Gary Vaynerchuck on brand identification, mobile and conversation management

The full interview can be found here, but we made a summary with the main take aways below.

For those who do not know Gary, shame on you, we will introduce him briefly. Gary is a self made man. Via his dad he rolled in to a liquor business and build a company WineLibrary.com (45 mio $ business), started Vaynermedia to advice big companies (Pepsico, Cambells, …) on social strategy & community management, wrote a book CrushIT about building you own brand and is soon to release a new book The Thank You Economy (you can pre-order here) on the ROI of ‘caring’. Moreover he is a family man, a Jets Fan and a true entrepreneur.

Use of Social Media

According to Gary, who is always pumped when talking about business, Social media’s biggest problem is the word Media. When people hear Media they talk … people, companies should listen more and talk less. Social Listening would have been better. You can promote yourself online but for every promotion tweet, you should listen to a thousand.

‘99% of the people using social media are not using it properly.’

Being passionate in a company (not your own)

In his first book CrushIt Gary preaches that you anyone who is passionate enough about something, can build his own business and be his own boss. But can you be as passionate and successful when you work for a company. “That is a big challenge!”

For Gary it was eye-opening to see that in big companies so many people care more about themselves and their career than about selling more products, building a better brand.

Nevertheless, Gary believes that want a bigger mission (see religion or sports) but companies fail to build a culture. It is very difficult to ‘create’ passion.

You can’t threat your company like a communist country. (Gary comes from Belarus) So you cannot say to your employees they cannot Facebook or Twitter.

Gary’s ambition

To Gary doing business is a game, a competition … he wants to be the best! He wants to beat every company. In the future Gary wants to be more than just a talking head writing books and doing speeches. Growing Vaynermedia is part of that.

The next big thing in technology

Mobile and virtual currency. People are underestimating that we are living our lives in a mobile device. People identify them with brands, in the physical world. But now our lives are in devices smartphones, tablets … we need to have alternatives in these devices such as badges for accomplishments. “Social currency is gone impact the way we do things! I think that is very underestimated. And mobile is THE game, if you do not understand this, you will be lost!”

Conversation management

In Europe a lot of companies start considering social media & conversation management but even in the US there is a lot of work to do. According to Gary the cultural background is the main reason for this. Americans love to talk, and don’t listen from nature. It should be easier for European, Asian or South American companies to understand Social. Culture should be an advantage in this case, but companies have always been in the talking business, so they will have to learn listening.