Day Trading Attention - Book Review

Gary Vee's newest book on using social media.

I just finished reading Gary Vee's new book, Day Trading Attention, recently and there were some excellent insights in there. Gary has said this is the playbook for social media for the next 10 years, and I can say he was definitely right. There's so much tactics and strategies in the book, that you should have a copy of it next to your desk if you're doing anything with social media. I'll give a review of some highlights I have of it.

If you want the short summary; I highly recommend the book. It took about 8 hours to get through, and there was a lot of actionable content in there that I'm going to be using. This is a must read for anyone with a business or personal brand.

Anyway, let's get started.

Gary opened up the book with a story about a guy named Dogface on TikTok. He was skateboarding to work one day and drinking a bottle of Ocean Spray. He took a video of it with his cell phone and initially decided not to post it, but later did. When he checked on his account the next day, the video had millions of views. It got a lot of new business for Ocean Spray, he got a ton of new followers, and his life changed overnight. Gary used this story to highlight how one video could change a person's life instantly. Later in the book, he said it's rare, but it can happen.

There's a lot more attention that's being shifted to social media and the door of opportunity is starting to close. Gary thinks there might still be a few years left for people to get in before the difficulty spikes and the attention gets harder to grab. I'll emphasize that if you're thinking of starting, you need to do it now, and not wait two years when the doors have almost closed. There's a lot to learn with social media and your first year is mostly going to be trying to figure out what you're doing.

Gary predicts in 10-20 years, people are going to be overinvested in social media. He's talked about this in a similar form in his past videos. People take way too long to catch up to what is currently working, and the fast movers have already moved on to the next thing. AR and VR are likely to become common household technologies in the next 5-10 years and most people aren't going to be ready for the switch.

I made a letter a while back talking about the Apple Vision Pro. Most people are dismissive of it right now, without realizing the power it could have when the technology gets dialed in during the next few years. The same goes for other AR headsets. I've already been making plans for how I'll be making videos then for the people that are going to be watching from those headsets, as AR and VR are going to completely change how people consume content.

The next big point Gary talked about is how all forms of advertising still work, though some work better than others. Radio and TV have lost much of their effectiveness, but the prices don't reflect it. Also, with the way advertising works online these days, there's a lot of platforms that are available. YouTube just recently announced pause screen ads on TVs will show a 30 second unskippable ad which will have a QR code and text embedded. This is going to be a huge opportunity for DTC brands. Other platforms are taking similar measures, such as Roku.

Gary also said people need to stop underestimating LinkedIn. When people go to the platform, they are in a state of mind of doing business. The organic content strategy there needs to be taken seriously and people need to start posting multiple times per day. Targeted ads are also a huge opportunity. A person could make and show ads specifically for C suite executives at a company.

Next, you have to be good at execution and be open to running experiments. It's no longer good enough to post for the sake of posting. Some thought needs to go into whatever it is you make. Your level of input is going to be the output. If you slop a two minute video together, you're going to see results that reflect the lack of effort. If you post for the sake of posting, you're not going to get any results.

Gary talked about how people need to stop focusing on how their brand looks on their page, and I'm glad he did this. I've seen too many people on YouTube post the exact same style of thumbnail with the same face, same text, same background, and same colors for most of their videos. This leaves potential growth on the table. Some of the videos I've seen that're like that have less than 50 views, and it's because the channel owner isn't willing to experiment. They take bad advice from other people who talk about brand consistency, when some simple changes to the title and thumbnail could cause their videos to get massive reach overnight.

Next, Gary talked about his previous book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. The premise of the book was to provide value three times, then make an ask. People have followed this to the T since he talked about that, and most haven't made much variation. There's more variables to consider now, such as the format of what you're posting, what types of content to make, what should the value be, and changing the content based on the platform.

There's a lot more supply being created for demand, and the supply is going up rapidly everyday. You have to start creating now. The opportunity isn't going to be there forever, and Gary emphasized this multiple times in the book. I've also seen him talk about this in multiple videos where he's speaking at a conference. When he asks people in the audience why they haven't started, it's usually some variation of being worried about the opinions of others, not knowing what to post, or now knowing how to do it.

The guides for the what and how are out there. As far as the fear of someone else's opinion, there's no book you can read that'll teach you how to deal with that. The only fix is to start making content and it'll go away with time. Most people fabricate some scenario in their mind about how others see them, but not realizing no one else actually cares.

There's still plenty of organic attention up for grabs right now, but the difficulty of getting it is going to go up a lot in the next few years. Once big brands start to get a better handle of how social works, the shift is going to happen even faster. If you haven't been following AI improvements, Sora could potentially have a huge impact on video content in the next year or two. In the past year, we went from video that was clearly AI generated to now having something that could be passable in some cases. AI voices have improved a lot as well. Brands are eventually going to figure out how to make "AI influencers" with video content. The game is going to change massively when that starts happening.

There's much more in the book. This was just a tasting of what was available. It was a lot of great information and this is something people should be using heavily for applying social media in the next few years. If you don't start using it, you're going to lose out to others who do. I've watched what Gary's doing and I've copied much of it for myself, and it works great. I'll be making changes on what I'm doing after reading this book.

Anyway, that wraps this letter up. I hope you have a good weekend and I'll see you next Saturday!