On Monday (21/03/16) Gary Vaynerchuk flew into Dublin for a mere few hours to speak at the Leading Social event in the Mansion House. Leading Social is a Dublin based social media marketing agency.
In the warm up to Vaynerchuk we heard from four other speakers, all Irish and all with a back ground in making waves on social media.
Samantha Kelly @Tweetinggoddess
Kelly told her story of how a low point in her life gave her the motivation to try new things and take a chance. She founded a company that provided young women with First Period Gift Box’s. The successes of her business was driven by her marketing efforts on social, particularly twitter. Through this experience she learnt invaluable information which formed the basis of her next ventures, The Social Media Summit and the Irish Biz Party and British Biz Party.
Kelly told the audience that her online growth came from her dedication to helping others on Twitter and growing a community around her.
“Connect. Share. Assist. Engage and make someone feel special.”
“The power of you helping out someone else is huge.”
My key takeaway: Chat and be nice to people online.
Anthony Quigley @AnthonyQuigley
Quigley is the founder of the Digital Marketing Institute, Code Institute and 3XE digital. He spoke about his use of social media to grow the DMI global brand in 70+ countries.
He advises people to test their digital knowledge using Testyourdigital.com to see where they need to improve. He admits this is a selling tool to convince people to take a digital course.
Quigley also puts a large emphasis on creating and sharing great content such as eBooks and guides etc. for people to download.
My key takeaway: Produce stuff around what you do that people will value.
Niall Harbison @NiallHarbison
Harbison spoke about how he used social media to grow the Lovin group (including Lovin Dublin & Lovin Dubai) as well as building and selling Simply Zesty.
The main theme I took from his talk was to take risks, and to not be scared to fail.
He encourages everyone to try things and ignore what other people are saying.
“It’s hard to take that first step but nothing happens without that.”
The other key points to note from his talk, which are later reconfirmed by Vaynerchuk himself, are the following:
- Facebook is going no where
- Snapchat is the new big thing
- Everybody has to be a publisher in 2016
Pat Divilly @PatDivilly
Divilly spoke about how social media helped him become a two time bestselling author, grow his client base from 5 to 5000 in under 3 years and raise over €250,000 for local charities.
Key points from his talk were:
- Step up and be a leader, use your knowledge to take what you know and share it.
- Stop waiting for permission, too many people are happy to be average in their industry. Shine.
- Don’t wait for perfect, say yes then figure it out. Put it into the world and see what does/ does not work. It’s all about trial and error and taking risks in order to see what really pays off.
- The only way to learn is by doing and the same goes for confidence. You gain confidence by doing things.
- Ask yourself how can you add value, and how can you help more people. The more people you help the more money you can make.
You can see Pat speak here at his recent Tedx talk.
By this point the audience was well and truly inspired ready for the main man to hit the stage.
Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee
Gary Vaynerchuk can be described using all sorts of buzz words, but he likes to describe himself as simply practical. And that he is. He speaks the truth and says how things are whether he himself is happy about this truth or not.
Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur and a bestselling author. He began his career with his family’s discount liquor store, eventually boosting its revenue from $3 million to $60 million over five years. Before many knew how to use the internet, Vaynerchuk saw the opportunity to create a retail website The Wine Library.
Later, in 2006 he started a daily video blog about wine- Wine Library TV. Vaynerchuk’s informal and down to earth approach to wine quickly grew him a large audience and the media took notice.
In 2009 he, along with his brother launched VaynerMedia, a full service marketing agency.
Today, Vaynerchuk continues to use video on the internet to spread his business knowledge with YouTube series AskGaryVee and the DailiyVee (vlog).
Vaynerchuk has a powerful presence. He came on to the speaker’s stage to a standing ovation and jumped right into it.
He spoke of three main trends in the current marketing industry:
- The smart phone is the single most important thing in a person’s life, whether we want to accept it or not. As soon as brands and marketers adopt tactics that use mobile the better.
- Twitter is still useful but it is nowhere near what it once was and not even close to Facebook’s popularity. Gary admitted he spent a major percentage of his time replying and interacting with all his followers on twitter, and is disappointed the social channel is dying. But “The market is the market, respect it, ride the wave.”
- This brings us to Snapchat. He believes, like Facebook was in 2007, Snapchat is the next game changer and we should all jump on the band wagon. Many have the perception that Snapchat is just for young people, but that’s exactly what was said about Facebook in the early days. Those “young people” continued to use it as they grew, while introducing it to the older generation over time. The same thing will happen with Snapchat, Gary predicts. He’s not overly excited about shifting his focus from Twitter and Facebook posts to short videos but he tells us not to disrespect consumers attention shift, we must pay attention to it.
He placed a massive emphasis on branding vs. sales. He feels brand trumps everything and should be the main focus for any entrepreneur. Another piece of advice for entrepreneurs he gave was to provide more than you expect to get. For any start-up this is the key to growth.
He suggests looking at the top 3 apps every morning and if you don’t have them yet then get downloading. It’s the most basic yet simple way to stay on top of new trends.
In summary, the two tops tips I took away from this talk seemed so simple yet so smart:
- Don’t get too hung up on the potential attention a social channel has and instead focus on the actual attention it is generating for you. If it’s not working for your business then it simply won’t.
- Don’t be crippled by getting shit right, get shit done.
There was a lot to take in from all the speakers; I tried to condense this post to the main takeaways from the event.
Did you attend? What where the main points of information you took away?
