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If you are not aware of who Gary Vaynerchuck is, you should become familiar with him. He is a very clever, highly motivated and motivational marketing expert, who burst onto the scene thanks to the seemingly intuitive way that he understands the power of social media.

Vaynerchuck claims that he has always been an entrepreneur, but it was when he joined his father’s off-licence (liquor store) that he really started to shine. He set up a website called winelibrary.com and took the business from a $3 million business to a $45 million business in an incredibly short amount of time.

If you are interested, here is an example of Vaynerchuck in action (warning: possibly not for the faint-hearted!)

Gary grew his business online through doing a number things: through disrupting the wine world. By pumping out his larger-than-life personality through his business. And by understanding and grasping the opportunities that every social media network had to offer. By 2009 he had launched VaynerMedia, giving companies advice on how to use social networks to their advantage.

He now has a new book out and as part of the promotion of that he wrote a post about British brands and what he thinks of their social media activity. One comment he made really struck a chord here in freestak Towers:

I know it’s Q4, really I do. I know you have sales goals, and KPIs to hit. But I also know that it’s the same for every retailer in the world right now, and a little bit of humanity can go a long, long way for your users. So tell a joke, post a recipe, post a picture of Tom the stock boy doing his impersonation of Margaret Thatcher for all I care, but take a quick break from selling and connect with your audience. They’ll appreciate it.

We couldn’t agree more. As with the last post we wrote – about trying to make a noise at a time when everyone else is making all the noise they can – Christmas and the beginning of the year, can feel like you’re in the middle of a hurricane, with everything whirling around and so much noise and bluster and chaos that you don’t know where to start. So the question is: do you wade in and try to do what everyone else is? Do you just try to out-shout all the other people shouting? Or do you do something a little different?

We would advise that whilst it is good practice to post about your special offers and discounts, etc you should make sure that you also just engage with your customers. People want to see something different – we are currently working with a client and it is clear that their Facebook page engagement really drops off when they are posting about special offers and the like. We are showing them how being very human and engaging, people – that is customers – will come back time and again to their Facebook page… which means when they do post an offer, the audience for that offer will be much, much bigger and more likely to respond.

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