Finally completed Gary Vaynerchuk’s 2018 book: Crushing It! How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business And Influence
Decent book with alot of great advice on creating your own brand. Gary is of the opinion everyone should have a personal brand and use it to market themselves. I can agree with this if you want more opportunity in your life.
Here are my highlighted notes from the book:
CH.1 The Path Is All Yours
“I’m an entrepreneur who built a $150 million media company in part because of my personal brand, which I developed by first creating valuable content that grew my influence.”
CH.2 What (Still) Matters
“What really matters is a pretty short list: INTENT, AUTHENTICITY, PASSION, PATIENCE, SPEED, WORK, ATTENTION”
INTENT
-A commitment to service
-A desire to provide value
-A love of teaching
…react pretty strongly when they feel you give a shit about them.
“I think because I came with energy and passion I atracted opportunities. I attracted people to come to these events.”
That one word chapter confirmed that when we show up and we add value and we care, then we can learn how to make money around it later.
AUTHENTICITY
Your intent will be reflected in your authenticity. You will be a thousand times more successful if you wake up eager to share and create something because you believe the world will enjoy it rather than because you have calculated that this is what you need to do to become an instagram celebrity. Authenticity is a welcome relief to consumers who live in a society where they constantly feel they they’re being taken advantage of or hearing only parts of the whole story.
Figure out how to use modern platforms.
…to give away that good stuff you’ve got, whether it’s your incredible fashion sense, your hilarious brand of comedy, your innovative team-building strategies, of your stunning flower arrangement ideas. Figure out the best platforms to showcase your true self, your craft, your joy, and your love for what you do.
…responding to skeptics
…respect my audience. I believe in peoples intuition. They are good at sniffing out hypocrisy and opportunism.
“Find that niche that you’re so good at and ride it, and ride it, and ride it until you can slowly expand out.”
PASSION
PATIENCE
…Passion and patience go hand in hand.
I kept my head down like an ox with a plow, putting almost every dime I earned back in the business and focusing all my energy on building a personal brand around unparalleled customer service, both in the store and online.
SPEED
You need to be constantly in do mode. I see you out there over thinking your content and agonizing over your decisions, taking forever to make up your mind.
“I was trying to learn so much about the product that people would not look at my age and lack of experience as a weak point but overlook that when I told them everything that I know.”
WORK
When you first start out, there is no time for leisure.
ATTENTION
Knowing how to spot underpriced or underappreciated attention is a key influencer skill.
CONTENT
To monetize your personal brand into a business using social marketing networks, two pillars need to be in place: product and content.
Develop high quality native microcontent…perfectly designed to suit the platform you’re using to disseminate it.
Focus on creating one big piece of pollar content that can be splintered into other smaller bits of content – content that breeds like rabbits if you will.
Use a chart to illustrate our strategy for creating endless bits of microcontent out of one “pillar” piece of content.
…great content is a result of passion + expertise.
…Constantly updating your knowledge and providing information and insight that people can’t find easily anywhere else. Moreover, you’ll have to do it in a unique and memorable signature style. There’s no way around it-your content must be amazing.
DOCUMENT, DON’T CREATE
“you can even make the learning process part of your content.”
…the learning process should be your content. That means it’s not a problem if you’ve got more passion than expertise.
I wanted to provide a learning tool for the kind of people built like me. I learn by watching and doing not by reading.
Take them along on your vacations and business trips. Think of yourself as the star of this show and the production company.
…your brand is there to hold you up and carry you to your next opportunity.
…any success you achieve will be predicted on the quality of your content.
If I could give some advice to my seventeen year old self, I’d tell him to turn on the camcorder and capture every minute of his training.
Put your stuff up and see what the market has to say about it. Take it down if no one likes it, (or keeo it up for historical reference). Change it up and try again. Take risks and learn from them.
CH 4. What’s Stopping You?
Align with all eight of the essentials – intent, authenticity, passion, patience, speed, work ethic, ability to track consumer attention and master social platforms, and content – and you have the closest thing to a formula for crushing it that I can offer.
CH 5. Premission
Pat’s story provides; go deep, go niche, and provide real value in the form of entertainment or information.
CH. 7 Get Discovered
By direct messaging, ie. Reaching out directly to people and offering something of value in return for their attention, a strategy that requires an unbelievably long grind.
…second one that I belive holds the most promise. ^
I like tedious. It means most people won’t do it. If you do you will win.
CH 8. Musical.ly
One of the best ways to become a big fish is to swim in a small pool, creativity adapting a platform to your needs.
…but it’s also a place where a performance oriented person can sell pencils, or acai juice, or fidget spinners.
For years, she has spent four to five hours every day, her lunch hour and the time she has after her two boys go to bed, on social media, engaging, reacting, and educating. She has a precense on all the usual suspects TW FB IG. (Dentist lady)
CH 9. SNAPCHAT
“Every single snap needs to leave them with something or else it’s narcissistic.”
All you’re doing when testing discovery strategies is figuring out how to siphon people’s attention.
CH 10. TWITTER
…find all the people every single one.
…reply to some unthreatening, interesting way that creates a connection between her and each sports fan.
…define discipline: it’s backing up your ambitions with your actions. This rookie will need to spend four-six hours a day on this kind of engagement, often in the predawn hours, if she wants to become the next Linda Cohn?
There are several other advantages to using Twitter as your pillar content:
It’s complete and trust worthy directory.
It’s retweet feature offers a remarkable opportunity to create instant awareness.
…spark that word of mouth many, more times.
…Skype number so that anybody could call at any hour.
…Get callers permission to record = free content
CH 11. YOUTUBE
Taking the “document, don’t create” approach means you are conceivably going to pour a shitload of boring content into the miasma of boring content already living on YouTube.
YouTube Best Practices
VIDEO OPTIMIZATION
TITLES: How much thought have you put into your video title?
Does the title accurately reflect the video’s content? Is the majority of the title viewable on mobile? Is the title short and concise, emotionally driven, and/or keyword optimized?
DESCRIPTIONS: Are the top two lines of the description keyword optimized?
Are the links to other similar videos or playlists in the description?
Is there a subscribe link?
Are there links to your other social media accounts?
Are all of the links clickable and trackable?
TAGS: Are there at least 10 tags in the description? Are both one-word and phrase tags included? Do the tags accurately reflect the video’s content? Are the tags valuable, that is, do they have high search volumes but low competition? You can find this by using VidIQ, Google Adwords KW Planner, and Keywordtool.io
THUMBNAILS: Does the thumbnail accurately reflect the videos content? If there is text, does it complement the title?
YOUTUBE CARDS: To extend watch time on your channel, are you including YT cards within your video to drive traffic to other relevant videos you’ve posted?
CHANNEL OPTIMIZATION:
BANNER: Does the banner accurately reflect the channels content and genre? Does the graphic transfer well to all devices?
ABOUT SECTION/CHANNEL DESCRIPTION: Are the top two lines KW optimized? Is the first paragragh an overview of the channel? Have you included the upload schedule? Are all social media links clickable?
PLAYLISTS:
Does the channel have custom playlists? Do the playlists have keyword-optimized descriptions? Are the playlists featured on the landing page of the channel?
CHANNEL TRAILER: Is a trailer displayed on the landing page? Does the channel trailer accurately reflect the content and genre? Is this channel trailer telling the best story in the shortest amount of time?
CH 12. FACEBOOK
Does the video have great copy alongside it? Are the first three seconds captivating? Does it show an understanding of the mindset of the FB demographic that would love to share it with family or friends? Does it compel an action right there and then? Video is still something of a novelty on FB, which means it has potential to be noticed faster and get greater engagement than whatever you might post on YT.
…you know that you should never ask for anything until you’ve given twice as much or more than you’re hoping to get.
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