Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 78

Privacy is DEAD and it’s not a Big Deal. [2:45 Video]

Some people will choose to be scared by privacy concerns. They are on the defense and they will lose. Simple as that. Humans are so vastly underrated by sensational new headlines, that all some people can see is this weird scary downside. I’m not like that, and that is why I’m winning.

How to Avoid a Classic Startup Mistake [1:47 Video]

I’ve seen this happen so many times, so really I am so, so, so thankful that this question got asked. Just remember that these people are not your users. They are borrowing your service, and if you disrespect them they will leave it.

Privacy is DEAD, and it’s not a Big Deal!

Some people will choose to be scared by privacy concerns. They are on the defense and they will lose. Simple as that. Humans are so vastly underrated by sensational new headlines, that all some people can see is this weird scary downside. I’m not like that, and that is why I’m winning.

How to Avoid a Common Startup Mistake

You don’t own your customers! They’re just borrowing your product and they deserve your respect.

English Brand Content Critiques

London is a pretty amazing city, and while I was there it got me wondering about what brands across the pond are doing on social. Again a huge thanks to the crew at VaynerMedia who helped me pull this information together.

 Harrods: Yikes

Oi, where to start with this one. Let’s go with the obvious: This creative was clearly made for something else and then re-appropriated for Facebook. Don’t do it. If you’re going to commit to having a Facebook presence, then take the time and create dedicated visuals. It’s barely readable on my laptop, so I can pretty well assume it will basically be useless for the users browsing Facebook on their phones (which is around 80% in the UK). Next up we have the copy, which is basically trying to achieve everything a single piece of copy could possibly attempt to achieve. It’s redundant relative to the image, there are line breaks, there is a link, and there is even a hashtag. Let me give you an actionable tip right here, right now, for free: Keep your copy to 90 characters or less. Simply obeying that one rule will make the writing smarter, and will force you to choose ONE thing to do with it. Decide on a CTA (call-to-action), commit to it, and be monogamous. It’s the right thing to do.

 

 

 

 

Marvel UK: Mystery and Mutants

 

This tweet is a solid effort from Marvel UK. I really appreciate the way that it asks you to watch the show by piquing your curiosity and tying it in with the imagery. Setting the actress’s @handle off in parenthesis is a smart move, but I think that in the interest of making sense, I would have put it behind the character’s name. That also would have broken up the wall of linked text at the end. Still, it’s a good execution on a straightforward CTA. There is just something a little bit classier about offering a tantalizing hint instead of saying, “Watch now!”

 

 

 

 

 

Topshop: Cross-Platform Domination

This is just brilliant in all aspects. First off, I want to make it very clear that Pinterest sells shit. When it comes to apparel sales, especially in a female demo, there is no substitute for having a good Pinterest strategy. What is really great about this is the cross-platform pollination they have going on. First they’re bringing the weight and importance of Pinterest recommendation into the real world with awesome physical collateral. Then they’re posting it to Instagram and Twitter, which may not seem like a big deal until you step back and look at how they’re posting to Instagram and Twitter. They could have gone the easy route and simply checked off the “Twitter” box when they were posting from the Instagram app, but they didn’t. Instead they took the file and re-uploaded it to Twitter because then it would display in-stream. That is being native to the platform, people. On top of all this, When they posted to Instagram, knowing that you can’t link in the copy (and that people won’t type in a whole link,) they put the product code in the copy. That has to be one of the best opportunities to get someone to actually search for the product on your website. Smart, smart, smart moves all around. Social Media 201. The only place they lose points is that the link in this tweet points to their entire collection of skirts and not to the product featured in the creative. To be honest, I’m actually more willing to assume it was a straight-up typo than bad strategy just because everything else here is so smart.

 

Henry Poole: Not so Bespoke

Henry Poole, for those of you who are unfamiliar, creates bespoke, tailored suits on London’s famous famed Savile Row. These are the kind of guys who will spend months creating the single most perfect garment you’ll ever own. So I hope we can all appreciate the irony here when we see that their entire Facebook presence is just Twitter content pushed through from an app. If you’re going to be on Facebook, make Facebook content. That’s it. Respect the fact that Twitter copy and Twitter images should be crafted to fit the psychology of people who are using Twitter, and Facebook content should likewise be made for the Facebook mindset. Never mind the fact that all the @handles are broken and the #hashtags won’t make sense; the fact of the matter is that people are on these platforms for different reasons. Just like people wear different suits for different occasions… You might say the content needs to be tailored to each platform…

 

Selfridges: Pro Moves

This is another example of Social Media 201. Let’s break it down. The creative is stark, high-contrast, and ought to jump out of the feed. Additionally, the lack of any text on the image means that Selfridges has the option to promote this post on the fly if they want to give it a little paid boost. The copy is short, sweet, and directs the user handily to the link. The next part is where we get advanced. I’ll caveat by saying that this could have happened totally organically, but I’m going to give Selfridges the benefit of the doubt and approach this as if they knew they were breaking the rules and they knew why. Adding that call to comment at the end should be a “nono.” I’ve said before that you should pick a CTA and stick to it without hedging or being “half pregnant.” In this case, though, I think it’s really smart because they’re in Q4 retail mode, and trying to add some comments is going to give this post a dramatic boost in organic reach. Plus it feels like it works in the context of the post overall, so I really don’t have a problem. That said I want to go over to the Selfridges HQ, find the gal (or guy) writing their Facebook posts, and give my permission to Jab. I know it’s Q4, really I do. I know you have sales goals, and KPIs to hit. But I also know that it’s the same for every retailer in the world right now, and a little bit of humanity can go a long, long way for your users. So tell a joke, post a recipe, post a picture of Tom the stock boy doing his impersonation of Margaret Thatcher for all I care, but take a quick break from selling and connect with your audience. They’ll appreciate it.

Le Web 2013: My Q&A with Loïc Le Meur

So this is what happens when I get interviewed by a sassy Frenchman after not sleeping for two days. But seriously Loïc is a dear dear friend and I really enjoyed talking with him as well as the audience members who came out to see us.

Car Dealer Content Critiques!

Again, a huge thanks to the VaynerMedia employees who helped me bring these together. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Kuni Lexus: Coco Upstairs…

This is… interesting. On 12/4 for three straight posts, this Lexus dealership referred to there being “coco upstairs.”

“Hot coco would be nice if you live in CO”

“Head upstairs for the hot coco”

“When you’re upstairs with your hot chocolate, take a look at our indoor showroom and covered new car lot”

Now intuitively, I get what they were trying to do here. Clearly they were offering complimentary hot chocolate at the dealership in an attempt to get people in the door on a cold day. Nice. So why didn’t they just say it? Everything else about the way that this dealer is handling Instagram is looking pretty good. The shots feel native to the platform (even if some of them are kind of difficult to interpret), they’re hashtaging aggressively (although, they might want to try dumping some of them in the first comment like the LA Philharmonic), but they’re never really making a clear statement. If you’re selling us on the hot chocolate, show it to us! I mean how much sense does this make: “I would like to entice my customers with free drinks, so I am going to coyly mention the drinks while showing a vaguely-framed photo of the roof of one of my cars.”

 

Tom’s Ford: I lol’d

Great stuff from Tom’s Ford. If you ever catch that guy who does your social in the back office surfing Reddit instead of doing work, thank him for this post before you yell at him, because when brands embrace a meme like this, it can open up tons of opportunities. You have the chance at earned media, and you’re speaking the language of a younger, web-native crowd (remember, the kids who grew up with this stuff aren’t kids anymore, they’re in their mid-20′s and they’re in prime-time for developing loyalty to a car-brand). This is what it means to be native. This is telling the right kind of story for the room that you’re in. The only real way to make this better would have been to customize the text in the image macro: “Brake Yourself, Winter Drivers are Coming” or something like that. In fact with tools like memegenerator.net, there is really not to. Now I understand that working with memes can be a legally tricky area, but if you’re going to go for it, go big and make it your own.

 

 

 

 

FIAT of Manhattan: Where’s the Link?

Now going in for a right hook when you’re selling a $30,000 product is kind of difficult. You can’t really just drop a link to the website, and hope you catch someone on the right day, so right hooks tend to be sparse and indirect when it comes to auto-sales. This post from Fiat of Manhattan, on the other hand, shows us an exception to the rule – accessories – and exactly how not to right-hook for them. If you’re really selling these potentially-twelve-dollar-impulse-buys at the dealership, why wouldn’t you want to present your followers with an easy and clear path to purchase them? Remember, that you only get a precious few opportunities to engage with your users each week. If you’re not providing them value at every turn you’re going to lose them, and I’m not sure what good that picture is doing if it’s not giving you the change to get some adorable car eyelashes of your very own? If you can purchase these on their website, link it! If the play is to get people into the dealership, do that! But this copy is still hedging toward a purchase CTA, so I guess the moral here is, once again, “Don’t be half pregnant.” If it’s a Jab, don’t elude at making a purchase; if it’s a Right Hook, give your followers something that is super actionable.

 

Liberty Honda: Perfect Holiday Spirit

Speaking of Jabs vs Right Hooks, this post is really only a few characters of copy away from being a prime-time commercial. You can almost picture it saying “The perfect holiday gift.” The hashtags are smart in their specificity, but I’m afraid a lot of them are too narrow to drive any discovery. What I mean by that is people are unlikely to be scrolling through the #hartfordct search stream any time soon. Otherwise, this is actually a really strong Instagram account (maybe with the exception of their totally blunt Thanksgiving post, but I can forgive that. Just next time , find a way to tie it back in the brand at least a little, ok?). That said, this is a post that just honestly feels right for Instagram. Good on Liberty Honda for getting the platform!

 

Sterling McCall Lexus: Right Tool. Wrong Mechanic.

I think using a Facebook event for a local event like this is a great idea. This Lexus dealership, however, has done a really poor job of implementing it. Now, the obvious critique here is that the creative isn’t sized correctly, which is why it got all stretched out, but that’s not too insightful, and it’s easily fixed. No, the big problem here is the copy, which is basically a novella. I think I’ve written entire Medium articles shorter than this event description. There is just no way a dog party at a car dealer warrants this many characters. Now ordinarily the idea of losing your reader before they get to the bottom of a Facebook event page isn’t such a big deal, but Sterling McCall Lexus decided to make it a huge deal by completely undermining the RSVP functionality of Facebook events and asking that attendees send an email to RSVP. And where is that email address? Oh right, at the bottom of the 260 word description. Ouch.

 

Carvana: Newsjacking with the Best of Them.

Is this kind of cheating because it’s an online car dealership? Maybe. But sometimes cheaters win, and they win big. I honestly wish I had jumped on the Amazon Prime drone joke as quickly and effectively as these guys did. It’s also worth pointing out that while the Twitter copy looks simple, and it probably came to them naturally enough, that question-and-answer format is really enticing for users. Don’t think I missed the part where they used their own @handle in the tweet. It’s kind of a Busch-League move and everybody needs to stop doing it, but it’s a nit-picky thing in the face of such a solid piece of content.

 

Los Angeles Content Critiques

So I was in LA yesterday, and I couldn’t help but be inspired to pull together some micro-content examples from local businesses.  Huge thanks to the VaynerMedia people who helped do the work on these audits. Enjoy!

 

Hollywood Bowl and Greek Theatre: Dueling Venues

Hollywood Bowl, I want you to meet Greek Theatre. Greek Theatre., this is Hollywood Bowl. You two have a lot in common. You’re both live venues, you both book a wide variety of acts, and you’re both pretty active on social. These two accounts have basically the same business KPI – butts in seats – but they’re taking dramatically different approaches.

Hollywood Bowl is straight-to-the-point, and follows a pretty set format: “Come see @band and @band on this date.” There are some jabs in the form of set lists, and manually retweeting partner artists, but the stream is relatively uniform, and fan interaction, while it’s there, is sparing. (One note: In the example tweet to the left, they didn’t @tag Steve Martin, one of the most obnoxiously recognizable celebs on Twitter. Don’t do stuff like this. He could have seen the notification and retweeted it to his 4.4 million followers.)

Greek Theatre’s feed, on the other hand, is a party. They’re posting photos, and retweeting fans all over the place in addition to promotional posts in a generally similar style to Hollywood Bowl’s. The result is a much more dynamic presence, and a feeling of community. Now to be fair, both brands aren’t great about engaging with their fans outside of retweets, but I honestly think that Hollywood Bowl could take a tip from Greek Theatre when it comes to their Jabs. And the proof is in the pudding. At the time of writing this, the Bowl is averaging about 3-4 retweets and 1-2 favorites per tweet. The Greek, on the other hand, is averaging around 10 of each, with some posts over-indexing by as much as 3x that (all with half as many followers). This stuff works, guys.

 

 

LA Philharmonic: Use What You Have

The LA Philharmonic’s Instagram account is an interesting case. Judging by the gallery, they’re not allowed to show any photos of performances, and if that really is the case, they’re doing a tremendous job given the constraints. Obviously high-end creative over-indexes on Instagram, so they took an incredible asset, their Frank Gehry designed building, and made it the star of the account. Play to your strengths. Now is it valuable, as a music organization, to attract fans of the (surprisingly active) #FrankGehry tag? It’s an interesting hedge, and one that I’m sure has grown their community, but I’m not sure it’s going to help them sell any tickets.

Speaking of which, they’re doing a great job using hashtags to increase their reach. If you look at this post you can see them doing a pro-move adding additional hashtags in the first comment. This serves dual purposes of pumping the image to the top of those hashtag searches while keeping the caption text clean. Finally, they do a great job integrating CTAs into their images in a way that feels native and natural. Good job, guys.

The Grove: Department of Redundancy Department

For the most part, The Grove (a mall) actually does a great job engaging with their own stores as well as their customers, but this tweet is a really good example of something I’ve seen a lot of brands do lately, and so I wanted to take this opportunity to call it out. There is really no reason to include your own @handle in a tweet. It’s already there. Doing it is like putting a nametag on your nametag so people know who your nametag belongs to. You’ve only got 140 characters. Use them wisely.

Pink’s Hot Dogs: Delicious

Writing this piece really drove home one point for me: L.A. gets Instagram. Just look at this post from Pink’s Hot Dogs. If this post were any more Instagrammy it would literally be wearing Wayfarers and a wool cap. You have product, you have amazing image copy, you have branding, you even have the @handle of the account spelled out in case the image gets copied anywhere. Just a really really solid effort here. The hashtags and @tags are appropriate to the show that the content is referencing, and to be honest, there isn’t really any need for copy; the picture says it all. If their dogs are half as good as their Instagram content, I really really hope I have a chance to visit next time I’m in town!

Bootsy Bellows: Keep em’ Squinting

Two big issues with this piece. First off, there’s no link to the event. No way to RSVP. This could be perfect for someone, but now they have to go and Google more info about the event, and you could very possibly lose them during that process. If you’re going to go in for the right hook like this, always present a clear path to purchase. Second, and maybe less obvious, is that this image doesn’t work on mobile. It’s not that it’s totally unreadable; you’re free to tap it and zoom in, but even scaled down to fit this post, you’re losing a ton of detail. On mobile, and zooming by at the speed of the stream, this image only has a fraction of a second to tell its story, and the way this image is laid out, you’re likely to just get a black and white blur with no discernible value.

–

If you think these studies are great, there are almost 80 more in my new book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Grab your copy today!

 

 

 

[Infographic] What You Need to Know About Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

CNBC Power Lunch Clip

In this clip from Power Lunch, it was two questions with a similar theme. Whether it comes to online gambling or ousting CEOs, the bottom line is that too many people refuse to play the game like the year it is. Of course you want to protect your business, but you have to be playing offense and innovating instead of playing defense and trying to stand in the way of progress.