Jab, Jab, Jab

12 years ago, Gary Vaynerchuk wrote an excellent book called “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook“. The idea was pretty simple: your social media content should consist primarily of “jabs”, where you’re sharing value-added content to make life better for your followers, with just the occasional “right hook” thrown in with your call-to-action.

Lately, it seems most people are either all jabs or all right hooks.

All Jabs

All jabs isn’t a bad place to be. If you’re solely providing great content to your followers, you’ll end up in a great place. That’s essentially how we ended up as clients of the CPA firm that we use, and we essentially produce content the same way.

All Right Hooks

The problem I’m seeing is too many right hooks. No jabs, just sales. There are the pure spammers of course, but that’s not what I’m referring to here. These are all people I know, that have chosen not to engage in any meaningful way online, and only show up when they need something.

For example, here’s I guy I know that I hadn’t talked to in a while. I reached out to see how he was doing, and he never replied, but four months later he reached out to me with a direct pitch.

Another friend has literally never posted on LinkedIn, and their first (and only!) post was looking for a job. That’s understandable, but should be followed up with other content that might be useful for potential employers. Instead, it’s just the one post on their feed and nothing else. I suspect it won’t go well.

A different friend has taken a similar tact. I know they’ve been struggling to get clients for their solo practice, and yet his last two posts have been:

• 5 months ago: “I’m looking for work”
• 1 year ago: “Here’s why you should hire me”

There are no posts showing his viewpoints, or tech stories that interest him, or resources for others to use. There is nothing that shows anyone why you would actually want to hire him.

Jabs Win

Social media isn’t the answer for everything, for sure, but if you’re going to spend a little time to post on there, throw a few jabs while you’re logged in.

I point people to the CPA firm that we use quite often because they do it right. Here are Jason’s last six posts on LinkedIn as of the time I’m building this post:

• Shared a recent podcast episode of theirs.
• Shared an episode from a different podcast of theirs.
• Shared a recent post from Gary Vaynerchuk about having purpose in your work.
• Shared a bit about their firm.
• Shared a tax reminder for small businesses.
• Shared a helpful product that one of their clients is offering to litigators.

He throws in some soft Right Hooks from time to time, but I love following his content because of the great insights and resources that he shares.

Throw an occasional Right Hook from time to time if you want, but pepper the internet with Jabs and things will tend to work out great for you!