All companies are media companies

Sander’s Book Club: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk.

Gary wrote the simplest guide to social media! Describing how companies should approach marketing across (almost) all the social channels of today. Taking time to analyse the media usage of the biggest brands — and showing how any of us could be better than them.

In this book, he looks into five platforms in the following chapters:

1. Storytell on Facebook
2. Listen Well on Twitter
3. Glam It Up on Pinterest
4. Create Art of Instagram
5. Get Animated on Tumblr (less important, years after the book release)

…while briefly mentioning others, like LinkedIn (much better now!), Google+ (since offline), Vine (since offline) and Snapchat (no one knows…).

It all starts with the idea that we need to throw some jabs before we throw our right hooks. This means that great marketing is all about telling your story in such ways that it compels people to buy what you are selling. Or as Gary says, there is no sale without the story; no knockout without the setup.

Moreover, the main thing to remember is that content shared on social media channels needs to be made for the customer or audience, not for yourself. Because the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others.

The point is to give and give and give, for no other reason than to entertain our customers and make them feel like we get them. So stop using the platforms as distribution channels, and start storytelling.

That said, the micro-content of every company must constantly answer the question “Who are we?”. Not just “What do we sell?” but “Why are we here?” and “How would the perfect world look like?”.

Once it’s clear then our core story must remain constant. Same goes for our personality and brand identity.

Content is king, context is God, and then there’s effort.

Every platform is different. People use them to satisfy their different needs, while the characteristics vary as well. So it’s our job to adapt and learn to speak their native language.

In short, we need to keep in mind the following things, regardless of the platform:

1. Keep it short and simple — there are platforms, like LinkedIn and Medium where people go to consume the long-format information. Yet most people only give one glance at every post and need to get the point within seconds. The shorter your content and storytelling, the better.
2. Keep your CTA very simple — Don’t tell your audience to do more than one thing at a time. Don’t tell them to SHARE THIS EVENT and BUY TICKETS HERE NOW and TAG ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS. By doing this you trigger decision fatigue in the consumer’s brain that will cause them to simply scroll away from your stuff and likely not come back.
3. Link to the right place — When pushing people to another website, make sure to send them straight to the end final destination. By sending them to the generic home page, they will leave and likely not come back either.
4. Quality, relevance, good timing matter — All impressions are not good impressions. Posting a bad picture says many things about the brand. Meanwhile, posting irrelevant stuff wastes your fans time. And posting at the wrong time (e.g. 2 AM) leaves it unnoticed.

That’s just the basic stuff. The most valuable part of the book is where Gary picks a number of posts by various well-known brands and analyses them in depth. Explaining why some are awesome, and others should have never seen daylight.

Meanwhile, he also concludes all chapters with questions all of us should ask before posting any piece of content on any of the platforms — copied here:

Facebook

1. Is the text too long? Is it provocative, entertaining, or surprising?
2. Is the photo striking and high-quality?
3. Is the logo visible?
4. Have we chosen the right format for the post?
5. Is the call to action in the right place?
6. Is this interesting in any way, to anyone? For real?
7. Are we asking too much of the person consuming the content?

Twitter

1. Is it to the point?
2. Is the hashtag unique and memorable?
3. Is the image attached high quality?
4. Does the voice sound authentic? Will it resonate with the Twitter audience?

Pinterest

1. Does my picture feed the consumer dream?
2. Did I give my board clever, creative titles?
3. Have I included a price when appropriate?
4. Does every photo include a hyperlink?
5. Could this pin double as an ad or act as an accompanying photo to an article featured in a top-flight magazine?
6. Is this mage easily categorised so people don’t have to think too hard about where to Reponen it on their boards?

Instagram

1. Is my image artsy and indie enough for the Instagram crowd?
2. Have I included enough descriptive hashtags?
3. Are my stories appealing to the younger generation?

Tumblr

1. Did I customise my theme in a way that properly reflected my brand?
2. Did I make a cool animated GIF?
3. Did I make a cool animated GIF?
4. Did I make a cool animated GIF?

Although Gary didn’t analyse LinkedIn posts, nor did he pose any questions then in short LinkedIn posts can be in a longer format and a bit less entertaining. Otherwise, the same questions as for Facebook apply.

Tl;dr

7/10 — I really liked the book. Especially the part where Gary analysed the posts made by other brands. If anything, the books was somewhat basic. Yet I did find some interesting concepts that I had never thought about before. So it’s a good read, nevertheless!

Sander’s book club is an initiative to record my thoughts just after finishing reading any book. Hope these encourage you to read more!

If you could recommend me just one book to read, then which one will it be? Let me know via my Newsletter, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.