Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: Book Review For Solos

This post is part of the MyShingle Solos summer series which will run between June 17 and July 3, 2014. 

This post is written by MyShingle Guest Blogger Christine A. Wilton

Have you read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuck (@garyvee) yet? This book came recommended by Dave Ramsey’s team and I couldn’t put it down. He brings a fresh spin on social media platforms and how to communicate on each of them. As solos, we can exponentially expand our reach and level the playing field of our competition by engaging with others through social media platforms.

He spends the better part of the book explaining how to storytell on Facebook.  What really helps to solidify the concepts are the examples with pictures of companies that get it right and others that don’t.  It’s important to know the demographics on each social media platform, along with how to participate and you get that here.  For example, Gary suggests that we may post pictures of our morning coffee on Facebook, but we would never do that on LinkedIn.  Great advice if you ask me.

Some important takeaways from this read are to learn to speak in the proper context on the various platforms.  In example, I have been working on twitter more than ever.  You can follow me @attychristine to catch my updates and musings.  I have learned to hijack #hashtags on Twitter to get more exposure from a single post. I’m also learning to speak Twitter (I think someone should write a dictionary of terms).  There’s more than enough information to make you a better user however you choose to use social for your business.

LinkedIn has an honorable mention.  Unfortunately, I just read that they’re in some litigation over their sending multiple emails to solicit non-member participation without consent.  It doesn’t seem to stop them from being the premiere business-to-business networking site.

The book title is a reference to boxing and Gary explains that you can’t ask for something until after you’ve “jabbed” for a bit.  That is to give before we receive.  He explains the differences through his vivid examples. It’s important to operate on the premise that we are all in the media business.  We owe it to ourselves and our communities to share what we know and read.  Blogging and social media are all about the business of being a thought leader on a particular subject and a trusted authority, such that the potential consumer will hire us.  It’s about doing what lawyers have done through the ages by being leaders in the community.  We just happen to have a larger community online.

Christine A. Wilton (@AttyChristine) is in private practice in Huntington Beach, California and publishes her blog at Los Angeles Bankruptcy Law Monitor where she writes about consumer bankruptcy in Southern California.  She is also a nationally known student loan lawyer and author of Discharging Student Loans in Bankruptcy In her spare time she serves on the board of directors for the National Association of Women Business Owners, Orange County chapter as Vice President of Corporate Sponsors