.  I always want to say to potential clients (even though I can’t), if it were that easy for you to do it yourself, you would have already done so.  And chances are, if I am approaching you it’s because you appear to need our assistance and I truly just want to help.

There are a lot of local businesses out there that are trying to stake their claim in the Social Media world.  I love that this is happening so my advice is, if you are going to get involved, look at the current businesses that are successful in being social.  Take the time to respond to everyone who mentions your business name.  Passing on one person and responding to another will create a sense of favoritism. (It sounds silly but its true)  Make your goal to take care of your followers, not your business. (no one wants to hear on and on about your daily specials)  Stay current with your topics and be a real human being.  Sure it sounds easy but add these commitments with looking for followers, finding interesting topics and establishing a reputation for being “social” on your accounts can take a good chunk of your day.

Ohh, and if just sounds like too much to handle, you always have us that can step in and make it work for you.  It’s what we do.

Sure, these are all rhetorical questions but I wouldn’t be asking if they weren’t valid concerns with many of the business social media accounts that are out there.  As a person, I do want to share my opinion on a Facebook business page and I don’t want to think that no one is ever there to read it.  As a person, I do want to compliment a restaurant on Twitter and I do want to get excited when I read a simple “Thanks” back in return.  When I check in on Foursquare I don’t need to be rewarded but I do want to know that the business saw that I was there.  I understand that all of this takes time throughout the day, obviously I know this but it needs to be done if you are going to be successful with your accounts.  Ok, sure this is only my personal opinion but being just an average guy that does average things, I think I do speak for many of the people out there.

Social media is easy stuff if you remember that you also need to be social in return to make it work.

And like I have said before, if you don’t have time to do it right, you can always have us do it for you.

As Twitter became more mainstream (just like everything) everyone one wanted their name to be involved.  Businesses joined in the millions and began thinking that all they needed was to send out promotional tweets every hour on the hour and all of their new followers would be right there to listen and support them.  This may have worked at first for the innovators that were with Twitter in the beginning but now all of the late comers still that think they can get away with it, and it’s ruining Twitter.  The last thing that I want to read in my twitter feed is advertising.  I’m ok with the occasional tweet promotion or special that you may be running but quit trying to force it down my throat.  Don’t forget that if it continues, all I have to do is select unfollow and I’ll never have to read it again.  It’s just that easy and most likely I will never turn your back on.  Just sayin.

What do we do to fix this?  It sounds easy enough to me but Twitter needs to get back to its roots of being a social site for actual people.  This doesn’t mean that businesses are out, it just means that automation needs to be out.  Real genuine personalities need to come back.  I like when I get tweeted happy birthday from a pizza place I’ve never been to.  I like when I mention a business in a tweet and they reply back with a simple thank you or glad you came by.  I really love when I get some kind of insight into the behind the scenes of a working business.

Twitter is not a lost cause… yet.  Businesses lets get your accounts turned around so people will begin to listen again.  Lets turn off the automated tweets, lets read the twitter feeds and lets talk to your followers.  If we can get Twitter turned back around to be fun again then this platform will survive.  If we continue to let it go, then your looking at the next Myspace.

Ohh, and if you don’t have time to do it right, well you can always have us do it for you.

Social Media response never stops.

Get Outta My Head was founded in May 2010 by myself, Brian Nowak.  I have been at the forefront with the utilization of Social Media for the last 15 years. From old days of Internet Chat Rooms to Instant Messaging to the modern usage of Twitter and Facebook, I have been right there pushing for others to join in. I started Get Outta My Head after witnessing many businesses jump into Social Media without a clear understanding of the potential of these tools and how, when done correctly, they can benefit their business.

Our goal is to encourage communication and develop a personality for your brand where your customers will be welcomed in sharing their thoughts about your business and telling their friends about their experiences. In a sense, we are creating digital word of mouth.

So while you focus on running your business, let us assist you with your Social Media campaign. Our services include:

• Social Media Maintenance
• Social Media Consulting
• Social Media Management

Call us today and lets chat about how Get Outta My Head can assist with your Social Media

602.790.7392

Get Outta My Head is a full-time service that manages your businesses Social Media accounts. In essence, we give your business a second personality by offering continuous dialogue with your clients/patrons. We search out your demographic and provide them with substantial content and respond to their interactions with clever conversation.

Our main goal is to promote your business. Even if you are using Social Media tools already, allow Get Outta My Head to take it to the next level.