Book Review: 'Crushing It!' by Gary Vaynerchuk

Get your copy here: amzn.to/3vdIrFv

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! is a book that helps entrepreneurs prepare themselves for the new digital world. It’s a useful guide to achieving fame and fortune in the 21st century. Vaynerchuk draws a range of insights for aspiring entrepreneurs from real experiences of influencer and social media success stories. It’s a book that helps entrepreneurs establish and manage their businesses by creating strong personal brands, and how they can manifest across social media platforms. 

Creating a personal brand is essential for entrepreneurs in the new digital landscape, because social media platforms allow personal brands to flourish, gaining fame and audiences. And at unimaginable speeds. Vaynerchuk suggests that with passion, authenticity and perseverance, anyone can use social media platforms to build their personal brands, and keep the momentum towards a sustainable business.

This is a book that questions the conventional principles of success, and replaces the aspects that have changed. Today’s dynamic social media world doesn’t just permit growth, but allows entrepreneurs to crush it — going past what was thought to be possible. It teaches readers to tap the power of the individual potential, and the ways in which that can disseminate across a variety of social media platforms.

Vaynerchuk's Crushing It! explains that creating a personal brand is something anyone can aspire and achieve; it works for every category of people: from plumbers to footballers and beyond. The book offers philosophical, theoretical and practical advice on how to stand out, and stand big on the back of personal brands. From Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes and other emerging platforms like Musical.ly, Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! analyzes each of these platforms and how they can best be tapped to grow a personal brand. With each platform being studied, the book offers many tips and tricks on how to improvise, enhance and work off the strategies and tactics that have been proven to work time and time again.

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! is a step-by-step guide on creating personal brands and social  success that inspires entrepreneurs to build things on their own terms, for the modern world. It touches on a variety of themes and concepts.

Personal branding is at the heart of it all. Because the new social world is underpinned on the power of personal brand. Creating a personal brand comes from identifying one’s strengths and unique qualities, passions and then communicating their value proposition to the world. 

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! explains how social media platforms are vehicles that amplify one’s personal brand. He goes on to explain, in depth, the power and tricks behind each platform: Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. He offers practical advice on how to go about making the most of these platforms, and ways to create content specifically for each of those platforms. He also explains how to measure content and shape them to resonate and maximize audience engagement.

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! talks about the power of quality in social media content creation. He talks not just about the value of the content, but the way it’s presented so as to capture the attention of audiences and convey trust and significance. He explores a variety of content formats, and provides observations and insights that help distribute your content strategically and tactically. He covers articles to podcasts, videos to live streaming and everything in between. And the right distribution mechanics that maximize and scale out these formats.

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! notably discusses the power of influence. Or rather, that influencer marketing is a strategic tool to help brands pursue collaboration across plaforms. He suggests that entrepreneurs need to realise that one part is having a strong personal brand that performs on existing networks, and the other part of expanding the reach and credibility across categories and industries, and influencer collaboration is therefore a necessary lever for greater effectiveness.

One of the issues with social media and personal brand management in the digital world is that it’s corrupted by fakeness. Vaynerchuk talks about the necessity and strategic advantage of coming across as authentic, and delivering genuine content. This, he suggests, is the only way to build a personal brand with the legs for long-term sustainability. This, he believes, is the way to achieve meaningful relationships because people tend to connect with brands that are true to who and what they are. 

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! is a playbook for entrepreneurs to manage the new and dynamic world of digital. It’s a guide to build a personal brand, and then take that personal brand and expand it over social media to achieve maximum impact. Filled with practical tips and strategic advice, this is a book that inspires entrepreneurs to realise the power of personal brands, social media success, and come across as authentic to thrive as a brand or business in the digital age. This is a book that helps entrepreneurs establish and engage with audiences over the long-term.

This book suggests that social media is one the most important tools for entrepreneurial success in the modern world. Because it helps create a personal brand, connect with customers, promote products and services and build loyalty. It’s a comprehensive tool for success. This is particularly important because it goes against the way business success was achieved in the traditional world. A grip on social and the ability to use it as a tool to maximize impact is a fundamental aspect for modern entrepreneurial success.

Social media isn’t just a tool to create a personal brand, it helps entrepreneurs tell stories and share their genuine perspectives for the world. It’s a way to draw people in and connect with them in a variety of ways: from value to values. Shared passion is a space that helps entrepreneurs connect with specific target audiences, and social media is tailored made for tapping into that nature. Similarly, offering the right value proposition and drawing people in on the back of that is another vehicle that social media helps address. Overall, social media helps entrepreneurs connect with potential customers on a personal level, helping them build loyalty and the groundwork for sustainable success.

Social media is also an important research tool for entrepreneurs because it lets them listen. Listen to unmet needs, wants, frustrations and motivations and problems. And then act and address those and keep improving on things, based on the feedback – and in real-time. By listening closely to consumers, social helps build strong relationships and create a sense of community around brands that is very hard to break from.

Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! also discusses the many ways to maximize impact and reach on social media by using tactics like promotional contests, giveaways and competitions that draw customers in and gives them a reason to particulate and be excited about earning something in return. Finding ways to strategically capitalize on the underlying motivations of people in the context of social channels and their adaptive contexts can be a perpetually useful business skill for entrepreneurs. Essentially, Vaynerchuk’s Crushing It! is a practical guide for social media branding, featuring relatable and inspiring examples from brands to influencers, revealing strategic and tactical ways to operate at the speed of culture. Get your copy here: amzn.to/3vdIrFv