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Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

By Gary Vaynerchuk

*A Book Review*

by Michael C. Gray

© 2015 by Michael C. Gray

Gary Vaynerchuk has a digital consulting agency, VaynerMedia, that works with Fortune 500 companies to develop social media strategies and content.

The subtitle of this book is, "How to tell your story in a noisy social world." The online world continues to evolve. Most people in their teens, twenties and thirties (the list is growing) operate almost exclusively on their smart phones. Email for them is passé, clunky, for dinosaurs! Communication should be by texting. God forbid you should talk to someone on the telephone!

The number of social media sites are exploding. It started with MySpace (now way down in the rankings), then Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Pinterest is popular. More are added regularly. You can even create your own.

Can you, or should you, use these media to promote your business? What is the appropriate way to do it for this particular social media provider?

There are now social media sites that appeal to almost every imaginable demographic, so you probably should be considering using them for business promotion. They are time consuming and don't tend to have a high return on investment, so they probably shouldn't be your highest priority promotional media. This may be an area you can outsource or have a person who loves social media handle for your business.

Gary Vaynerchuck explains that you must handle social media communications delicately. Most users are offended by blatant promotion on the sites. Most of your communications should focus on building relationships by giving value. He calls these "jabs." When you have built and continue to build relationships, your followers will be willing to receive an occasional offer, which he calls a "right hook."

The closest thing we have in the direct response school to this approach is the lead generation model. We build relationships with prospective customers, get their permission to directly communicate with them to eventually make offers. Gary seems to be of the "image advertising" school.

In this beautiful book, suitable for display on a coffee table, Gary shows effective ways to tell your story on social media sites. He gives lots of examples and does critiques of communications for different businesses.

According to Gary, almost all communications should include a photo or short video clip. A common error is not including a company logo somewhere on the photo. The person preparing the photo will need to be good at working with photo editing software. If you can afford it, it's best to use a professional photographer.

Business owners should make an effort to keep up with developments in marketing media and how to use them. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook is a useful and entertaining way to learn about how social media works for businesses.

Buy it on Amazon: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World.

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