Hey Square Readers,   We hope you had a great time reading Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk with us. We had some really great discussion threads, so thank you all for participating and making the Square Readers Book Club a welcoming and helpful place. And a big thanks to @DinaLRosenberg for co-hosting and leading this round of Book Club with me!   So we’re here now to bring it all together with a full book and discussion summary, with the parts that you all found to be the most important. And if you didn’t get a chance to read the book, here’s a chance to get the shortened version. Let’s dive in!     Book Summary Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk is all about effective strategies, tactics, and key principles that you can use to promote and grow your business through social media. It focuses on understanding where consumers are spending their attention, and how to create engaging content on those channels in order to get customers to spend their time and money with you.   Discussion Summary We used our Book Club discussion threads to take the theories from the book and see how you all put them into practice in your businesses.    We kicked things off with a baseline conversation before reading the book about how your business uses social media.     Next we laid the foundations of the book by covering the author’s views why attention matters. He explains how the book gained its title, explaining that business owners must study where their potential customers spend their time and attention, and work to make engaging content in those mediums.    Then we dove into the core principle of the book, what the author calls the The Modern Advertising Framework. This covers the entire process of truly understanding and researching your core audience, creating a strategy and content, amplifying it as much as possible, testing and refining, and creating new content based on your findings and results.    After that, we gave an overview of all of the current Social Media Platforms, explaining the differences and specialities of each one. Here Dina also gave more insights into her experiences with creating engaging content.   Dina also led a social media consultation, with members sharing their channels and giving each other advice on how to improve things. Feel free to jump in to ask for advice and share your own insights!   Then we put everything all together to share the final takeaways from the last chapters of the book. This covered authenticity, creativity, bringing community in-person, and so much more.   And finally we finished off our discussion threads by talking about the impact that implementing strategies from the book has had on your businesses, with folks sharing the benefits they’ve felt and their final learnings.   Tactic Talk: Social Media Event Rather than our usual Live Discussions, we shifted to hosting a new event, Tactic Talk: Social Media. This was an opportunity for all Community Members to share their learnings and experiences with social media, as well as to ask each other questions for tips and best practices. It was a really great discussion, and thanks to everyone who joined us! Watch the video recording here.   Next Book We’re taking a winter break from Book Club for the busy Holiday Season in November & December, but we’ll be back in January 2025! Keep an eye out for the next round of book voting coming soon.    Your Thoughts I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this book and overall the experience of our Square Readers Book Club!  Was this book’s framework helpful? What did you get out of it? What are you looking forward to with next year’s books?   It’s never too late to jump into any of our discussion threads and join in on the conversation!   Paying it Forward If you’re all done with the book and are looking for something to do with a copy you bought, I highly recommend paying it forward. Give it to another local business owner, or donate it to a local used bookstore, community center, library, Little Free Library, or anywhere else, so someone else can benefit from it.   Thank you so much for all of your participation and discussion throughout the last two months! A big shoutout to some of our most active members: @DinaLRosenberg, @CareyJo, @bonny, @theroyalctambo, @GoalGetter, @BrianaJo, @CrismarChandler, @Doran, @Smellthis1919, @schaefferjosh, and more!    We hope you read the next book with us in January!   Can’t wait to read more with you, Pesso ... View more

Hey Readers,   We’ve now finished up reading Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk, and we’ve covered everything from your business’ use of social media, the basics of covered the basics of why attention matters, went through the The Modern Advertising Framework, did an overview of the current Social Media Platforms, held a social media consultation, and shared the final takeaways from the last chapters.     So let’s talk about how you’ve implemented what you’ve learned from the book. I’d love to hear what ideas resonated the most with you, what you learned, what it’s been like to actually enact those changes, and how they’ve impacted your business.    I know there is so much to digest and implement. This book really is more academic text book than what we’ve read in the past and, as such, requires working through it rather than a straight read.   In light of that, @Pesso and I hope you’ll join us for our live Tactic Talk event about social media use in your business. Bring questions you may have, wins, any “lightbulb moments,” or even frustration – we wanna hear from you!   Don’t forget to RSVP to Tactic Talk: Social Media, a new version of our Book Club Live Discussions that we’re holding Tomorrow, Tuesday October 29th, to chat together about the social media strategies. Hope to see you there!   We’d love to hear your answers in the comments: What resonated the most with you from this book? What have you done in your business as a result of reading this book? What effects have you felt on your business so far? Where do you still feel lost or frustrated after reading this book?   Don’t forget to: View and Subscribe to all threads about this book RSVP to our Live Discussion – Tactic Talk: Social Media   Happy reading! ... View more

Hey Square Readers!   Thank you so much for joining our Square Readers Book Club! Don’t forget to click Join Group at the top of our Book Club Group Hub.   I would love to learn more about you all, so here's a space to introduce yourselves and to meet some fellow Readers.      So tell us a bit about yourself here in the comments.    Tell us: Your name & location Your business name (and website) What you're hoping to learn and gain from Book Club Your favorite book (business or fun) A picture or two of you or your business   And of course feel free to reply to each others’ intros, especially those nearby or in the same industry as you.   Looking forward to meeting you all, and reading with you, Pesso ... View more

Hey Square Readers,   As we’re getting into reading Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk, let’s get deeper into the material. So far we’ve talked about your business’ use of social media, the first basic principles of the book, and broken down The Modern Advertising Framework.   Here we’ll cover Chapter 4, going into more details about each major social media Platform and how to create content for each. The goal is to help you to get clear on two of the Sections of the Framework from last week, where people seem to get a little lost and extremely frustrated: 2. Platforms and Culture (PAC) and 3. Strategic Organic Content (SOC).      Let’s dive into Chapter 4: Platform Overview.   This chapter goes into detail breaking down each social media platform, their origins, their benefits, and specific strategies and tactics to use for them. We won’t go through all of that detail here, but we’ll do a quick overview of some of the key points of each.   While there’s no rule that says you must post on every single social media platform, there is a lot of exposure, attention, and skills to be gained for your business by trying out each new one that comes up.    “Even if a platform turns out to be a ‘fad’ and goes away, you’d still retain the brand value that you captured by putting out content there … [and] the learnings would translate to other platforms… When you get brand value, people will still find you wherever consumer attention moves next… If a platform does stick around, usually it expands its user base to many different demographics. In that case, it would be smart to get on it early and get a sense for how to make content on the platform.”   Each Social Media platform has its own culture. Sure, some businesses find success by posting the same content across platforms, but in my experience, the best accounts differentiate across platforms, speaking to specific “cohorts” of potential customers within the cultural framework of the platform.   Platforms Ok- BREATHE! If you’re sorta new or resistant to Social Media, I know what I just wrote sounds a lot like word salad, so let me break down the culture of each social media channel:   Facebook has pretty much been around the longest. I know I spend time on Facebook to see what my friends and family are doing. I share photos of my kids and my dogs and post major (and not-so-major) life updates. Admittedly, I’m not so great at tapping into Facebook culture for my business, but I do use it to keep people abreast of upcoming events that we host.  Instagram started out as a photo-sharing platform. As such the content on Instagram is more beautiful and polished, but don’t be fooled. Whereas Instagram feeds used to look polished, that full “put together” aesthetic is a thing of the past since Instagram began pushing Reels over static individual Photos. TikTok, the new-comer on the block, gained popularity with kids and teens dancing to popular songs. While a lot of TikTok is still dancing, there is huge up-side and potential to reach customers. I find TikTok to be the most off-the-cuff of all the social media platforms.  Not to leave out our business-to-business friends, LinkedIn is a professional networking site, and as such, continues to have a similar culture. It’s an excellent platform to position yourself as an expert in your industry and share relevant information that users will find interesting as they’re scrolling through the platform.    The following four I’m going to do my best with. I don’t have a ton of experience with them but they are incredibly large platforms with value depending on what your market/cohort is. Twitter (X) is more a stream of immediate consciousness that is visible/readable by the public. If you are an expert in a particular field, you can try searching for content in your area of expertise and respond to, showing yourself an expert in your field. YouTube has long content and newer short-form content like Reels/TikTok. Long form content tends to be more polished/vlog format whereas reels is more off-the-cuff similar to TikTok. Snapchat is used by younger kids and it’s about fun, filtered photos that are off-the-cuff and are not permanent. Threads is Facebook’s answer to X/Twitter and is all about conversation. Create threads that spark a discussion and invite replies. The easiest way to start a conversation is to pose a question. Consider being direct and asking your followers what they want to hear from you on Threads. Content PHEW- that was a lot! So, now we know the difference between each platform’s culture.    The magic trick to creating content that goes viral AND builds your brand and sales is to do so within each platform’s unique culture. As I’m writing this I’m laughing; a sentence that was easy to write but incredibly difficult to execute.   Sometimes I think this can be where people get stuck-figuring out what type of content you should be creating to reach your individual audience cohorts. The best way to figure out what your cohorts are consuming is to consume the content yourself.    Have you looked at competitors and/or leaders in your industry to see what type of content they’re creating? Are there any industry-adjacent creators that are successful? Pick a platform and spend a considerable amount of time consuming content from all creators so you become intimately familiar with the culture there.   While you’re scrolling listen for trending sounds/trends and act on them, fast. Just this afternoon we were listening to Charlie XCX and were laughing at how fast “Brat” summer came and went. The challenge is to use relevant trends while connecting it to your particular business.    When it comes to creating content, I prefer to keep it fast and keep it moving. I don’t consider it “throwing spaghetti at the wall” but testing different types of content to see what your market prefers from you while also figuring out what feels most natural and authentic to you. The more authentic you are, the more successful your content will be.   Finally, think about providing value. We started our TikTok by teaching about the products we carry (Gary talks about this on page 71). My thinking (at the time) was even if customers didn’t buy from us we’d solidify our position as an expert in our industry.   Jump into the comments below to share: What platforms are most appealing and appropriate for your business? What new platforms might you try after learning more about them? What new things can you try to maximize your efforts across these platforms?   Feel free to share any other thoughts you have about this book. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments below!   Don’t forget to: View and Subscribe to all threads about this book RSVP to our Live Discussion – Tactic Talk: Social Media   Happy Reading!   ... View more

Hey Square Readers,   We’re almost done reading Day Trading Attention by Gary Vaynerchuk, so make sure you jump into some of our discussion threads and let us know your thoughts and what you’ve learned.      Since the Festive/Holiday Season is busy for most business owners, we’ll be taking off the months of November & December 2024, and picking back up in January 2025!   We’ll have our next round of book voting in either November or December, so stay tuned and keep your eyes open for that thread!    Even though we won’t be reading together for those two months, you can still read on your own! Check out our Bookshelf with a full list of all of the books sellers like you recommended, and get a head start before we start back up on January 1st!   In the meantime, please don’t forget to fill out our Survey, and RSVP to our Tactic Talk Live Discussion all about Social Media on Tuesday October 29th!    Happy reading, Pesso ... View more