I just finished Gary Vee’s new book The Thank You Economy and I have to say he’s done it again.

He’s been the most visible and productive advocate of using social media for marketing in the wine industry, and has demonstrated in the promos for this book that he’s not lacking for innovative new ideas for book promotion as well.

Here’s some excerpts from his in-your-face, straight-talking, get-out-of-your-chair-and-do-this manifesto of modern marketing.

“People can spell bullshit even across an oil slicked Gulf”

“Social media is not media, or even a platform, it’s a massive cultural shift.”

“If you’ve already experimented with social media and it didn’t work, there are only two possible reasons:  your product or service isn’t any good, or you’re doing it wrong.”  (great line, but I’d add a third or maybe a corollary for both…you don’t have clear objectives)

“It’s not the number of followers you have or “likes” you get, it’s the strength of your bond with your followers that indicates how much anyone cares about what you have to say.”

Steve Raye and Gary Vaynerchuk at the U.S. Drinks Conference

Right on bro’! We’ve been carrying that flag for a while now…Facebook fans and Twitter follower numbers are nice, but it’s the depth of the engagement that we’re interested in.  We’ve created a proprietary tool to measure engagement level across social media platforms and that tells us more about how we’re doing than likes or followers.  Combine that with social media monitoring tools like Sysomos and you’ve got some powerful real-time, behavior-based market research.

“Intent Matters”

You said it Gary! The better you can intuit intent, the more likely you are to delight customers.  That’s why social media monitoring and tools like the engagement index are so important to us.  They help us understand why people feel compelled to converse with us, so we can respond with more content of value to both of us.
Bottom line folks, if you want to know how social media is impacting the wine and spirits industry…read this book!