Platforms are recognizing that content is more valuable when people are allowed to add their context to it and are building the tools to allow them to do it easily. One of the reasons I invested in Tumblr was that it encouraged reblogging. And I love the potential of Twitter’s quote retweet that gives you 250 characters to work with. Your thoughts and opinions about George Clooney’s wedding or Apple have real value when you can contextualize it to your audience’s world, whether it’s music, restaurants, yoga, or pumpkin farming.
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I work in two different spaces. How do I use social media platforms so that I’m not confusing my audience?
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There are a couple of ways you can handle this. Let’s say you’re talking business and wine. One strategy, which is probably the easier of the two, is to create two separate accounts on every platform—two profiles on Twitter, two pages on Facebook, two different boards on Pinterest, and so on—dedicated to their respective topic. The other, harder option is to become a Renaissance person, and become so branded in both topics that everyone knows they can come to you for one or the other and get equally good information or entertainment. But even if you do that, you’ll still need to target specific audiences with promoted content and Facebook ads to make sure that the right people are seeing what you want them to see. You have to adjust to each platform to ensure your storytelling is always giving your audience what it wants.
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Is there a way to drive traffic to a website when posting content directly to Facebook?
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Facebook is content awareness gold. Post a link to an article or video and if your post earns enough likes, shares, and comments, you can just step back and allow the awareness to grow organically. But if you want things to move a little faster, or you want to hedge your bets, you can actively drive a crapload of views with Facebook ads. It’s absolutely worth the investment.
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Should I wait until my website is 100 percent built before putting out content or put out content while I’m still building it?
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Tommy Mottola, the ex-president of Sony, once told me privately that he never let any of his artists go on TV until he was ready to sell something. His thinking was that it would be a wasted opportunity if a fan saw the artist perform and, inspired, ran to the store to buy the CD only to find out it wasn’t coming out for another week. In that context it made sense to wait. But what’s your objective? To sell, right? If the only place you can get your goal accomplished, whether it’s selling a product or getting people to sign up for something or do something, is on your website, then obviously you need to finish the website. But how often is that the case nowadays? How often are we really limited to our sites to do business?
When VaynerMedia was in its early days, our website was garbage by most people’s standards. We didn’t mention the work we were doing or make any reference to our clients. We looked like we were going out of business. I did that on purpose. We were a new agency, and I was David. And when you’re David, you don’t play Goliath’s game. I needed to make sure that the bigger agencies didn’t know how big we were actually getting. This can be an enormously helpful strategy when you’re new to the field and you want to stay beneath your competitors’ radar. You get creative with your content, curating, adding context, and putting out original pieces that don’t necessarily talk about your business but do establish you as an authority and a place for people to convene on a topic.
If you can achieve your business objective outside the website, do it, because not only are you executing, you’re also telling your story, which builds up leverage and equity that you can use later to drive people to your website if you want to. Don’t ever waste time or opportunity. Sell against the impressions you’re getting in social. If you can make your money or do the thing you want to do natively on a platform, do it there. And you know what? Do it there even when your website is 100 percent complete. Use every channel you’ve got.
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Should I avoid doing podcasts or videos if I have a foreign accent?
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I might be a little biased because all of my relatives have Russian accents, so when I hear one it makes me feel comfortable and at home. Are there certain Americans who think accents reflect untrustworthiness and inferiority? Yup. There are idiots everywhere. But there are many, many more people for whom accents don’t matter at all. Obviously, because many of the most successful entrepreneurs in this country do have accents. Have you ever heard Sergey Brin speak?
You’re never going to please everyone. I don’t have an accent but a lot of people don’t like the way I speak, either—too much cursing, arrogance, and bravado. But there are pros and cons to everything. What alienates me from one person is probably the very thing that draws someone else with a different sensibility to me. If you think you can skillfully communicate through a video or audio podcast, invest in it and the market will come to you if you’re good at it. If you’re not, don’t do it, because they won’t come and it won’t be because of your accent. Try it for 180 days and see what happens. See what does and doesn’t work (be honest!), adjust, and then decide whether it’s worth the effort to continue down this path or try another.
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If you’re not from an English-speaking country, should you produce content in English to reach a higher number of people, or should you produce content in the native language of your country?
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Simple: You should be speaking in the language of the people you want to reach. So if you’re trying to reach consumers who speak your native tongue, that’s what you should use. The only exception might be if English is a second language in your country and 80 or 90 percent of its inhabitants are comfortable with it, too. If English has a bigger stake in the overall market you want to reach, use it exclusively.
That said, maybe you want to reach your native language speakers and English speakers. On Facebook you can, so long as you plan your distribution ahead of time by using the targeting capabilities that allow you to segment your audience and decide where your content will go by language and region. You can’t target so easily on the other platforms, but some people get around that creatively. I have a former client that used Spanglish on Twitter and Pinterest. It works for them. Why couldn’t it work for you?
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I am growing my business and looking to include partners for content. What’s the best way to recruit them? Money? The promise of exposure?
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You have to know what will motivate the people you’re trying to connect with. If you have a big enough platform to create exposure, people will do it for free. Why do you think DRock offered to make a video for me pro bono? Because he knew it would be good for his exposure. Some experiences have more long-term worth than money. The reason I’m willing to accept other people’s free work and hustle is that I know that by giving them a shout-out I can help them. That’s what I was thinking when I agreed to let DRock film “Clouds and Dirt”; I figured I’d get a cool video and he’d get something good for his portfolio. It felt like an even trade. But then when I saw the extent of DRock’s talent, I realized that he was actually bringing me something way more valuable than a five-minute video. He could amp up my entire video content production. So I swooped in, and this show exists because he could provide the infrastructure.
Tailor your approach to each potential partner by offering him or her the thing they value most. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s your Rolodex. Maybe it’s exposure. Study up and make no assumptions.
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How much time do you spend creating a single piece of content? Do you focus on video because it’s more natural for you?
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I’m a talker, so video has always been my best channel for communicating my thoughts and ideas. It wasn’t always easy. I used to have to walk around with a Flip cam and follow this whole convoluted process to get my videos online. Now when I us
e Twitter’s video product, for example, I can work straight through the Twitter app. So technically it’s much easier for me to create my video content than it ever has been, and it takes me very little time. If you’re seeing more written content from me now, it’s because I have a team in place to help me adapt the videos into interesting written pieces.
I don’t ever stress over what I’m going to say in a video or how it’s going to look. Whatever happens happens. We’re living in a culture where fourteen-year-old girls are taking forty minutes to take a picture because they keep futzing with the lighting, and then if the picture doesn’t get enough likes they take it down. I couldn’t care less about lighting or the angles; I know I’m pretty. What I do care about is substance, and that’s where all my effort goes.
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You’ve talked before about “recycling” a tweet, but what about other content such as a blog post? How often do you pull a piece from the archives to dust it off and republish?
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I haven’t recycled a lot, though it’s something I might consider doing more now that I have a team to help me adapt pieces of content. In fact, they are constantly on the lookout for nuggets from The #AskGaryVee Show that can be turned into articles, infographics, animated GIFs, and short movies. I do think it’s valuable for people to look back on their own content (though I admit I rarely do it). It can be interesting to revisit your position and put out a 2.0 version of a piece that resonated well with your audience.
What might be more valuable to you than recycling an old piece, however, would be to focus on putting out content across multiple platforms in a very jab-jab-jab-right-hook way. At the time I was writing this book I had started repurposing more and more across different platforms with tweaks to titles and pictures and I was seeing the value.
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I spend ten to fifteen hours on image posts I make for my company on social media. They are hand-drawn lettering posts as well as computer drawn. I get way more likes on my hand-drawn posts than the computer-drawn ones. But lettering takes a long time to do, and I don’t think I can keep up a daily social media content output. What should I do?
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I suspect a lot of artists have had similar dilemmas. Quality and artistic integrity is imperative, but you can’t let yourself get paralyzed by perfectionism. Whenever your effort is disproportionate to the value you get in return for doing work, you have to make an adjustment. How many times have you been absolutely sure you were going to miss a deadline, and then miraculously pulled it off? It’s amazing how fast and efficiently we can work when we force ourselves.
Content creates opportunity, and if you can’t produce the content at the rate your audience wants it or that benefits you, your business won’t survive. So get faster. Experiment. See what you can accomplish in two hours. Even if you hate the results or you see less engagement than usual, do this several times in a row. First of all, practice will help you get more efficient. Second, you might be surprised at how much your audience still likes what you produce.
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Is it wrong to have my Pinterest account tied to my Twitter account so when I post to Pinterest it autoposts to Twitter?
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Yes, it is wrong. Why do you tweet? To get your message out. What’s the best way to get your message out? To make native content. Why on earth would you use Twitter as a Pinterest distributor when you could just tell your story directly on Twitter? Maybe autoposting on Twitter from Instagram is efficient, but it’s not particularly compelling.
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How can I take my website to the next level by making it go viral and increasing sales and visibility?
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Content, content, content. It’s the gateway drug to subscriptions, sales, and everything else. If you’re just starting out, obviously you just have to hustle and put out as much quality content as you can. But what if you’ve been at this awhile, seen some success, made a name for yourself, and want to go even bigger? The way to do that on a big scale without spending too much money is to use your brand equity to your advantage. Find people who can bring you value who could benefit from exposure in your industry, and offer them the chance to create content for your site. You could offer some payment, but you’d be surprised at how many young people or retirees who love talking about your industry or topic would do this kind of work for very little, and maybe even for free, because they believe your brand equity is worth as much to them in the long run as money. Choose carefully—make sure the people you approach will bring you as much value as you can bring them. And then work together so you all benefit. Your team’s enthusiasm and the content’s quality will shine when everyone feels they have a stake in a project’s success.
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I posted a video on Facebook that got 2,700 views and 35 shares in one day. It took one year for me to get the same number of views on YouTube. Should I focus on creating videos for Facebook exclusively?
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One fan can be more valuable than 2,000 if it’s the right fan. For that reason, I would never tell anyone to abandon a platform entirely. Who knows, one of those YouTube viewers may be incredibly influential in your industry. There’s no reason why you can’t put video on both YouTube and Facebook at the same time. The content could be similar, with small edits made to make sure each is native and that the calls to action resonate with their respective audience. That said, I am very optimistic about Facebook’s shareability, which has enormous upside to many just starting out.
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Since you’re such a fan of Facebook videos, do you plan on embedding them on your website instead of your YouTube videos, and is it more beneficial to do so if you are not monetizing?
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There’s a lot of debate over the value of Facebook videos versus YouTube videos because of the difference in the way the two platforms measure views, or as YouTube calls it now, “watch time.” But I care less about a hundred thousand views on YouTube than I do about taking advantage of the virality possible through Facebook. When you’re not monetizing, virality is everything, and Facebook gives your fans an easy way to share your content and get new people to see it. Facebook gives you a chance to make a good first impression, and I think it’s a better place to find new fans than YouTube. That doesn’t mean that YouTube isn’t a powerful platform and that you should dismiss the value of subscriptions. But not tasting what Facebook could be bringing to you is a mistake. At the time of this writing the embed product isn’t there yet for Facebook—it’s still clunky—but if it does get there that’s the future.
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You say you don’t consume much media, but isn’t it kind of necessary in order to put out relevant, current content?
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The reason I produce so much relevant good content is that I listen to my community. I don’t need to watch other shows or pay attention to other thought leaders to know what people are struggling with or talking about. I can see it every day, right there on my phone. And because I listen well, I’m able to create content that speaks to my community’s needs. The fact that my content spreads to and speaks to the needs of people beyond my community proves that I know my craft. So I guess you can say the people I interact with and who consume my type of content are the “content” I consume. What’s great about this is that many of these people have plenty of other interests and expertise, in areas ranging from science to music and everything in between, which allows me to get plenty of other “content,” too.
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Is Pinterest really such a good marketing tool, and how could a small business like a restaurant use it well?
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Pinterest was once just a place mainly for sharing, but in the last year or so as people have become increasingly visually oriented online, it has become the new must-have search engine. Many people are using Pinterest as a search engine in visual form, and that’s a bigger deal than most realize. Men are starting to use Pinterest a lot m
ore, too. I think Google should be shaking in its pants.
Now, as to how a small business should use Pinterest. Think visual. Infographics do really well there. If you’re a restaurant, share beautiful pictures of your food, or behind-the-scenes shots in your kitchen or office. Take photos of the street where you’re located, or your neighbors and fellow business owners. Give us a sense that you’re invested in your immediate community as well as the online one. Act like a media company and put out content that’s interesting and valuable, not necessarily to you, but to your customers. Think more like Food Network or Zagat and less like a single restaurant.
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What kinds of headlines attract you on social media?
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Usually things that scare me, like “Jets running back in trouble.” I couldn’t tell you specifically what kinds of headlines really attract me. All I know is that if I click on one, the person who wrote it is doing his or her job well.
We all need to accept that the “BuzzFeedification” of media is in play. When the New York Times uses slang and headlines an article with “Five Ways to . . .” you know the trend has gone mainstream. And so whether you’re raising money for charity or selling boots, you need to get good at writing this kind of attention-grabbing copy. Because if you can’t, you’re in trouble. Of course, as many more of us create these headlines the consumer will become accustomed to them, and then there will be a new thing that will stand out. You should always be testing to see if you can be first to figure out what those things may be.
#AskGaryVee Page 12