Gary Vaynerchuk on navigating shifts in social media marketing

Getting and keeping customer awareness in a crowded attention economy is the key to surviving and thriving in retail today, whether it’s by capitalizing on social media trends or creating viral YouTube videos that garner countless views, like serial entrepreneur and marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk regularly does.

“We’re looking at a world where creative is measurable,” Vaynerchuk said during a session at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show. “The greatest thing about social media right now is that the AI algorithms as written are based on relevance.” Success on social media is no longer measured by number of followers but on the popularity and relevance of individual posts, he said.

Because of this shift in the algorithm — from prioritizing wide networks to prioritizing individual interests — retailers’ metrics for success have had to change. “Everybody’s number one measurement needs to be views achieved by the creative in your social output across the seven or eight social networks, monthly, gross and per post,” he said. “That becomes the starting point to understanding how your marketing mix can be successful.”

In fact, according to Vaynerchuk, society is no longer in the age of social media, but the age of interest media. “I’ve painstakingly worked very hard for the last 20 years to amass 50 million-plus followers and I’m starting to, on a daily basis, lose the leverage that I’ve created for myself,” he said. “We’re now down to a place where the individual piece of creative gets the reach, not how many followers you have.”

That creates an opportunity to build brand loyalty through relevance, he said. “If you see something that’s relevant to you over and over and over again, now you start to create loyalty. Now you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a brand I like. They talk about things I like.’ And all of a sudden, you’ve gone from brand to acquaintance to friend.”

That is why retailers need to be on all platforms, Vaynerchuk said. “We are in complete relevance warfare.” For retail marketers that commit to organic social at scale to bring relevance and awareness, the sky is the limit, he said. “The highest performing organic reach pieces of content? When you take that content back to the lab, slightly tweak it and put it into your performance, it outperforms your best a/b meta testing by a country mile.”

The one platform that continues to grab Vaynerchuk’s attention? Live social shopping. Despite that live social shopping hasn’t quite taken off in the United States, Vaynerchuk pointed to Whatnot, a live streaming ecommerce app that sold $7-$10 billion in gross merchandise value last year.

Live shopping is how retailers will get that all-important attention in the future, Vaynerchuk said.

“Live shopping is attention. Consumers see something and they act on it. It’s a frictionless environment. It’s in your feed. It just shows up. It’s easier than any other ecommerce,” he said. “Every single company, every retailer here: If they are not spending an enormous amount of time debating their live social shopping strategy … they are setting themselves up for very challenging 2027-2028 realities.”