Image credit: icedsoul photography .:teymur madjderey

Why is Gary Vaynerchuk smiling?

Because his new book, The Thank You Economy, just dropped today. In a moment, I will tell you how to get a copy FREE.

The drastic improvement from Gary’s first book, Crush It! (still a NYT bestseller) to TYE is reminiscent of one of my favorite bands, 1990′s hip hop supergroup Public Enemy, maturing from a solid but raw debut record (Yo! Bum Rush The Show) to one of their finest albums ever (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back).

The other parallels are eerie.

Both frontmen are known by a first name + last initial.  Chuck “D” and Gary “V”.

Both debut offerings had an unexpected exclamation point ! in the title.

Chuck D was once featured on a track called “Shock and Awe” and “Shock and Awe” is Chapter 8 in Gary’s new book.

I can’t make this stuff up.

Similarities to Public Enemy aside, below are are 10 reasons you should buy TYE and 4 reasons you shouldn’t.

10 reasons you should buy The Thank You Economy

1. The opening. The opening page of historical quotes on adoption of various technology brilliantly sets the tone for proving skeptics of social media wrong. Then the book does exactly that.
2. The storytelling. The book is filled with stories that all support the main point. Some are stories from Gary’s work and personal life. Some are “should have” stories and some are “what if” stories. The entire book is written in Gary’s personal, casual and engaging voice. Reading it is like being in the room with him.
3. The data. When he doesn’t use stories or anecdotes to support the points, Gary references legitimate data from trusted sources.
4. The honesty. Gary doesn’t pull any punches. He explains exactly what it takes to operate in this new world of customer engagement and marketing. He also explains times where he has made mistakes in the past and learned from them.
5. The variety of case studies. From large brands like Amazon, Avaya, Zappos and Zagat to small businesses like Boloco and AJ Bombers to individuals like Irena Vaksman, a dentist in San Francisco and Hank Heyming, an attorney inside a huge law firm, there are examples and case studies that any business or individual can relate to.
6. Chapter 3. By itself. In Chapter 3, Gary specifically addresses eleven of the top objections to using social media. As someone who also works with large brands on social media, I’ve heard every objection multiple times. Gary dismantles each one, piece-by-piece. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
7. The focus on culture. Chapter 4 outlines how critical the right culture is to success in this new world. A couple years ago while I was working with a large consumer electronics client on marketing, branding and social media, I could sense that their culture was badly broken and getting worse. So while we were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I organized a tour of Zappos for my client execs to see a world-class culture firsthand. The tour was great. The client executives were excited. But when we returned from Vegas, nobody wanted to step up and own the culture turnaround that everyone knew they needed. I pleaded with them to hire a Chief Culture Officer, a position Gary explains in detail in the book. Long story short, they ended up doing nothing to focus on improving the culture, which continued to erode. Now, just a few short years later, many people have quit or been laid off, key functions have been outsourced to China and the company is splitting up and moving across the country. Even perfect use of Facebook or Twitter is not going to change that. The lesson here is important. Culture is paramount. Chapter 4 explains how to instill a culture for success.
8. The ping pong. In Chapter 5, Gary outlines how to effectively combine traditional media and social media. The two are far from mutually exclusive and when used in concert and as part of a strategic plan, one plus one can really equal five.
9. The sawdust. The fourth part of Gary’s book is appropriately named The Sawdust…a collection of little nuggets that were leftover after sawing the content into logical chapters. Instead of sweeping it out the door, it’s included in the back…great little riffs on everything from fear to emotions, innovations to apologies and more. This part of the book is like licking your orange fingers after you polish off a bag of Cheetos. There’s not much there but it’s really good stuff.
10. The caring. Gary clearly put his heart and soul into this book. He cared enough to ship a book that mattered. The Thank You Economy is going to help everyone from executives to entrepreneurs to agencies really understand this new world we’re living in.

4 reasons you shouldn’t buy The Thank You Economy

1. You don’t care about your customers and you don’t want to.
2. Your culture is negative and broken and you don’t care to fix it.
3. You make too much money and you would like to make less.
4. You’re retiring. This week.

Win one of ten copies

I believe so much in this book that I’m personally buying 10 copies to give away to my readers. To get a chance at snagging a copy of The Thank You Economy, you must do the following two actions:

1. Leave a comment below. Tell me why you want this book. Be creative.
2. Tweet a link to this post. You can do so automatically by clicking here. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can use Facebook.

On Friday, March 11, 2011, I will select 10 people, based on my evaluation of their comments. If you are one of those selected, I’ll personally contact you to ask for your shipping address (or Kindle version if you prefer). If you don’t hear from me, you can assume you didn’t win.

Question: Why do you want a copy of this book? If I give you a copy, do you promise to read it?

If you made it this far, thank you. A few final points. I was fortunate enough to get sent an early galley of this book. The links to purchase the books above are affiliate links. I plan to beat Gary in a pencil war at SXSW. If you’re going to SXSW, please track me down and say hi.