I love Gary Vaynerchuck  and when I read this review about his latest webinar, it just re-energizes me to work harder.  If you don’t know Gary, he’s a guy from humble beginnings who has learned to use the Internet and all the social media, web 2.0 tools out there to market his businesses and himself.  You should get his book.

Please visit http://prashanthgopalan.posterous.com/webinar-with-gary-vaynerchuk, the source of this review.

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January 16, 2010

Webinar with Gary Vaynerchuk

Great news! This is going to be a bit of a long blog post, but I think it’s worth it.On Friday I attended a webinar hosted by none other than

social marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk. This guy’s a crazy phenomenon; he started off as a co-owner and Director of Operations at his dad’s wine retail business, Wine Library, and using the Internet (WineLibrary.com) he grew it from a $4 million business to a $60 million business in just 5 years. And this is all before the age of 30.So now what? He had everything, a multi-million dollar business underneath him and great business prospects. So he also started Wine Library TV, a daily Internet series of podcasts on the subject of wine. And because of that, he’s been featured in everything from Time and New York Times to features with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon and Ellen.

And because of THAT, he’s now a social media champion, traveling around the country giving keynote speeches about using social media to optimize business activity.

But Friday was completely different. I’ve watched some of his gigs online, but Friday’s webinar turned into more of a Q&A with him. We could send in questions via Twitter and he’d do his best to answer them.

For those who weren’t there, I’ve recorded some of the nuggets of wisdom that I think go beyond a transcript of the webinar (maybe its also because I couldn’t type fast enough to keep up with the pace of the conversation). Here are some of the interpretations of what I got from it all:

#1 -- Social media has become part of our lexicon. It’s changed the face of the media and has become an indispensable addendum to society.

#2 -- This is the single biggest culture change in our society. It’s mainly driven by word of mouth and has the potential to turn e-commerce websites with upto 70-80% conversion rates.

#3 -- Word of mouth and connectivity have been scaled to a level that has never been comprehensible to prior generations. Selling is different, selling is the new in, so it’s not a presentation.

#4 -- This is the age of love. Consumers need to love their brand, that’s the kind of relationship you need to build with them. You

like Hershey’s but you love your Mom right? Do you love Hershey’s more than your mom? No, but that’s what companies need to aim for. You need to get consumers to love your brand, not like it, love it, that’s the kind of personal connection you need to make with them. Use these technologies to make your customers love you.#5 -- Scale your caring. This is important, use customer service as your benchmark and core structure to your business,

that’s taking charge of opportunity.#6 -- Use

search.twitter.com everyday!#7 -- Talk to your customers. Use these technologies to build personal relationships with these people. Offer them help and advice before they even ask you. Give away your advice without looking to sell to them right off the bat. That’s what people don’t seem to be understanding. People, understand this for your own good.

#8 -- Get a real relationship.

#9 -- A picture speaks a thousand words. A video speaks a million.

#10 -- Today, it has nothing to do with what you’re selling, it has to do with the DNA of the person. It’s the mentality, not the product that you want to sell. Create content, don’t try to sell. Give them something to look at, and videos give you a platform to sell. If you have good intentions, use it to create content and the most unsexy thing can be given an edge.

#11 -- Don’t hire outside guys to manage your social media platforms. It you do, chances are they won’t know your product, and will not be as passionate about it as you or your customers will be. Understand what you’re selling and how to make it personable for the customer. Use someone from the inside for this role if you have to, if you can’t, hire a fan, at least they’ll understand what your customers will need.

#12 -- Don’t hire an outside guy, content has to be knowledgeable, not pretty or cute, it has to be witty, it has to be good.

#13 -- Go where the fish are, follow our customers, don’t expect them to come to you anymore, that time has passed. You can build a community anywhere now, but if you want big results, you go where the fish are.

#14 -- You can try opening a mall in a city with 8 malls already existing. But you might be more successful opening a mall in a city with one third of the foot traffic. Go where the fish are, but avoid places that are too congested.

#15 -- Men lie, women lie, numbers don’t lie.

#16 -- If you want to be private in these social spaces, guard what you say. They define public space, so there’s no way of safeguarding the privacy of what you put out there. Don’t believe in any privacy filters or anything, they can be hacked. Once something gets out there, it’s out there, and there’s no way you can do anything about it.

#17 -- Communism tried to guard communication and

that didn’t work out too well. Out there, communication is open and free, and so you can’t guard against it.#18 -- Any fan on Facebook becomes a person you can email, and they can respond to you. When they join your fanpage, their friends will know, it’s an ecosystem and its totally customizable.

#19 -- You simply have to know the landscape of your business.

#20 -- Information as value has collapsed. You can get it at your fingertips; hearing sensitivity (towards your customers) and innovation are the things that will drive things forward.

#21 -- Many people think social media is a tactic to improve their businesses. Like salt and pepper, they think it’s the steak -- customer service is the thing now, everything else is secondary. We are in the business of customer service now, everything else is secondary to that. Remember that.

#22 -- I work on the assumption that if your product is good, word of mouth is activated, but the moment someone says something negative about your product and someone else agrees, you’re screwed.

#23 -- These are examples of people not recognizing how to work it.

#24 -- Marketing and customer service are what you need to be successful now.

#25 -- Whatever you think you need to be successful are actually the barriers, the costs of entry. These are the starting points to being successful.

#26 -- Great content acts as its own filter. No-one can read everything, only the best things will be read, just as cream rises to the top of milk. The “cream” of the content will be read, and not much else, so all the junk will be pushed down below.

#27 -- If you argue that TV and conventional marketing media can measure conversions, it’s because you’re working with false presumptions. I’d argue that it’s easier to measure conversions in social media than through conventional media.

#28 -- I spent $7500 in marketing Wine Library through conventional means, and sent out one tweet on Twitter. I made 4 times more conversion through Twitter than through the other means.

#29 -- I’m not defending social media. In my opinion, social media has already won out, it’s upto people who resist to justify why radio and TV and print are still relevant.

#30 -- There are people who still think TV is evil. Such people will continue to exist. I\m not saying that TV and radio are failures, I’m just saying that if you’re creative and don’t tell people to come online and keep the conversation going, “you’re an assclown”. It’s like not offering dessert at a restaurant.

#31 -- Social media is like marathon while TV is like a sprint. It takes patience! Ad managers like to throw money at TV because it’s more quick. Well, in the race between the tortoise and the hare, “you can take the hare and shove it up your ass”.

#32 -- Always use Twitter as a customer service platform as well as a platform to deliver press releases.

#33 -- Record videos on Facebook, and then use these videos as responses on blogs and forums in order to generate attention.

#34 -- Explore new ideas…what if I did this or that? Metrics are easy, you can hire companies that offer social media metrics these days.

#35 -- Here’s good advice -- if you have a physical location, you don’t care whether you made a customer anywhere. You don’t have to make a customer in your home. You can make a customer anywhere, and they’re still customers.

#36 -- Make a real committment -- 90% of what people are trying to tackle social media are only half pregnant. You have to do both onsite and offsite events, and inject them into the DNA of the company. Price and product selection are not key, customer engagement is key. As top management, you have to make this your credo: “engage and care”.

#37 -- Unify branding, link it back to your home presence, be transparent, be active, listen and don’t start selling from the opening bell.

#38 -- Empower your employees to carry your message and make it your own. Look at Zappos!

Zappos is basically a customer service company that happens to sell shoes! Twitter and Facebook are not secondary, they are the meat of your business, everything else is secondary.
#39 -- Social media is an extension of our existence. We’re all walking around connected to the Internet; offline and online are converging slowly, almost becoming indistinguishable.#40 -- Every time a bad thing is said about you, it’s great! It’s an opportunity to say you’re sorry, and make things better!

#41 -- Show who you are in this. Don’t let it go, engage and be caring. Social media is nothing but the internet being iterated. Social media is giving us the tools that we do as human beings. We are social beings, we need to interact, we want to interact, and so these tools are allowing us to do so.

#42 -- People who follow you are customers in some way. They can give you money, and help you via word of mouth, making your idea work!

#43 -- Social media “is all about the big picture, stuff, legacy, customer service, patience, that’s why it’s so comfortable to me, that’s why analytical people are struggling.”
Hope I managed to convey a sense of the information we were streaming in the webinar. If you really want more information, you should check out Gary’ book -- Crush It! Why Now is the time to Cash in on Your Passion.

I’ll be getting myself a copy of it next week, so keep eye out for a review of it on this blog sometime in the near future.

Till then, cheers!

P.S. Here’s a video of Gary delivering a keynote at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo in New York.