Attention, social media and doing the work
Grew a family wine business by getting to a new platform before anyone else, and has been shouting about attention ever since.
Photograph: Vaynermedia · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons
Vaynerchuk took over his family's wine shop and grew it substantially, largely by using email and then a daily video show at a point when almost no small retailer was doing either. He then built an agency business and became one of the most visible voices on social media marketing.
The core argument he has made consistently for two decades: attention is the asset, it moves between platforms faster than businesses adapt, and the arbitrage is in getting good at a platform before it becomes obvious.
The delivery is relentless, and the hustle framing has been fairly criticised for glamorising overwork. The underlying observation about where attention is cheap, and about producing far more content than feels reasonable, has held up better than most marketing advice of the same period.
His most durable idea. When a platform is new, reach is cheap because advertisers have not arrived. The businesses that win on a channel are usually the ones that were early and ordinary, not late and excellent.
The advice that unlocks content for most small businesses: you do not need to invent things to say. Show the work you are already doing. It is faster, more honest and considerably more sustainable than trying to be clever weekly.
Give repeatedly before you ask. Most small-business social media is a sequence of right hooks — offers, promotions, asks — with nothing given in between, and it is why nobody engages.
These links go to their own work. We summarise and point — we do not republish it.
Anyone doing their own marketing who is waiting until they have something polished enough to post.
The hustle framing is genuinely unhealthy for some people, and the platform-specific tactics date within a year or two. Take the principle, ignore the schedule.