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Alternative Investments to Look Into: Know This

Investing. This has been one of the topics I’ve been most commonly asked about throughout my career. People want to know why I make my decisions and how I decide what to invest in and what not to invest in, but I think there’s a more important conversation that needs to be had first. 

The truth is, when it comes to investing, the world is in a very different place today than it was for your parents or even your older siblings. For older generations, investing sat in the context of three main things: stocks, real estate, and just sitting on your actual cash. Anything beyond that meant that you were on a totally different level of ridiculous wealth, and you got into shit like fine art. 

Today, things are totally different. Now, 17 year-old kids on TikTok are putting out investment videos. It’s no longer something just for parents or something for the wealthy – investing is part of the culture, and everybody feels like they need a piece. The good news is that it’s possible. The bad news is that there’s a lot of mistakes and the potential to lose money if you’re not thoughtful and educated. 

Now, 20-something year-old “Tanya” isn’t necessarily thinking about buying apartments and renting them out for passive income. She’s not thinking about buying 1,000 shares of Tesla – or maybe she is, but there are a lot more “Tanyas” out there buying Jordan rookies, or comic books, or CryptoPunks…and I think it’s only going to continue from here. There are a lot of different options when it comes to alternative investments, and I think the ecosystem over the next half century is going to be staggering as people’s portfolios expand dramatically outside of publicly traded stock and real estate.

I can’t tell you what’s right for you. What I can do, however, is share the alt investment spaces that are exciting to me, and provide some insight into how I think about things. I hope you find it valuable. 

Everything written below is just my perspective and opinion, and not investment advice. 

What are Alternative Investments?

First, alternative or alt investments fall outside of conventional investment categories such as stocks and bonds, fixed income, and cash. You can check out this beginner’s guide if you’re completely new to the subject, but I will give you my general breakdown. 

With a wider range of asset classes available, today’s alt investing is no longer reserved just for the rich and wealthy. High net worth individuals may invest in real estate, private equity, or venture capital, but there are so many other ways for the average person to invest that excite me so much more. These are non-traditional spaces that are not only seeing major growth, but they’re much more accessible to the average person. More importantly, they’re just fucking fun to get into. 

Please note, my bigger concern is that we’re very early in this movement. Even though I’m excited about the overall opportunity of alt investments – and think there’s incredible opportunity with 5-10% of the individual investments – in my opinion, the hype around the space right now does lead to many of the projects or individual assets declining and losing money. 

I think maybe 90% of sports cards are going to end up not being good, but ~10% will be ridiculous. I think, say, 95% of NFTs are going to go to zero, but 5% will change people’s lives. Could you buy a $200 NFT that will sell for $47k in seven years? Sure. It’s crazy…but the problem is, that’s a needle in the haystack and it takes real hours of work. 

So, as you read this blog and do your own research on alternative investments, keep that in mind: the macro excitement, but the micro thoughtfulness.

Examples of Alternative Investments 

Here are some of my personal favorite alternative investment opportunities: 

NFTs Sports CardsComic Books‘80s and ‘90s Pop Culture Memorabilia (video games, toys, clothing, and other collectible chachkas)Sneakers

As you can see, this is not your mom and dad’s investment portfolio…this is – in my opinion – what investments of the future will look like. For any of these spaces, you don’t need to be rich to start. What you do need is the interest to get excited, the hunger to get educated, and the patience to play the long game. 

via GIPHY

Let’s dive a little deeper into a few of these categories. 

Investing in NFTs 

By now, all of you know that I’m bullish on NFTs. To understand more about the space and why I’m so excited, check out my article What is NFT? Non-Fungible Token Guide. 

Do I believe that NFTs are a worthwhile investment? Of course. Do I believe that the current supply available is so ridiculous that most of today’s projects will flop or go to zero? Absolutely. The question isn’t whether you should invest in non-fungible tokens – whether you decide to get on board or not, I believe NFTs are here to stay as a permanent fixture in society, just like the internet and social media…The real question is: Which projects and which project creators have what it takes to make your investment a good one? 

What’s happening with NFTs right now is exactly what happened with the internet in March/April 2000. When the dotcom bubble burst, lots of people lost lots of money as countless internet companies crashed…but you know what remained? Amazon and eBay. So today, a lot of the NFT projects you see popping up will build a lot of hype. Your job is to do your research and determine which projects you think will be the Amazons and the eBays when everything else disappears. 

We’ll talk more about how to determine a worthwhile investment later on. 

Investing in Sports Cards

If you’re an OG in my community, you already know how I feel about sports cards. From 1986 to 1994, I was deep in the cards game. I did sports cards shows most weekends in eighth grade and high school before falling off once I started working in my dad’s store. So much of my business strategies and understandings are built from those days. 

via GIPHY

Three years ago I tried to tell everyone that sports cards were back big time – my best friends, my brother – but no one believed me. Looking back, I think it’s because they thought I was thinking with my heart. They thought my love and nostalgia for cards were clouding my vision, but I knew something huge was coming, and here’s why. 

Around 2018, my son started getting into cards with his friends. Naturally, it was a huge connection point for him and I to bond and for me to teach him what I know. I figured that former card enthusiasts would now be getting back into the game as a way to connect with their kids. On top of that, I knew from VaynerMedia’s strategy work with companies like Hasbro and Mattel that toy franchises tend to loop every 25-30 years when parents get interested in teaching their kids. 

Fast forward… I attended the National Sports Collectors Convention in Cleveland. Afterward I spent months on eBay, reading forums and blog posts online, and talking to prominent dealers about their take on the sports cards world. After hundreds of hours of research, I put out a blog post on Why I Believe Sports Cards are About to Explode in Culture and Value – be sure to give that a read if you want the nitty gritty. 

Today, everything I said two and three years ago is proving to be true and the crazy part is that we’re just scratching the surface. If you’re interested in getting into cards, here are some things to think about: 

Enjoyment and Happiness 

For some people, it’s about flipping and making a profit. For some, it’s about the hobby of opening packs and collecting. For others, sports cards bring an added element of excitement to watching games, and for others, it’s about legacy or teaching their kids about entrepreneurship. Sports cards are about a lot of things – the game, the gamble, the fun, the comradery. Having the self-awareness to know why you’re getting into it will help you decide how you invest. 

Whatever your reason, money is not a guarantee and you never want to get overexposed financially. There are enormous amounts of risk in this game, which is why enjoyment and happiness should be at the core of your motivation. 

Long-term vs. Short-term plays

Personally, I’m very hot on basketball icons like Dr. J, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Oscar Robinson…I think vintage basketball is way underpriced. I’m also huge on LeBron right now, not just because of talent but because he has a cultural relevance that I think is going to make him even more popular in 20 or 30 years. 

The point here is not to tell you which cards to invest in, but to get you thinking about the long-term. Like anything else, this is about trends – like one decade, it’s all about tight jeans, and the next year, it’s about baggy jeans. Things go up and things go down, which is why I encourage you to invest in things that are evergreen. People like LeBron, Jordan, Brady …these are the names that are going to carry some weight down the line.

I see a lot of people rush in and throw investments behind the hottest rookies. Yeah, they’re hot right now, but what happens if they get injured? What happens if they don’t become an all time top 25 player and the market collapses? You might make a nice bag in the short-term, but you might also end up being the person that’s holding the bag. 

We’re only in the second quarter of demand with sports cards, which means there’s more room to grow. I think if you spend 80% of your time on the classics and all-time players, then you can have a little fun on the side with your prospect bets. 

Education

I am petrified that so many people will invest in sports cards – or anything else – without really knowing anything about them. Do you know about the grading companies? Do you know the different companies that make the cards? Do you understand supply and demand and how that’ll affect the market moving forward? Do you know about the sport itself and the players? 

The barrier to entry for sports cards is relatively low because you don’t necessarily need thousands of dollars. That being said, you should still do your due diligence before investing in anything. Get educated – spend 30 or 50 or 100 hours searching on eBay, reading articles, reading Twitter threads, talking to people who know the game. Of course, all of this will come easily if you have a genuine interest; in the end, it all goes back to enjoyment. 

For an in-depth look on everything I think you should know about investing in sports cards, check out this video: 

Investing in Comic Books, Toys, and Video Games

I can’t go super deep into this because even though I’ve collected all these categories in the past, I have not yet put in my 50 hours of homework to be on the record. Hopefully I’ll find some time to do that soon between VeeFriends, VaynerX (which is now hiring), VaynerNFT, VaynerMedia’s work with DraftKings, VCR Group (where I’m a co-founder), and everything else I’m involved in…But my spidey senses – which have a large track record of being right – tell me that now that NFTs, sports cards, and sneakers are doing and have done their thing over the lasts 3-4 years, you’re going to start seeing comics, toys, and video games have some real upside (because they all play in the same realm). 

I myself find myself gravitating towards wanting to do those 50 hours of homework. That in itself excites me about this category. Go check out completed items on eBay. Go check out articles that are being written…it’s starting to happen, and so I highly recommend people dig into it. I feel like there’s something brewing here, and all three of these categories – comics, toys, and video games – play heavily into popular culture, which is always the bedrock and the foundation. 

For example, 30 and 40 year-olds are starting to make money, and some of them want that original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle “in package.” 40 and 50 year-olds are starting to be more “alternative,” and instead of buying 30 shares of GE, they may want to buy an Optimus Prime G1 Transformer in original package. By the way…if you looked up “Optimus Prime G1 Transformers MIB” – which stands for “mint in box” – you’d shit your pants. 

Finally, if a 28-45 year-old who is affected by the Spiderman movies hits it big with an IPO, instead of buying some land or an apartment building to rent out, will they go buy Spiderman’s first appearance in a high-grade comic?

This is what I see coming. 

Pros and Cons of Alternative Investments

My intention is not to persuade or dissuade you to do anything, but I do want to leave you with a cautionary note. Just like entrepreneurship, investing is not for everybody. When society deems something cool or sexy, people rush in without knowing what they’re getting themselves into. When that happens, there are always consequences. That being said, let’s talk about some cons of these different alt investment spaces: 

Cons

Probably the biggest mistake I see is people who are not educated just going out and blindly buying. Whether it’s an NFT project, sports cards, comics, or anything else, the number one rule I can give you is to never spend your money on something you don’t understand. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert, but you should have a solid enough understanding of whatever it is you’re investing your money into so that you can make a decision you feel good about. 

When you don’t prioritize education, you leave yourself susceptible to the next con, which is fraudulent activities. From people altering sports cards, to fraudulent plays in coins and art, to people tricking you into giving them your seed phrase in NFTs, there are always vulnerabilities when money is involved. 

Lastly, keep in mind that these spaces are very hot right now – and anything that’s hot will eventually cool off. With NFTs, sports cards, etc., it’s about supply and demand. When there’s an overabundance of supply, only time will tell how the market plays out. If and when bubbles burst, your job is to make sure you’ve done your due diligence to end up on the right side of things – and to be okay if you don’t! Remember, any investment comes with risk. Never put in more than you’re willing to lose. 

For example, I love the NFT space and believe it will do so much over the next two decades, but what concerns me is people going “all-in” outside of their means. People gamble in new things like NFTs, cannabis, sports betting, alt coins, new areas of real estate, new IPOs/SPACs etc. with money that they need for their mortgage, food, or life. Please do not do this. High risk or new ventures must always be strategized with dollars you can afford to lose.

Please understand that many of these alt spaces are early days…it’s too soon to tell exactly what will happen. So only put in what you can afford to go to zero. 

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PROS

Potential profits aside, the main pros of investing for me will always be the thrill, the fun, the game. I don’t get enjoyment in buying Netflix stock and it going through the roof just because I knew Netflix would be a good buy. I get a hell of a lot more enjoyment in buying sports cards and seeing how everything shakes out. 

I can’t stress enough how important the enjoyment element is when it comes to investing. Investing is about research, intuition, using discernment, and betting on yourself and others. If you have a true interest, enjoyment is a pro that outweighs a lot of cons. 

What You Should Know Before Going into Alternative Investments

Now for three top pieces of advice for anyone interested in investing. Invest in things you a) understand, b) believe in, and c) can actually afford to lose. It sounds simple, but let’s break it down. 

Invest in Things You Understand

The reason so many people lose money in sports cards, comics, NFTs, crypto, cannabis is because they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, but then they see one person tweet and suddenly they think, “I’ll buy that!” Please, never do this. 

Even when it comes to VeeFriends, I say it all the time…please do not invest until you have done your 100 hours and educated yourself on NFTs and why they matter. 

Invest in Things You Believe in

When you don’t understand something, you lack conviction. When you lack conviction, you cannot make sound investment decisions and you risk being swayed by the chatter of the crowd or by an “influencer.” The reason I believe in my investments is because I have conviction, not only in the thing itself, but in the person or team behind that thing. This is the principle of horses and jockeys. 

Let’s take NFTs as an example. The NFT project is the horse but the creator behind the project is the jockey. Where most people mess up is that they get so infatuated with the horse, that they ignore who’s steering it completely. For example, I hear lots of people saying they fell in love with the art…but if the people running the NFT project can’t make the masses care about their art, or you and a small group of people are the only ones that like the art, it’s game fucking over. 

Before I invest, I ask myself: Do I like the horse – the app, the idea, the business, the thesis? But then I spend even more time looking at the jockey. Is this just a great student that went to a prestigious university? Is this just a person with a stellar resume? Or is this a true entrepreneur? Does this person understand what it takes to lead a team, build a community? Are they just good at raising capital or are they good at leading men and women? Are they capable of pivoting when an idea isn’t working? Can they take a punch and keep on going? 

These are the questions that inform my investment decisions. Why? Because I’ve learned the hard way. In the past, I was right about concepts but very wrong about the people running them. Now I’ve learned to look at the jockey and lean on my own discernment. It doesn’t mean you’ll always get it right, but if you’re wrong, at least you’re wrong on your own terms. 

Life is a video game – you die a lot, and that includes business and investment. It’s just a lot more fun to die on your own decisions, so make sure you actually believe in them. 

Don’t Invest More Than You Can Afford to Lose

Lastly, I always remind people, don’t be frivolous with your money. Never do things that you can’t afford to lose and understand that very few things are ever completely “sure.” If you want sure money, investing isn’t the way to go – that’s what traditional jobs are for. Before you jump in, be practical about what you want to invest, and don’t romanticize it. 

Takeaways

I think what all these alternative investments have in common is that they represent a societal shift in what it means to invest, and who gets to participate. Young people or even 40-something year-olds like me don’t want to buy old, expensive ass art. I don’t want a picture of some random Englishman or a scene of a hillside to hang on my wall. I want to build a case and display my stack of 150 Hakeem Olajuwon rookie cards. I want to show my friends my sports cards and comics, or pull out my crypto wallet and show off my NFTs. The alt space is here and thriving, and it’s changing the way future generations think about investing. 

Let’s recap on some important takeaways: 

Alternative investments are non-traditional investments – meaning they’re not stocks, bonds, or cash.My favorite alt investments – NFTs, sports cards, comic books, ‘80s and ‘90s pop memorabilia, sneakers.Pros and cons of alt investments – investment is often high risk, high reward. 3 things to know before investing – invest in things you understand, believe in, and can afford.

I hope this article was helpful and provided some perspective on how I think about some of my favorite alt investment opportunities. Of course, be sure to do your research before you make any financial moves. For more of my personal takes on drops in the alt investment space, you can also check out my new two-man joint podcast, Props&Drops with Matt Kalish and GaryVee, available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and a range of other platforms. 

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this blog, I hope you share it with a friend. 

The post Alternative Investments to Look Into: Know This appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

VaynerX: Now Hiring Crypto Creatives and Strategists

After the successful launch of VeeFriends, the 500 hours of research, and hundreds more hours spent in Discord groups of other NFT projects, I’m very excited to announce a brand new chapter in the VaynerX world. Introducing, VaynerNFT! 

VaynerNFT is the latest VaynerX venture and my next step in doubling down in the NFT space. I wholeheartedly believe that NFTs can simultaneously build brand value while delivering community value. This is why I’m launching this offering for everyone – intellectual property owners, personalities, athletes, celebrities, artists, brands, associations – as a way to help strategically map projects in the NFT space that align to value for their own communities. 

While I trust and believe in my blueprint for building an NFT project with real, lasting impact, I cannot do it without your help. That being said, if you’re a creative, a designer, a strategist, or just bullish on crypto, keep reading to learn how you can be a part of something special with VaynerNFT. 

Calling all Crypto Creatives!

The VaynerX family is dedicated to building the future of NFTs – partnering with celebrities and brands to make magic happen. Day in and day out, we propel some of the biggest IP owners in the world to the intersection of attention and culture. NFTs are the enterprise of the future, and we are here to help our clients navigate this exciting new world…with your help!.

Who are you?

An (aspirational) NFT enthusiast and ultimate team player who will create value in any situation. You understand creative problem solving and will be excited to use your skill set for engaging storytelling around NFTs. You may be an expert or a newbie, but either way, you have an undeniable zeal for all things non-fungible tokens.

You have a passion for design and a hunger to learn how to create pieces that drive engagement and extend brand experiences. You have a unique creative style and point of view, however, you also understand that good ideas can come from anywhere and are open-minded when working with teammates.

Who are we?

We are creators, creative industry rogues, and SuperBowl stars. We are not just on the internet; we are creating the stuff the internet wants to see. We’re insane for what we do and the people we do it with. We move so fast and make so much good shit that we can’t even keep up with ourselves. So, we need more folks just like us: the unconventional, less-obvious, unseasoned (or over seasoned) creative pros. But above all – passionate makers and culture shakers. Want in?

Submit an application to become a Crypto Creative with VaynerNFT: https://boards.greenhouse.io/vaynermedia/jobs/3257279

We’re also looking for crypto strategists!

We’re looking for strategists native to crypto. Are you obsessed with NFTs? Do you get into real debates over your favorite L2? Do you want to work with some of the largest IP holders and help guide them on how to get involved in the crypto space in an authentic way? We’d love to hear from you! 

Fill out this form to apply to be a full-time NFT strategist with VaynerNFT: https://forms.gle/izQ8CR8DkWnAWTpw6

#pitchGaryVee

Do you have a pre-seed crypto company that you want to pitch to me? I’m always looking for new businesses either for now or in the future.  Ideally you haven’t raised money or haven’t fully built the product yet – but we want to hear from you! 

Fill out this form to pitch me your pre-seed crypto company: https://forms.gle/jxwUh7WuGwsqMLGH7

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Facebook Live Audio Quick Guide

On Monday, Facebook announced the U.S. rollout of its Clubhouse competitor, Live Audio Rooms. To me, this announcement was inevitable. Much like Snapchat and “stories,” there are social networks that come along that are not only networks themselves, but also features that can be adapted for other platforms. When Clubhouse first came around, it was obvious to me that their model was both a standalone network and a feature in one. 

Source: Clubhouse App: The New Audio-Chat Social Network

In general, I think that in-app audio chat is a great way to discover people, to build up your profile, and to learn and exchange value. I’ve frequently talked about The Rise of Audio & Voice and the power of podcasts in the past. With platforms like Facebook and Twitter adapting audio chat as a feature, it’s just further proof of the long term impact. Check out this clip to understand my POV on the significance of audio: 

Audio content comes with a lack of friction that makes it very easy to passively consume — the key word is “passively.” You don’t have to look at a picture or watch a video…simply click and listen. As a result, drop-in audio is a great timesaver that allows you to multitask; you can literally pop into a conversation while you’re driving, cooking, traveling, or working out. 

That being said, the reason why you should understand Live Audio Rooms is no different than why I encouraged you to understand TikTok. Even if it doesn’t stick around forever, having tasted what it can offer as a new adapter will give you a “first mover advantage” in understanding the ecosystem, connecting the dots with different audiences, and allowing you to build a voice in the white space. 

Live Audio Rooms are great for someone like me who already has a large audience on Facebook, but it will also be great for those just getting started once the feature is extended to everyone. I’ll tell you exactly how you can use it to your advantage. First, it’s about creating value. Start a Facebook group, build it up, and use that group as a launching pad for your exclusive Live Audio Room. Once you’ve built up consistency, you can then ask for others to join your group to gain access to your room’s conversations. Of course, never spam or bombard, but if you do it right, the value exchange in your room will speak for itself. 

As for Clubhouse, with Facebook and others on its heels, the next step is innovation. They need to do what Snap did — when other platforms began adapting the “stories” format, Snap didn’t allow itself to become a one-trick-pony. It built out Discovery, QR codes, AR, and filters to stay relevant…Clubhouse will have to do the same. 

For now, let’s have a look at Facebook’s take. This blog will explore Facebook Live Audio, how it works, why it’s different, and my general take. 

I hope you find it valuable. 

What is Facebook Live Audio? 

Like Twitter’s “Spaces” — which officially launched on May 3, 2021 to users with 600 followers or more — Live Audio Rooms are Facebook’s answer to Clubhouse. As of yesterday, June 21, 2021, the platform announced that it would be rolling out the new feature to select public figures and Facebook groups, as well as introducing select podcasts for U.S.-based listeners. 

Live Audio Rooms

According to Facebook, “Live Audio Rooms on Facebook enable you to discover, listen in on and join live conversations with public figures, experts and others about topics you’re interested in.” While both iPhone and Android users may join a Live Audio Room, rooms can only be hosted through Facebook’s iOS app. We’ll talk more in-depth about specific UX details in a bit, but for now, let’s cover the two different ways to participate in the new feature. 

How Does Live Audio on Facebook Work? 

Each Facebook Live Audio Room allows up to 50 speakers with unlimited room capacity for listeners. A room host has the option to invite people to their room either in advance or once the conversation has already begun. Currently, rooms can be hosted by a single user aka public figure or within a public or private Facebook group. 

Single User Live Audio Rooms

Facebook is inviting public figures to kick off the Live Audio rollout. You can expect to see rooms hosted by names like Kehlani, Joe Budden, D Smoke, DeRay Mckesson, and Tina Knowles-Lawson among others. Once a room has been initiated, public figures can then invite their Facebook friends, followers, or other listeners to speak as well. 

Facebook Group Live Audio Rooms

Alternatively, Live Audio Rooms can also be started and joined within existing Facebook groups. In this case, it is the group admin who determines who within the group can start a room. They can grant this permission to group moderators, other admins, or all group members. 

Live Audio Rooms held within a public Facebook group are available for any Facebook user to join and listen in, regardless of whether they are a member of that group or simply visiting for the conversation. Those held within private groups are only available for group members to join. 

How to Discover Live Audio Rooms 

You can discover new rooms — or live audio conversations — to join through your Facebook newsfeed or notifications. If you notify the platform of which conversations you’re interested in joining, you will be prompted with a reminder once a room has been started. You will also be notified when your other Facebook friends or followers join a conversation you’re listening to. 

Live Audio Rooms Layout & Features

Similarly to the Clubhouse format, Facebook’s Live Audio Rooms are split into speakers and listeners. 

Front Row and Stars

The “Front Row” of a room is reserved for highly engaged listeners who show their support for the room host by sending “Stars.” Stars are essentially how Facebook monetizes livestreams, with hosts receiving $0.01 for every star they are sent. 

How does it work within Live Audio Rooms? Basically, if you’re really loving a particular room, you as a listener have the option to purchase Stars or Star packs during the conversation. This will bump you into the Front Row where the host(s) can recognize you with a shoutout or maybe even invite you to speak. For more information on how to purchase Stars, see this guide. 

Raising Your Hand and Reactions

If you want to speak, click the button to “raise your hand.” This will notify the host who can then decide to grant you speaking permission or not. Even if you don’t want to join the conversation, you can still interact with different reactions. 

How Live Audio Rooms are Different from Clubhouse

While essentially identical in purpose, Facebook seems to have tackled some things that are left to be desired within the Clubhouse app. For one…Facebook Live Audio Rooms include the option for live captioning — a feature Clubhouse still has yet to offer. 

Another departure is Facebook’s in-app donation button. This button allows users to donate to a cause while in a conversation. The host can simply pick the nonprofit or cause of their choosing, and room participants can donate directly. Clubhouse, on the other hand, requires that hosts point listeners to links outside of the app to make their contributions. 

Facebook Podcasts

Separate from Live Audio Rooms is another push from Facebook towards audio: Facebook podcasts. Starting with select podcasts available to U.S. listeners, users have the option to listen through a full-screen experience or a miniplayer, making it easy to tune in while still browsing your newsfeed. Podcasts can be accessed either through the newsfeed itself, or on the podcast creators’ Facebook pages. 

While the platform plans to expand its podcast offerings in the coming weeks, it is launching with a few choice offerings from celebrities and notable podcast hosts. 

Takeaways

As of right now, only select public figures and Facebook groups have the option to host Live Audio Rooms, but anyone with an account can listen. While the plan is to expand the rollout to more users and groups over the coming weeks or months, you’ll already know the deal and be prepared when the moment comes. 

That being said, let’s recap on the high-level need-to-know on Facebook’s newest features: 

Facebook introduces Live Audio Rooms – Like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, Facebook Live Audio Rooms is another example of the social media space trending more and more in the direction of audio and voice content. U.S. rollout to public figures – Live Audio Rooms were introduced on June 21, 2021 to select public figures and Facebook groups.Unique features – Facebook has evolved Clubhouse’s audio chat format with in-app direct donations, live captions, and unlimited room listener capacity. Podcasts – Facebook is continuing its audio push with select podcasts, available via newsfeed and on creator pages. 

If you enjoyed this article, I would love it if you shared it with a friend or on your favorite social media platform…and maybe I’ll talk to you in a Live Audio Room soon

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The First 30 Days of VeeFriends

Hey everybody. I’m super excited to write this article celebrating the first 30 days (and counting) of my NFT project, VeeFriends. First, let me just say thank you. So many of you have supported this incredible project since it first dropped on May 11 and I am so humbled. The stats are staggering and exciting, and so I wanted to recap on all that VeeFriends has done thus far — both as a disruptive launch in the NFT space and as a community. 

I hope this article gives you some valuable insights and information that will help you with your own projects. Cheers to the first 30 Days…and the next 45 years! 

Pre-Launch

Before we jump into the 30 day recap, I want to bring your attention to the importance of the pre-launch. When you’re getting ready to launch anything — an NFT project, a website, a new product or service — you have to think about how you will prepare your audience for the drop. The pre-launch period should be about increasing awareness and providing real value ahead of your drop, aka the jabs before your right hook. For VeeFriends, pre-launch was all about education, anticipation, and community. 

Building Education 

As many of you know, I spent months researching in the crypto and NFT space before ever introducing the concept of VeeFriends to my team. It was important for me to do my due diligence and learn from the people who have really been in the dirt with NFTs and blockchain technology for years. When I realized the long-term impact that digital collectibles would have on society, I wanted my community to be properly educated so that you could take part. 

Building education meant creating and putting out content — a lot of it — about NFTs. The main goal was to get you equipped with the understanding you’d need to participate not only in VeeFriends, but any NFT project that piqued your interest. First, we introduced the concept of digital art and collectibles with What is NFT? Non-Fungible Token Guide. Then, we got you all set up with your own MetaMask wallets in How to Make a Cryptocurrency or NFT Wallet. 4 Steps to Make Sure You Have Ethereum in Your Wallet made sure the community was ready to go come launch day, and 5 Things To Do To Best Prepare for 5/5 served as a quick-and-dirty checklist. Finally, we published 10 Ways to Protect Yourself from Scams to ensure that anyone participating in the launch could do so safely and responsibly. 

Ultimately, when preparing to launch anything you want people to buy, your main priority should be helping them to first navigate the space and understand how it will add value to their lives. Yes, I wanted VeeFriends to be successful, but more importantly, I wanted you guys to understand the real power of NFTs so that you could get in early, understand your investment opportunities, and start building your own projects. 

Creating Awareness and Anticipation

Another vital component to any successful project launch is building awareness within your community. Why? People can’t support what they don’t know about. In order to grow interest and anticipation for a launch, you need to put a lot of energy into generating buzz. 

VeeFriends Content

As far back as February, I started sharing my doodles across social platforms. While they might have seemed random to some at the time, I was really dropping sneak peeks of what would become the VeeFriends characters.

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A post shared by Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee)

Man …… pic.twitter.com/8xACVH0HBd

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) April 3, 2021

Why was this important? By the time launch day came, many of you were able to figure out the real meaning behind these seemingly meaningless drawings. At the same time, you became more and more familiar with VeeFriends being integrated into my content. 

5/5 Countdown

Another way the team and I built anticipation was through the countdown to 5/5, which was the originally intended launch date for VeeFriends. Even though the launch was actually pushed back by a few days, all the 5/5 content we did helped build up momentum and prime the community to be even more excited.

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There’s a lesson here that’s really valuable: the importance of being able to pivot. Sometimes, things don’t go to plan. Missing the 5/5 deadline could have been horrible, but instead, it became an opportunity. While the auctions were delayed, 5/5 marked the public release of the VeeFriends.com website. While people could not yet purchase, they could still go to take a look at the site and familiarize themselves with all the different token categories and characters. This helped many of you know exactly which VeeFriends you wanted ahead of the launch. 

The point? Stay flexible when micro details go left, and focus on the macro. 

Community Building 

Another huge part of preparing for an impactful NFT project — or a project of any kind — is building a strong community. This meant building a dedicated home and voice for VeeFriends across social platforms.

VeeFriends Instagram

The VeeFriends Instagram account was launched on March 21. Since then, it has become the place to learn everything related to the project, from current top resales on the secondary market to potential future VeeFriends products and more. 

VeeFriends Twitter

The VeeFriends Twitter account came later on May 5th, coinciding with the public release of the website. There, the community gets a deeper look into the personality of the VeeFriends brand and messaging. 

VeeFriends Discord

Finally, we have the VeeFriends Discord. Launched on April 28th, the Discord server has become the go-to home for those interested in all things VeeFriends. With over 150k members, I’ve been blown away by the kind, compassionate, and hungry community that has grown there, so much so that it became the hub of my GOO token giveaways (more on that later). 

The Discord isn’t strictly about VeeFriends. It’s a place where anyone interested in cryptocurrency, digital art, or networking with like minded people can go to feel supported. It’s a place where people share their biggest wins and make friends both online and in person. I believe in the impact of Discord so much that I believe anyone looking to build a true community should understand how it works. For more information, check out my recent blog, How to Use Discord: An In-Depth Guide.

To strengthen the community even more, we created individual Discord roles and channels for members to get really involved. By appointing some of our most dedicated members as moderators, we have created a community — the VeeFam — that people can really feel a part of. 

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VeeFriends Launch

Now, let’s get into all the magic that has happened since VeeFriends went live. On Tuesday May 11 at 5:55pm ET, the VeeFriends.com website went live for the inaugural auctions. Within the first 24 hours, 3,129 tokens were sold. After a successful first day, the work had just begun. 

We followed up with additional educational content and materials, this time specifically geared towards aiding those interested in participating in the launch. How to Buy Your First VeeFriends was a step-by-step instructional guide on purchasing VeeFriends via the website. After the 5-day auction period, we released Meet the 268 VeeFriends Characters to begin the lifelong journey of familiarizing the community with each character.

Building VeeFriends Brand Awareness & Relevance

After a project goes live, your efforts will shift to increasing brand awareness and social relevance. We did this through fun, interactive tools for the VeeFriends community to use, express themselves, and bond with other members both on and offline.

Official VeeFriends GIFs

We created custom VeeFriends Gifs which can be found on Giphy.com and in Whatsapp, Facebook, and Twitter GIF libraries. This way, VeeFriends entered not only the NFT space, but also larger social conversation. Giving the community more ways to engage and interact with the help of their favorite characters grows the VeeFriends name and enhances brand recognition. 

Official VeeFriends Twitter Avatars

To that end, we also created individual VeeFriends character avatars to be used as profile pics on Twitter and across social media platforms. Available for anyone to download via our most recent blog, Official VeeFriends Twitter Profile Avatars, these profile pics increased VeeFriends’ accessibility and inclusion. Now, even those who missed out on owning a VeeFriend token during the launch, secondary resales, or giveaways can rep their favorite character — not to mention, the avatars make it super easy to spot and connect with fellow VeeFam online. 

VeeFriends Sold Out on VeeFriends.com

On June 1, 21 days after auctions began, VeeFriends officially sold out on the website. While this was a major milestone, it was also a prime chance to shift conversation to amazing opportunities to score tokens on the secondary market. 

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A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

Changing focus, we shifted gears to informing the community on How to Buy VeeFriends on OpenSea. 

VeeFriends GOO Token Giveaways

One of the main highlights of the first 30 days of VeeFriends has been being able to give back to the community. In a Thank You Economy, it’s crucial to show your audience that they are valued and appreciated for their support. It’s good business, but more importantly, it’s being a good human being. 

That being said, I’m very proud that we have gifted — so far — 48 Gary Originally Owned (GOO) VeeFriends tokens to the Discord community. Not originally for sale on the VeeFriends website, GOO tokens are tokens I reserved specifically for this purpose. I knew that ETH would be pricey for many, so it was important for me to ensure that some of my OG community was able to benefit from the launch. 

Not only is surprise and delight central to the core of who I am, but it also enhances community building efforts through incentivizing and adding value. For any project launch, saying “thank you” should be a main priority. 

First VeeFriends Brand Collaboration

Finally, in just its first month of existence, VeeFriends was able to introduce its first example of IP in motion with the STAPLE Pigeon x Perspective Pigeon capsule collection collaboration. It all started with a simple Instagram comment from STAPLE CEO, Jeff Staple: 

From there, the concept was sparked. This was an exciting moment for VeeFriends, as it was the first taste of what’s to come for the next 45 years…more concepts, more collabs, more IP. 

VeeFriends Secondary Market Sales

Once tokens sold out on the website, the secondary market took off. To date, we’ve seen approximately 1,983.88 ETH in secondary sales, including some incredible resales on OpenSea…and we’re still going strong. 

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A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

What’s most exciting about resales is seeing my community make a return on their investment. Whether you HODL or flip your VeeFriend, my goal was always for this project to add value to the lives of everyone who has supported, and it’s just getting started. 

Takeaways

Let’s take a quick look back at VeeFriends’ biggest milestones in the first 30 days: 

Building education — familiarizing the community with concepts like NFTs, crypto wallets, and Ethereum.Creating awareness and anticipation — using content strategy to generate buzz and build excitement for launch. Community building — creating an engaged community of VeeFam through social platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Discord (150k+ strong) Launch — introducing our inaugural 5-day auction and the launch of VeeFriends.comBuilding brand awareness & relevance — creating social capital around the VeeFriends name through fun, interactive tools like Veefriend GIFs and profile pic avatars. Selling out — hitting a major milestone and selling out of all tokens on VeeFriends.comGiveaways — saying thank you to the community with 48 GOO token giveaways on Discord.Brand collaborations — Dropping the first VeeFriends collab with the STAPLE Pigeon x Perspective Pigeon collectionSecondary market sales — 1,983.88 ETH in secondary sales on OpenSea.

Ultimately, I hope this article can serve not only as a look into the first 30 days of VeeFriends, but also a blueprint for how to structure and execute your own projects. Once again, thank you all for making VeeFriends one of the biggest launches in the NFT space in less than a month! 

If you found value in this article, please share it with a friend or on your favorite social media platform. 

The post The First 30 Days of VeeFriends appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

How to Use Discord: An In-Depth Guide

One of the more recent and exciting developments in my content, branding, and community-building lately has been my Discord interactions. Discord is an incredibly popular voice, video, and text chat platform that got its start in the gaming community, but has since expanded to much more. It piqued my interest over the last 12 months as I was learning about NFTs. Discord servers were incredibly important for other NFT communities like Cryptopunks and others that I paid heavy attention to. When it was time for the VeeFriends launch, I knew that Discord would be a great way to make sure my community was at the forefront of the NFT explosion. 

Initially, I wanted the VeeFriends Discord to be a great community tool for people to learn and exchange. My team would connect with members to answer questions, and members would network and share with each other as well. What I didn’t anticipate was how easy it would be for me to be involved so heavily. 

Much like early Twitter, I find myself being quite active in the VeeFriends Discord. It’s incredibly easy to use on both desktop and mobile, and I have a funny feeling this will be the prime social media destination for many of you trying to build your own communities moving forward. That being said, I decided it was time for a Discord 101 article to help you out. 

I’ll hand it over to my team for a comprehensive introduction to Discord — how it works and how to use it. I hope it helps. 

Team GaryVee here

Hi everyone. As many of you know, the VeeFriends Discord was originally created to build community, answer questions, and further NFT education ahead of the VeeFriends launch. Since then, it has evolved into a thriving hub where over 150,000 people gather daily to exchange ideas, information, and resources. For perspective, since it was started back on April 28th, there have been 350,000+ messages sent in the general channel alone! Without a doubt, we couldn’t have built such a dope community without the vast array of features and freedoms that Discord provides. 

Especially in light of the pandemic, Discord has been instrumental in helping people to get together even at a distance. Popular among gamers, the platform can be used for so much more…including streaming music with friends, hosting book clubs, meetings, or just hanging out online. From text and voice chat to moderators and bots, we believe that Discord is the best community-building tool out there. While there are other social media platforms that have community-building capabilities — like Facebook groups — Discord has hands down the most utility for anyone looking to start a public or private virtual group. 

Whether you’re an influencer, a business, or just interested in learning more about the platform, this article will cover all bases to help you get started. We hope you find value in it! 

Creating an Account and Installing Discord

One of the reasons we love Discord is because of its accessibility. For one thing, it’s completely free to use. Users do have the option to pay for Discord Nitro for access to premium features, but we’ll touch more on that later on. Secondly, Discord is available both in web version (via desktop browser) and as a downloadable app for your computer or mobile devices. We’ll talk about mobile later, but first, let’s start with the computer. 

To create your Discord account, go to discord.gg. There, you will see the option to either download the app to your computer or open Discord in your browser. 

If you are going with the latter option, click “Open Discord in your browser,” create a username, and check the box for Discord’s Terms of Service and Privacy agreement. After you confirm that you are not a robot with a quick CAPTCHA test (online test to determine whether a user is a human or a bot), you will be brought to a “Welcome to Discord!” screen. Enter your birthday and voilå! You’re ready to go. Before you exit the browser window, Discord will prompt you to claim your account by signing up with an email address and password. Claiming your account is an important step for storing all of your chats and server activity — be sure to do it! 

If you prefer to use the desktop app, click the download button and then double click on the file to begin the installation process. Once the app is on your computer, double click the Discord icon to finish the installation and launch the app. It will detect and sync up with the existing account you created via the browser version. If you are starting out with the desktop application, you will have to create your username and password and enter an email address. 

While either version works great, keep in mind that the app comes with certain freedoms that aren’t accessible with the web version, like streaming video to your channels. After you have Discord installed and your account is set up, you’ll want to get in on the action by creating or joining a community server. 

Most Frequently Used Discord Features

Discord offers lots of features that make it easy to tailor your experience to your needs. Let’s cover a few of the most commonly used, including servers and streaming. 

How to Make and Join Servers on Discord

First, what are Discord servers? Servers are essentially different community spaces hosted within the platform. They can be public — typically large with hundreds or thousands of members — or private — smaller, more intimate groups meant for specific friends. Servers are created based on specific interests or hobbies that the joining members have in common. You can think of servers as online clubs full of like-minded enthusiasts. 

Every Discord user can join up to 100 servers. 

Joining a Server

One way to get started is to join a server that you know already exists. For instance, if you have a friend who uses Discord and has a server, they can send you a link to invite you to join. Once they send you the invite link, you simply click it to enter and boom! You’ve found your first Discord home. 

Alternatively, you can use Discord’s search function to explore all the servers available and find one that you would like to join. Click the “Explore Public Servers” icon on the left hand side of the screen or app to open up a server browser. 

This will take you to a “Discover” page where you’ll find a selection of featured communities — these are typically larger, more popular servers with high member counts such as the Minecraft or Official Fortnite communities. You also have the option to search by niche or topic by clicking on a category that corresponds to your interests. The categories on the Discord Discover page include Gaming, Music, Education, Science & Tech, and Entertainment. 

Lastly, if you’re not sure exactly what kind of server you want to join and just wish to poke around a bit, you can simply type in any keyword of your choice in the “explore communities” search bar. For example, whether you want to find a group for all things cryptocurrency or a group for people who love K-pop superband, BTS, just type it in the search bar to see if the server exists! 

Making a Server 

Perhaps you want to create a server of your own. Hit the plus sign on the left hand side to add a new server. 

When the prompt window pops up, click “Create My Own” and then Discord will take you through a series of prompts to help you get set up. 

Decide whether your server will be for a larger public group (club or community) or just for you and your friends.

Once you’ve done that, Discord will ask you to customize your new server with a name and a picture icon. This is how people will come to know and recognize your community, so choose thoughtfully! Click “Create.” 

Congratulations, you’ve now created your own Discord server! Note that once created, your new server will be empty. In order to kick things off, you’ll have to create some “text channels” and/or “voice channels” for server members to interact with — more on that in a bit.

Admins and Mods

When you create your own server on Discord and claim your account, you become what is called an administrator aka admin. This just means that you are the person in operation of the server. You may then appoint other people to serve as moderators, or “mods.” Mods simply help you to run the server and manage the community and can have whatever responsibilities you decide, from deleting messages to inviting new members and more. For this reason, it is always a good idea only to appoint moderators that you trust. Admins and mods work hand in hand to oversee server communities and are typically the trusted authority figures that your community will defer to for help with any questions or concerns. 

Since reliable moderators are so important, here are a few tips the VeeFriends team used to find and assign our community mods: 

Create an online application — To avoid being overwhelmed with DMs, texts, and emails, we created a Google Form which consolidated all moderator applicants in one convenient location. Prioritize applicants who have prior experience — We found that it was best to choose people who already had a thorough understanding of the platform and were proven members of other Discord communities. A familiarity with bots and how they operate was also a plus.Use a bot to identify your most active community members — Statbot was great for helping us find existing server members who were already living and breathing the VeeFriends community. By choosing these kinds of members to be mods, we were confident that they would be strong eyes and ears for the server.

Inviting People to Your Server

Being the only member of your server is no fun…as the admin or mod, you’ll want to invite others to start building your community. Right click on your server icon and click “invite people.” You can either invite friends that already have Discord accounts or you can create an invite link to distribute wherever you like. 

How to Create a Channel on Discord

Within each server exist “channels” where members can gather to communicate via text or voice. Basically, if joining a server is like joining an online club, starting a channel is like starting a conversation with your club members. As you might have guessed, text channels allow members to chat in written form while voice channels are video and audio-based. The former are denoted by a hashtag symbol while the latter are represented by a speaker. 

Just like you name your server, you will have to name each of your text and voice channels. For organization’s sake, you can then group several channels under a category, which also has its own name. In the above example, “Text Channels” and “Voice Channels” are the categories while “general,” “Kitchen ,” “Igloo (meeting room),” and “Twitch Studio (lounge)” are the various channel names. 

Click on your server name at the top of the screen and then choose “Create Category.” You will then be urged to enter in a category name. Once created, your new category will appear on the left hand side of the screen. From there, click on the button next to your category name to create a new channel. Decide whether you want your channel to be text or voice, and then give it a name. Your new channel will then appear on the left hand side underneath its corresponding category. Note that you can create your categories first, and then your channels or vice versa. Once your categories are created, simply drag and drop channels under categories to organize them as you like. 

Ultimately, the main purpose of channels is to create micro communities within the larger server group. To create the best experience for your community members, we recommend starting off with simple channels to meet general needs, and then expanding as you learn more about your community’s different interests. For instance, when the VeeFriends Discord was first launched, the primary objective was to educate Gary’s community on all things NFTs, blockchain technology, and security/privacy. The team wanted to make sure that people had all the information and understanding they needed to be able to safely participate in the project, and the server’s early channels reflected those needs. 

Once VeeFriends was launched, the objective shifted into community-building, and so many of the subsequent channels were based on recommendations from group members themselves. From coder talk to crypto chat and collectibles/flip life, the team took cues from the community on how to build out new channels that would fill their needs. For example, the #helpful-articles channel links members straight to educational content on Gary’s blog. The FAQ channel addresses the most common questions. There’s a channel all about VeeFriends giveaways and another just for new members to introduce themselves. See all of the current VeeFriends channels below:  

It’s only just getting started! As the community continues to grow, the VeeFriends team will continue to build out more roles and channels to create an even better experience. 

How to Chat

Chatting in Discord channels is simple. To enter a channel, just click on its name. For text channels, just type and send like instant messaging. For voice channels, just start talking. You’ll notice a green highlight surrounding your avatar any time Discord picks up on your voice or audio. Within voice channels, you also have the option to turn on your camera to video chat with other users by clicking “Video.” 

(h3) How to Stream on Discord

One of Discord’s most popular features is live streaming or screen sharing. While the two are slightly different, both functions allow you to do essentially the same thing: share the contents of your screen with other users in a Discord voice channel. This is perfect to take your virtual hangouts to the next level, whether you’re gaming and want to show off a cool play, you’re in a meeting and need to give a presentation, you’re hosting a virtual game or movie night with your friends, or really any other reason. It is important to note that whether you are streaming or sharing your screen, this feature is only available in voice or video chats; it is not possible in text channels. Let’s first dive into streaming. 

Discord’s live streaming feature is also called “Go Live.” Basically, it allows the platform to recognize other programs you are using on your computer and stream them to your server in real time. This is an especially useful tool for gamers on platforms like Twitch who want to show their gameplay for others to watch. 

Here’s how it works. When you enter a program — let’s say, a video game — Discord will pick up on your activity and a Go Live button will appear next to the game you’re playing. You can then click this button to begin your stream and anyone in that voice channel will be able to join and follow along. 

(h3) How to Share Screens and Windows on Discord

Again, screen sharing is very similar to live streaming but with a slightly different process. Start by clicking on the voice channel you want to enter. Then, click the “Screen” icon to begin sharing your screen. 

A window will pop up asking you to choose what you want to share. You can either share your entire screen or a specific application window. Note that if you choose to share a specific application, viewers will only be able to see that window. This means that if you exit or switch applications, the stream will be paused until you re-select the chosen application. On the other hand, sharing your entire screen allows viewers to see everything on your computer, regardless of which applications you’re using. 

To begin screen sharing, make your selection and hit the “Go Live” button. To stop your live session, hit the red button. 

If you want to join someone else’s livestream, all you have to do is click their username. If they are currently live, aka sharing their screen, there will be a red “Live” icon beside their name. Once you click their name and join their stream, you can resize the viewing window and increase/decrease the stream volume to your liking. 

Discord for Mobile Devices and Tablets

For on the go users, Discord is available for both iPhone and Android devices as well as tablets. Simply download the Discord app from the App Store or Google Play Store. Launch the app by clicking the Discord icon on your phone. If you’ve already followed the steps above and have an existing account, all you have to do is log in by entering your email address and password. If, however, you are creating your first Discord account via the mobile app, press “Register” to create your account and enter a username, password, and email address or phone number. Then hit “Create an account.” You can also choose whether or not to opt for two-factor authentication. 

While the computer application provides the most complete experience, the mobile app is still a great option with ongoing updates upgrading the user experience. For instance, mobile users can now screenshare, a feature that was once reserved for the desktop app. That being said, the mobile layout will be slightly different than the desktop app or browser service, so if you plan on using Discord primarily on your phone or mobile device, be sure to read through this in-depth support guide on using Discord mobile. 

Customizable Settings

Discord is extremely customizable; the platform offers a variety of setting options to make your experience as simple or advanced as you need. You can adjust your settings by accessing the “User Settings” gear next to your username toward the bottom of your screen.

Appearance

As you might expect, the appearance setting refers to the aesthetic layout of your Discord. Here, you can choose between dark or light mode for your theme display and font size for your messages. You can even get super specific and set zoom levels or the space between groups of messages. It’s all up to you. Check out this guide for support on changing your Discord appearance/theme. 

Accessibility

When you begin using Discord you’ll quickly notice it’s a great place for using gifs and animations. While this is great fun for the community, Discord thankfully offers the option to reduce motion settings to make their platform more accessible to users who are sensitive to excessive motion and movement on screen. On this setting page you can choose whether to enable automatic play for gifs and animated emojis, as well as toggle on/off for the text-to-speech function. 

Voice & Video

Here is where you can customize your audio/video experience. Choose an input and output device for your audio source and control the volume. You can also choose between “voice activity” and “push to talk,” or even enable noise suppression so your friends can hear you crisp and clear. Select the camera you want to use for your video purposes and test both your camera and mic to be sure everything is up and running. 

Text & Images

In this window, you can control how all your messages and images are presented when shared. Do you want display images for your pics and videos? Do you want website previews when you copy and paste a URL address into a channel? Do you want the option of using emojis to react to other people’s messages? This is where you decide. 

Notifications

Discord gives you the option to enable desktop notifications so you can always stay up to date with your community’s latest conversations. You can even customize the length of time for which you need to be inactive on your computer before the app will send you a push notification. 

Keybinds

Another setting available only via the desktop app, a keybind is essentially a singular keyboard key or combination of keys that gives quick access to a specific corresponding function within the app. Discord allows you to add as many keybinds as you want, but you’ll need to create them each individually and assign them to a particular action. The actions the platform allows you to keybind are: Push to Talk (normal), Push to Talk (priority), Push to Mute, Toggle Mute, Toggle Deafen, Toggle VAD, Toggle Streamer Mode, Navigate Back, and Navigate Forward. For a more detailed explanation of keybinds and what they allow you to do, please check out this reference guide. 

Language

Discord allows you to select your default language from a list of 30 languages. 

Streamer Mode

Streamer mode is essentially Discord’s way of protecting its users from potential leaks of their sensitive information. Imagine that you’re sharing your screen with dozens or hundreds of people in your server when you get a text notification at the top of your screen. Well, everyone watching your stream has just seen it, and those with potentially harmful intentions can even screenshot and distribute your personal business on or off the platform. 

To avoid this, streamer mode allows you to hide certain information while you are streaming. By enabling this setting, you can hide texts and emails, make your DiscordTag (the number next to your username) anonymous, and disable sounds and notifications. It can also make your server invite link private so that random people cannot find and join your community unless invited.

For more information, check out Discord’s Streamer Mode 101 support guide. 

Activity Status

Let your fellow Discord users know what you’re up to with a status message. When toggled on, the platform will automatically update your status based on your current activity, like if you’re playing a particular game, listening to Spotify, or attending a public stage. 

Discord Bots

Especially for larger servers, it’s always a great idea to implement bots — or automated robots — to automate specific tasks and functions. For instance, with over 150,000 members in the VeeFriends Discord, it would be overwhelming for one or even several human members of the VeeFriends team to manage the community in 100% real time. By using Discord bots, we are able to make sure that the server runs smoothly and responsibly at all times. Some common uses for Discord bots include: welcoming new users, filtering out spam, banning members who violate community guidelines, and playing games. 

Now, let’s discuss some examples of how we use bots to our advantage in the VeeFriends Discord. For one, we have a bot that sends an automated message every 30 minutes in the general channel giving best practices and advice for avoiding scams. As this is our most active channel, the bot helps ensure that as many members as possible see this important information and are protected against potential VeeFriends-related scams and phishing attempts. 

Another bot filters out suspicious messages to help us actually catch scammers. Yet another one flags derogatory words and other offensive messaging we don’t want shared in our community. As you can see, bots are another set of eyes and hands helping you to scrub your server of potentially harmful participants and maintain a safe space for all. Like the VeeFriends’ Carl-bot, you can even give them a name and photo so they become a personable and easily recognizable member of the group. When used effectively, bots become an integral part of your Discord server structure that your community will appreciate.

Where to Find Available Discord Bots

All kinds of bots can be searched and found online and then added into your Discord server. Some of the most popular websites for finding bots are Discord Bots, Bots on Discord, and top.gg. Once you’ve found your desired bot, click “invite” to add them to your Discord server and authorize them to perform the desired functions.

How to Create Custom Discord Bots

Alternatively, you also have the option to create your own bots and add them to Discord’s Development Portal.  Check out this guide for a detailed reference on how to create, program, and implement your own Discord bots from scratch. 

Discord Nitro

As mentioned earlier, Discord Nitro is the paid alternative to Discord’s free service, and it is available in two tiers: Discord Nitro Classic and the standard Discord Nitro.  For a monthly or yearly subscription fee, Nitro users gain access to additional perks and capabilities to further customize and enhance their platform experience. While not necessary for Discord’s basic functionalities, upgrading to Nitro does come with valuable benefits including higher upload size limits, higher quality for video and live streaming, custom emojis and animations, and gif or animated profile avatars among other benefits. For a more detailed look, check out this breakdown of all the Discord Nitro offerings. 

Currently, standard Discord Nitro is available for a monthly fee of $9.99 ($99.99/year). Nitro Classic is more affordable at $4.99/month ($49.99/year), but comes with less capabilities. 

Discord Insights

Finally, Discord thankfully provides pretty robust insight information for large servers (500 members or more). These insights are very helpful to administrators and/or moderators who need to assess the health or growth of their server community. From the insights tab, you can view audience information like where your members are from and how long they’ve been in your community. You can also see your engagement information — your most popular channels, how many people are talking in your server, etc. For a full list of information accessible via Discord Insights, read this Server Insights FAQ. 

Takeaways

That was a lot of information, so let’s do a quick recap. Discord is a value-packed platform with a wide range of features and settings, but luckily, its customizable interface makes it pretty user-friendly once you get started. 

Creating an account and installing Discord — as easy as signing up with a username and password, and don’t forget to claim your account with an email! Choose between the browser version, desktop app, or mobile app. Most frequently used Discord features — from making and joining servers and channels to streaming, sharing screens, and more. Discord for mobile devices and tablets — access the platform on the go from your iPhone, Android, or tablet. Customizable settings — curate your Discord experience exactly how you want from theme and display to notifications, keybinds, and more. Discord bots — learn how to automate messages and manage your servers with the help of bots.Discord Nitro — want even more perks? Upgrade to the paid version of Discord with Nitro Classic or Standard for a monthly fee. Discord insights — all the information you need to track your server’s growth, from engagement to audience demographics and more. 

By now, we hope you have a thorough understanding of Discord and all that the platform has to offer. We also invite you to join the VeeFriends Discord community to take a look around and see it in action! 

If you found value in this article, it would be amazing if you shared it on your favorite social media platform! 

The post How to Use Discord: An In-Depth Guide appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

How to Buy VeeFriends on OpenSea

So many of you have been texting and DM-ing me asking how you can get a VeeFriend since it’s officially sold out on VeeFriends.com. Here’s the article my team and I have worked on to help show you how. What is OpenSea? It’s a platform where you can go to buy NFTs…and more specifically, where you can go to buy your VeeFriends on the secondary market. This means that even if you missed out on the inaugural auction, you can still get your hands on a token. 

Unfortunately, there are always a few people out there with bad intent, meaning there are some fraudulent posts on the platform posing as official VeeFriends listings. I’m writing this article with the help of Team GaryVee to make sure you have all the information you need to make a safe and legitimate VeeFriends purchase on OpenSea. 

Before we dive in, I just want to say again — whether you purchased a VeeFriend or not, I am beyond thankful to everyone who has shown interest in my NFT project. It’s been an amazing ride, months in the making — from research and education to the 5/5 journey and the official project drop. I love to see you guys tagging me on Instagram and Twitter with your purchases, and I’m hyped about the community that we’ve built in the VeeFriends Discord group. That’s exactly what this project is all about. 

Now, I’ll hand it over to my team to get you set up for your OpenSea purchase. I hope you find this blog helpful. 

Team GaryVee here

Hi everyone. We are so blown away by the amazing VeeFriends support thus far, but it’s not over yet! If you’d like to learn a little more about the VeeFriends, check out Gary’s recent blog, Meet the 268 VeeFriends Characters. If you’re ready to own a VeeFriend, join the community, and gain access to the exclusive superconference that is VeeCon, keep reading. 

While you can no longer buy VeeFriends on VeeFriends.com, there are still steals and availability on OpenSea. That being said, it is very important that you exercise caution when navigating the platform and triple-check listings before purchasing. Don’t worry — here is the step-by-step process for how to safely purchase a VeeFriend on OpenSea.

1. Have a Crypto Wallet with ETH

Before you can make any purchases, it’s important to know that you will need an ethereum wallet to use OpenSea. As always, we recommend MetaMask as an easy-to-use option. If you have yet to buy any Ethereum, read 4 Steps to Make Sure You Have Ethereum in Your Wallet. To learn more about crypto wallets in general or how to set up your MetaMask, check out How to Make a Cryptocurrency or NFT Wallet. 

2. Go to the VeeFriends Website and Connect Your Wallet

While the tokens are no longer available for purchase on VeeFriends.com, the site will still help you navigate safely to the correct OpenSea landing page. This will ensure that you are only browsing listings officially associated with VeeFriends, and not anything posted by a scammer. 

First, let’s make sure that your MetaMask is connected to the VeeFriends website. If you have the MetaMask desktop extension, make sure you are signed in to your account. On the VeeFriends homepage, click the black “Connect Wallet” button in the top right hand corner and select the option for MetaMask. You are now connected! 

Next, click on any VeeFriend character to open their page.

3. Click on “View on OpenSea” 

This will bring you to the OpenSea contract for that VeeFriend. 

4. Access the OpenSea VeeFriends Collection

From there, click the blue “VeeFriends” button with the check mark listed above the character name. This will bring you to the correct page for the entire VeeFriends collection on OpenSea. Here, you will be able to browse several categories, including “recently listed,” “newly minted,” and currently “on auction.” To see all the tokens, click the black “View all” at the top right hand corner. 

5. Browse Available VeeFriends 

On this page, you can check out all the VeeFriends listings sorted by various filters on the left hand side of the screen. Click “Buy Now” to view all VeeFriends currently on a buy now sale. Click “On Auction” to see all the VeeFriends currently on auction, and so forth. You may also find it helpful to search by price. On the right hand side of the page, you can click the “Sort by” button and click “Price: Low to High.” 

You can also tailor your search with other filters including which VeeFriends have offers, the OG prices, adjectives, benefit types (group access vs competition vs one on one, etc), animal types, and a range of other options. The “On Sale In” filter will allow you to search according to the type of currency in which the VeeFriends are available for purchase (ETH, WETH, DAI, or USDC). Note that if a token is on auction, OpenSea requires it to be purchased using WETH, or wrapped ETH. 

Basically, you can combine various filters to make your search as broad or as specific as you like. For instance, if you want to find a Very, Very, Very, Very Lucky Black Cat that is currently available to buy now, you can do that! 

6. Make Your Purchase

Once you’ve found the VeeFriend you want, it’s time to make your purchase! Click on the VeeFriend you want and click the blue “Buy Now” button. Once you checkout, OpenSea will send a transaction into your MetaMask wallet to be signed. If you are using a Ledger or Trezor hardware wallet, OpenSea will send the transaction to your MetaMask to be confirmed. Then it will send the transaction onto your hardware wallet to be signed and then back onto MetaMask. 

Once your transaction goes through, your VeeFriend will be transferred into your wallet. Congratulations, you have successfully purchased a VeeFriend on OpenSea! 

For a visual walkthrough of this entire process, check out the video below:

We hope you now feel confident in buying your first VeeFriend on OpenSea. If you make a purchase or have any questions, please join the Discord community and let us know what you got! 

If you found this blog helpful, we’d love it if you would share it on your favorite platform or with a friend looking to purchase VeeFriends. See you at VeeCon 2022!

The post How to Buy VeeFriends on OpenSea appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

15 Tips on How to Brand Yourself Online

For years, I’ve been talking about how important personal branding is, but let’s not get confused by the semantics. Your personal brand is your reputation, and your reputation in perpetuity is the foundation of your career.

Your personal brand is your reputation. And your reputation in perpetuity is the foundation of your career.
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People don’t understand this: Playing the long game and building your reputation always plays out in your favor. The issue is that people see others getting ahead in the short term and think that’s the way to go. Instead of being patient, they go for quick sales. They keep trying to convert customers on the first interaction. They try to extract money, instead of creating an experience. What these people don’t see is that that short-term “progress” is often at the expense of long-term personal brand health — and so, they get tricked. 

Your brand is about how someone feels in the moment when they interact with you or your business. You all have emotions you feel in reaction to names like “Coca-cola,” “IBM,” or “McDonald’s.” Whether good or bad, you have a reaction. When you hear my name, you probably get a feeling too (which I hope is positive). 

If you had to put it into words, I hope you’d say, “Gary Vaynerchuk, the guy who gave more than asked,” or something along those lines. I want you to think of me as someone who gave massive amounts of value. This is the idea around which I build my brand. 

The best companies in the world don’t sell — they brand. For example, Apple never tries to “convert” you into buying an iPhone. Instead, they paint a picture of the “iPhone experience.” They focus on branding. I do the same. 

I’m not saying you should never sell…but your personal branding strategy is a disproportionately valuable factor that most people just don’t focus on. In this article, I’ve put together a mashup of personal branding strategies, tips, and advice I’ve talked about over the years. If you’ve ever asked yourself, how do I build my personal brand online? How do I brand myself on social media?…keep reading — I hope you get a lot of value from it

1. Good Intent Wins in a Transparent World

In a world with all these social networks, everything is transparent. Everything you do is captured with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Every part of your movement is on record and anything you do will be exposed and unraveled. 

For this reason, you can’t have “multiple personalities” anymore. It’s no longer realistic to have a different persona for business, family, and everything else. In today’s world, you are who you are. I talked about this first back in 2008, and it’s even truer today. 

In an environment like this, people who have good intentions are going to win, and — you guessed it — people who come from a bad place are going to lose. The internet is going to expose all of us, so think long and hard about what your intentions are and who you want to be to the world. 

2. Have a Media Company Mentality

There is no reason to do anything other than act like a media company in today’s digital age. People haven’t fully grasped the attention shift we’re living through. Why? Over the past 70 years, we’ve seen businesses sell to us constantly; there wasn’t much free content — and it makes sense. Businesses of the past just didn’t have the kinds of opportunities we have now. It was expensive to create a commercial, put up a billboard, or run ads on radio… and it still is. 

Now, however, you can produce as much content as you want across social media platforms. This has paved the way for a new type of marketing. Instead of selling constantly, you can now create helpful, educational, entertaining content and use it to get sales long-term. The amazing thing is, the content you create doesn’t even have to be related to what you’re selling. 

For example, in this interview I did with Keith Ferrazzi, an audience member asked me how to create content for a legal business: 

The answer I gave her was a bit rogue. I pitched her on starting a website about golf — totally unrelated to legal services. I knew it would change her business if, say, in every seventh post, she promoted her actual business while using golf as the “gateway drug” to attract an audience.

3. Hack Culture and Buy Ads to Distribute Content

When people ask me about my mistakes and regrets, I struggle to come up with good answers. It’s not that I don’t make mistakes, I’m just incapable of remembering and dwelling on them. That being said, there is one thing I do regret: Not spending enough money on Google Adwords. 

I built my dad’s liquor business from three to $60 million on the back of Google Adwords. I bought keywords like “wine” for pennies on the dollar when they were underpriced — but if I had spent more, I would have grown it to hundreds of millions. Since those days, Facebook and Instagram became the underpriced platforms — today, it’s LinkedIn. It’s amazing to me how many people aren’t taking advantage of the opportunity. 

When people ask me about my mistakes and regrets, I struggle to come up with good answers. It’s not that I don’t make mistakes, I’m just incapable of remembering and dwelling on them.

Find a way to promote your content through ads. If you don’t have any money to invest, flip something on eBay, take that money, and run ads with it. 

The second way to get attention is by hacking culture. If you can understand what’s truly relevant in culture, you can create unbelievable opportunity for yourself. Culture hacking deserves its own blog post, but the best advice I can give here is to take advantage of influencer marketing.  

Message anyone who’s got 500-1000+ followers. See how you can add value. Hit them up on Instagram DM. If you’ve got a restaurant, you can offer them a personalized coupon for free food. If you’ve got a plumbing service, give them a free evaluation. Message them, connect, add value, and in return, they might give some awareness to your brand. 

4. Know What You’re Talking About

Being a personal brand for the sake of being a personal brand is usually the quickest way to not be a personal brand. The first step to building a brand is to be self aware about what you have to add to the conversation. You have to understand what you do and the things you want to talk about. 

I’ve talked a LOT for the past decade, but within a very narrow area. I haven’t talked about healthcare or geopolitical issues. I haven’t added my two cents to every pop culture situation. I talk about the things I know — communication in a modern world. 

If you’re not an expert yet, you can talk about your process of becoming an expert. Document the journey. 

5. Document Over Create

If you want to be heard on social media, you have to put out a LOT of content. You should be doing a long form vlog or podcast at least once a week. You should be posting on Instagram and Snapchat at least 6-7 times a day. 

Now, that sounds like a lot…and it is. But here’s one great piece of advice that’ll help. Document. Don’t create. 

Think of it like Keeping Up with the Kardashians vs. Star Wars and Friends. One is more practical to create, while the other takes some creativity in coming up with stories. The first is simple for most people (including myself). The second is harder. You can go through the process of fabricating your life on the internet to make yourself seem like an “expert” — or you could just be yourself. 

One of the biggest mistakes that people make when building their personal brand is trying to “oversell” themselves. They front. They try to act bigger than they actually are. The reality is, it’s much more valuable to talk about the process than the advice you think you should be giving people. 

Ultimately, the game is simple, my friends. Know what you’re talking about, put out content around it, and run ads. Watch what happens to your personal brand / business. 

6. Show Different Sides of Your Personality

The reason so many influencers get commoditized is because they only show one side of their personality. For example, if you’re an attractive fitness model on Instagram, brands that are looking to sponsor you will put you in the same “bucket” as all the other attractive fitness models on Instagram. 

A lot of influencers are scared to post different sides of their personality because those posts won’t get as much engagement. If their followers are following them for one thing (i.e. fitness), they won’t always like it when they post about something like food, travel, or business…but it’s something that will change the course of your personal brand. 

Even if you’re not an “influencer” looking to get brand sponsorships, showing different aspects of your personality will get people more invested in your journey. It shows your targeted audience who you are. Even if a number of people stop following you or stop engaging, 30% of your audience will start looking up to you in a different way. 

That’s the key to positioning your brand in a way that separates you from everybody else in your space. 

7. Prioritize Your Brand Over Sales

My entire company is a “mistake” on paper. The entire VaynerX machine — PureWow, One37pm, all of it — is not smart for me to do. It doesn’t help my short-term finances. 

As an entrepreneur, I’m in the prime of my career right now. I’m in my 40s. I worked hard to set a great foundation for myself in my 20s by building my dad’s liquor store to a $60 million revenue business, and I grew VaynerMedia to $150 million+ in revenue in a short period of time also. It’s taken an enormous amount of discipline for me to spend my late 30s and early 40s building a “framework” for the rest of my life, especially since we’ve had a great economy for the last decade. 

It would’ve been a lot “smarter” for me to monetize my information, sell courses, start a mastermind, and be more aggressive with monetizing my audience. Why don’t I? It’s because I know that prioritizing my overall brand over short-term sales is what will bring me more respect, admiration, and wealth in the long run.

It’s what I encourage all of you to do. While you’re running ads to convert sales, you need to equally be spending time on branding activities that bring you zero ROI in the short-term — things like doing podcast interviews on other people’s shows, hosting events, and more. 

8. Be Your 100% Authentic, True Self. Don’t “Water it Down” in Any Shape or Form

In my 30s, I grew a YouTube show around my family’s liquor business called Wine Library TV. On that show, I talked to people about wine. I would describe wines in ways that nobody else did at the time. I said certain wines tasted like Whatchamacallit bars, or that a particular wine tasted like someone opened a racquetball case. None of the wine “thought leaders” at the time had described wine in this way. Describing wines the way I did lowered the amount of “reach” I had with Wine Library TV. It wasn’t something that the Food Network or other TV shows were receptive to in the beginning, but it was me. 

I still leave money on the table to this day because I care about authenticity over short-term dollars. The fact that I curse so much in so many of my videos limits the number of speaking gigs I can get. But I’m from New Jersey; cursing is just part of how I talk — so I refuse to water it down. 

The truth is, people who are “fake” will never last. It’s like hip hop artists who fizzle out after having one or two big hits. It’s like entrepreneurs who call themselves CEOs and look the part but don’t actually know how to run a business. 

The best strategy for building a personal brand is to be 100% “you,” without watering down your personality in any way. 

9. Be Smart About How You Distribute Your Brand’s Content

I put out a massive 86-page deck talking about how I create and distribute content around my personal brand. There are a lot of moving parts, but ultimately, this is the core piece: 

Source: GaryVee Content Strategy  

“Pillar content” refers to the long-form audio or video show that you use to derive all other content. It could be a vlog, a talk, a podcast interview, or any other long-form piece that you can turn into more audio/video/written content. 

For my brand, the pillar content shows are: 

DailyVee (my vlog)AskGaryVee (my business Q&A show)Tea with GaryVee (Fan Q&A series)PodSessions (a group podcast show where I talk to multiple guests)Influencer meetings (meetings I take with rappers, Instagram influencers, entrepreneurs, and more)Keynotes, interviews, and fireside chats

I’m a big fan of “documenting” your life over “creating” new content. A big reason why so many people struggle in building their personal brand is that they don’t have time. They don’t have time to sit down and write, record a podcast, or prepare and film a video. But if you just document your thoughts or your journey, you don’t have to spend a ton of time on your content. Plus, since “quality” is subjective, many of you would still get people interested in what you have to say. 

Once you establish your pillar content, you can take pieces of that content to repurpose it. You can take a video clip and chop it up into “micro-clips” for Instagram. You could take powerful quotes from that clip and create pictures. You could transcribe the audio or video and publish it as a blog post. 

For example, I did a video interview in 2018 on Travis Mills’ show. 



From that video interview, I put out a “micro” video on Instagram from a clip I was particularly passionate about.

I would also take memorable quotes and turn them into pictures, and my writer would take clips of things I said and use them in articles. 

Don’t get it twisted: this isn’t something you need a large team to do. Years before I ever hired a videographer, I was filming myself and creating content around my personal brand — whether it was through Wine Library TV or just handheld selfie videos. 

10. Focus on Quality AND Quantity

When it comes to producing content, everyone always focuses on quality over quantity. I’m actually in the business of quality and quantity. Both are needed for a winning strategy. 

Think of it this way: quality is subjective, quantity is not. When you make a piece of content and you don’t post it, it’s because you don’t think it’s good enough. You’re letting your subjective opinion stop you from putting something out in the world that other people might actually like. When we think about quality, we have to remember — yes, some things will hit the market better than others, but you can’t continue holding back from posting because you’re insecure about the quality. Make shit, put it out, and let the market decide on quality.

Quantity, on the other hand, is black and white. You have to put your reps in, and just through the act of honing that skill — creating hundreds of videos, blogs, captions, etc — you’re bound to get better. You just are; that’s how things work. 

So it’s not a matter of quality over quantity or vice versa — it’s about using them both to improve your content and gauge your audience’s interest.

11. Offer High Value Content

That being said, whether you’re making one piece of content or 100, you should be providing value. That can be through education, inspiration, entertainment, whatever — but it needs to be giving something to your audience. 

How do you figure out what your audience wants? I’ll tell you the secret: bringing value comes down to listening. When you put out content and people engage, what are they saying? What questions are they asking in your DMs or comments sections? What are they complaining about the most, or where are they seeking more clarity? You won’t be able to provide value to your audience if you don’t pay attention to their needs. 

When you skip this crucial step, you end up deciding the value you’re going to give someone. When you do this, you’re not actually providing value at all — you’re just giving what you want to give. Anyone building a personal brand or business must ask themselves the question, What is Social Listening and Why is it Important?

12. Be Consistent

Many people struggle to build a strong personal brand, not because they aren’t capable or because their content sucks or they have nothing to contribute to the world…but just because they’re inconsistent. Are you willing to put in the work that it takes? Are you willing to put in your reps? 

It takes work. It means showing up, not once in a while, not every week, but every day. There is so much competition for attention right now. The brands that stand out are the ones that show up consistently. 

13. Add Your $0.02

Back to bringing the value, one of the best ways to do this while also building awareness of your brand is through commenting. Add your two cents to ongoing conversations within your industry as often as you can. 

Many of you know about my $1.80 Strategy to Grow Your Business or Brand. Well, if you really follow that strategy, we’re talking about leaving your two cents on 9 posts for 10 different hashtags every single day. That’s 90 comments — and this is not even counting responding to comments on your own posts. 

By engaging with other social media users in this way, you position yourself as an authority, an expert, or at least a person of interest. People will see your name and go, “who is this guy?” and then go look up your page. It’s one of the easiest ways to increase your brand visibility and attention, and yet not enough people are taking advantage. 

14. Understand It’s a Marathon

Let’s talk about a common trap that people fall into when building a personal brand. They put in all the time and effort to make amazing content. They come up with a posting strategy and share their content consistently across platforms. They diligently respond to all comments and questions…and then they give up when they don’t see the number of likes, comments, and followers they expected. 

Even if you do everything “right,” the numbers won’t necessarily reflect your effort. The good news is that these kind of vanity metrics don’t really matter. Building a brand isn’t about having a perfect aesthetic or an Instagram feed that looks like an art gallery. It’s about building a community who shows up because of the value you bring. Community building takes real time — and the only way to do it successfully is to keep going. 

Don’t dwell on the followers you don’t have. Instead, focus on serving the ones you do have to the best of your ability.

15. Do the Work

Everyone wants to build a brand. Everyone wants to be a thought leader. Everyone wants to be an expert…but an expert in what? A leader of what? Before you get your name out there, make sure you have been (and continue to) put in the real WORK. That is what your brand will stand on. 

Technology and social media accounts will help you grow your brand, but your brand is only as real as your execution. I’m not a “social media expert” because I woke up one day and decided that would be a fancy new title — it’s because I have years of experience using social media to build brand and generate real dollars. I have the receipts and most importantly the knowledge — the trial and error, wins and losses — to back it up. You have to earn your opportunity to be a personal brand, and the only way to do that is to actually execute. 

Takeaways

I know that was a lot of information to process, but these are my tried and true recommendations for building a strong personal brand. I hope this blog helps you formulate your own method, now let’s recap:

Good intent wins – The internet will tell all, so be clear on who you want to be to the world.Have a media company mentality – Thanks to the modern attention shift, it’s less about billboards and commercials and more about producing as much content as possible.Hack culture and buy ads – Put your money where your mouth is and invest in paid media and influencers to help you hack culture.Know your stuff  – Talk about what you know; don’t talk about what you don’t know. Simple.Document over create – Don’t overthink it. Live your life, document everything, and post…at least 1x a week for longform content and 6-7 times a day for Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Show all your sides – You don’t have to fit in one bucket. Be you, diversify your content, and show your audience who you really are. Brand over sales – Some things won’t bring you ROI short-term but will build your brand over time. Be 100% authentic – “Fake” never wins. Don’t water yourself down to fit in – be you and let that be what sets you apart.Be smart about content distribution – It’s all about pillar content and repurposing. Get strategic across platforms. Quality AND quantity – Remember, quality is subjective, quantity is not. Put in your reps and let the market decide. Offer value – Ask questions, read comments, and let your audience fuel your content.Be consistent – You can’t build a brand if you’re not all-in. Show up for yourself and your audience every day. Add your $0.02 – As often as possible, leave your $0.02 under every relevant post and hashtag. It’s a marathon – Don’t worry about likes and followers; keep your head down and go the distance. Do the work – Make sure you’re an “expert” not just on social media, but in real life too. Don’t just build your brand, live it. 

There’s an unbelievable opportunity right now to build your brand using social media…and it will go away…I hope you take advantage of it.

What did you think of this article? If you got value from it, share it on your favorite social media platform and leave your two cents! 

The post 15 Tips on How to Brand Yourself Online appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Meet the 268 VeeFriends Characters

Hey guys. Now that my NFT launch has dropped, it is my pleasure to introduce and get my community properly acquainted with all 268 VeeFriends! These characters represent the human traits that I most admire and that I believe will lead to happiness and success, both personally and professionally. I also drew inspiration from popular culture references and some of the beloved characters and entertainment figures of my childhood. 

Why “friends?” I called them friends because I believe that business with friends can be fun and that you can build a community around common interests and support one another through friendship, kindness, and empathy. That is what VeeFriends represents. These drawings come straight from my soul, and I’m excited to continue to build out their stories and bigger meanings in culture for the rest of my life and career. 

People often ask me why NFTs? To me, the smart contract underneath NFTs is what excites me. It provides a new lens on utility, access, and collaborations. The first ever collaboration of VeeFriends was a capsule collection between VeeFriends’ “Perspective Pigeon” and the world-renowned streetwear brand STAPLE. My great hope is that people look back at this in two or three years and say, “wow, that was one of the early indications of how we could do things creatively with NFTs and collaborations.” And this is just the beginning! 

In my eyes, each and every VeeFriends character is intellectual property and represents the opportunity for more dope projects and launches to come. That being said, allow me to introduce the VeeFriends family!

Meet the VeeFriends:Accountable Ant

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Accountable AnteaterAdaptable AlienHuman beings can and should adapt to anythingAdventurous Astronaut

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Alert Ape

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Ambitious AngelWildly content and equally ambitiousAmiable AnchovyAmped Aye Aye Arbitraging AdmiralArbitrage is a word I use a lot…I’ve actually said it 568 times in my content over the last 8 years. It’s an important word in my lexicon and an even more important word in how I think about business and opportunities, and no one “gets it” like the Arbitraging Admiral “gets it.”

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Articulate ArmadilloAspiring AlpacaAuthentic AnacondaAwesome African CivetBad-Ass BulldogIsn’t he bad-ass?!

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Balanced BeetleBashful BlobfishBasketball ButterflyBe The Bigger PersonBefuddled BurglarBenevolent Barn OwlBig Game BandicootBoisterous BeaverBold As Fuck BatBombastic Baboon Boss BobcatBowling BoaBrave BisonBreakfast BatBrilliant BarbBrilliant BarracudaBrunch BearBubble Hockey Basset HoundNo one can beat me in Bubble Hockey! …And I mean NO ONE! Bubbly BuzzardBullish BullGary BeeWho doesn’t like a Gary Bee?

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Very, Very, Very, Very Lucky Black CatOn a mission to change the narrative of unlucky black cats forever.“Content” CondorContent is EVERYTHING and everything is CONTENT.Calm ClamCandid ClownfishCapable CaterpillarCaring CamelCharismatic ChameleonCharming Cheetah

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Checkers ChickenCheerful ChipmunkChill ChinchillaClever CrocodileCommon Sense CowCompassionate CatfishConfident Cobra

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Considerate CowboyI admire those who are considerate to others, and the Considerate Cowboy is certainly one of them! Consistent CougarConviction CockroachCourageous CockatooCourteous CoyoteCourtside CatCreative CrabCurious CraneCynical CatSensitive CentipedeDapper DachshundDaring DragonflyDecisive DuckDedicated DragonflyDetail-Oriented Dumbo OctopusDetermined DolphinDialed In DogNow this dog is DEFINITELY dialed in. Dinner DeerDope DodoDriven DragonDynamic Dinosaur

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Eager EagleEarnest ErmineEmpathy Elephant

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Enamoured EmuEnergetic Electric EelEntrepreneur Elf

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Tennis Elbow“Gone Fishing” Fish“You’re Gonna Die” Fly3 words from a fly to inspire you FOREVER! 5555 FanFacetime FiveFacetime FleaFacetime FlyFacetime FoxFacetime FrogFlex’n Fox

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Fly FireflyFocused FalconForthright FlamingoGenerous GerbilGentle GiantGenuine GiraffeGift GoatGifted GopherGlowing Glow WormGraceful GoldfishGracious GooseGracious GrasshopperGracious Grizzly BearGrateful GarGratitude GorillaBecause gratitude is the antidote.Gusty GeckoKnowing Gnome“Diamond Hands” Hen

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“Hot Shit” HornetForgiving Horned FrogHangout HawkHappy Hermit CrabHeadstrong Honey BadgerHelpful HippoHodl Hyena

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Honest Honey BeeHumble HedgehogHumble HummingbirdHungry HammerheadHustling HamsterHype HorseSelf-Aware HareSuffocate HateBad IntentionsImpeccable Inostranet

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Independent Inch WormInnovative ImpalaInsightful Irish TerrierIntuitive IguanaJolly Jack-OJoyous JellyfishJuicy JaguarJust JackalKarma KiwiKeen KingfisherKeynote KoalaKind KuduKindred KangarooPing Pong KalongLast Glass StandingLegendary LemurLegit LlamaLevel Headed LizardLikable LeopardLit LambLogical LionLoyal LobsterLunch Lady BugFuck You Monday MoleMacho Manta RayMacro MicroMagnanimous MalteseMajor MothMature MuleMentor Meeting MongooseMethodical MammothMeticulous MagpieMint MinkModest MooseMojo MouseMoral MonkeyMotivated MonsterThe Motivated Monster is legit. There’s just not much else to say!Tasteful Malayan TapirThe Oak MonsterShout out all the Vayniacs who have been jamming with me since the Wine Library days and know exactly what The Oak Monster is. 

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To The Moon MeerkatOne for all the OGs

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Nifty NarwhalNoble NumbatHonorable OlmO.G. OxObservant OysterOffense Oriented OrangutanOptimistic OtterOrganized OstrichFaithful PheasantForever Phoenix

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Part Of The Team DreamPassionate ParrotSkills are cheap. Passion is priceless, and Passionate Parrot knows what’s up.Patient PandaYou gotta fall in love with patience early on to be fast for the rest of your life Patient PigPeaceful Pelican Perceptive PumaPerfect Persian Cat

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Perspective PigeonYou can only control a few things in life: your mindset, your focus, and your PERSPECTIVE! That’s something I learned early on, and I believe in it so much I’m building a brand around it! Shout Out to the Perspective Pigeon x STAPLE collab! Persuasive PigeonPleasant PlatypusPodcast PantherPoised PugPoker PiratePolished PoodlePonder It From All AnglesPositive PorcupinePractical PeacockProactive PiranhaProductive PuffinProfound PossumPrudent Polar BearQuick Quail“Rare” RobotRadical RabbitThe Radical Rabbit…an ode to my late, great friend, Nipsey Hussle. Rational RattlesnakeReflective RhinocerosReliable RatResourceful RobinRespectful RacoonResponsive RamGleeful Sugar GliderJam Session SnailLike A SpongePea SaladSecure SparrowSelfless SlothSensible SommelierSentimental SalamanderSerious Sperm WhaleShadow Me ScorpionSharing SquirrelShrewd SharkShrewd SheepSincere SkunkSkilled SkeletonSlay’n SlugSophisticated StingraySorcerer ScholarshipSpiffy Salmon

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Spontaneous SeahorseSteadfast SnakeStoic SlimeStunned SunSufficient ShrimpSupper SunfishSwaggy Sea LionSweet SwanSympathetic Squid“Turnt” TickHeart-TrooperTenacious TermiteTenacious TurkeyThe World Has Plenty Of Love Start Listening To ItThoughtful Three Horned HarpikTidy TrollTidy Troll cracks me up, but don’t underestimate the value of tidiness. Tolerant TortoiseTolerant TunaToronto & St. LouisTough To Beat A Worm From The Dirt!Tremendous Tiger

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Truculent T-Rex

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Trusting TarantulaUno UnicornUnwavering UrchinVibe’n VampireVideo Game Vulture“Wine Shopping Spree” WoodchukHard-Working WombatKind-WarriorIt amazes me how many people think kindness is a weakness when in reality, it’s the ultimate strength! Kind-Warriors, where you at?!Warm WolverineWell-Connected WerewolfWell-Rounded WarthogWhen You Live For Their Validation You Aren’t LivingWho Was Born In 1997Wild WallabyWillful Wizard

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Wily Wild BoarWise WaspWitty WeaselWoke WalrusWorkout WolfGarage Sale YaleYolo YakYOU ONLY LIVE ONCE! And Yolo Yak lives it! 

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Your Poor Relationship With Time Is Your Biggest VulnerabilityZealous ZombieZestful Zebra

Whether you purchase a VeeFriend or not, I sincerely thank you for all your support over the years, and I encourage you to at least click around and check out the project. VeeFriends is the blueprint for how I believe all NFT projects should be done, and I’m excited to see what things this inspires YOU to come up with! 

xoxoxo,
Gary 

The post Meet the 268 VeeFriends Characters appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

Instagram DM: Direct Messaging to Network

Instagram DM (Direct Message) is the single biggest networking or business development opportunity of this decade. If you’re late to the IG game, check out my blog, How Does Instagram Work? Everything You Need to Know, for a comprehensive guide. If you’re a veteran user and looking to grow your platform, read 10 Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram. For the purposes of this article, we’re honing in on one of my favorite features of the app — DMs. 

Here’s my step by step guide to deriving the most value from Instagram direct messaging to upgrade your networking strategy. Do this, and you will win! 

How to Network in 2021:

In a world full of salespeople, there are so many individuals just trying to market, sell, or take advantage of you, and not enough people leading with service. There are not enough people thinking, “how can I actually solve a problem?” or “how can I bring value?” The key is to connect first, provide value, and THEN — given the right opportunity presents itself — ASK. This is the essence of my book “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.” Remember, business lasts a lifetime, not a day. 

With that said, Instagram is one of the most under-utilized resources when it comes to networking. You can connect with anyone from a social media influencer to a nearby business to a Fortune 100 CEO, all the way up to a famous celebrity…IF you are persistent enough

Here’s what you need to know — my top 5 keys to remember when connecting on instagram. 

1. Find New Instagram Accounts to Target

In the world of social media, there is a lot of noise. First, you need to cut through it all and locate your point of interest by doing a quick search through the Instagram app. The beauty of Instagram is that you can find a nearly infinite amount of leads through a number of unique search methods. You can choose to search by location, hashtag, or user. For instance, If you’re a business and you want to grow your audience, start by searching hashtags for the most used terms in your industry and engage in a meaningful manner. 

Let’s say you’re a hairdresser on the Upper East Side of New York. You can easily begin your Instagram strategy by searching the hashtag “haircut” and find posts you would like to engage with to create conversation and gain visibility for your business.  For more information, read How To Use Hashtags Correctly. Alternatively, you could also filter by location using the address of your store. Go to the search tab in Instagram and select “place”, then look at the top and most recent posts and start examining each account for possible people to DM. These people could be prospective customers! 

When deciding which accounts to target, don’t overthink it. Too many people get caught up thinking they have to identify people with 100,000+ followers. Unless you’re a big time business with a big budget, you don’t need this approach. If you can activate “micro-influencers,” or people with smaller followings but tremendous engagement that live nearby, you can win.

2. Look at the Instagram Profile and Audit Their Account

You’ve targeted some accounts — nice. Now, spend about 30 seconds scrolling through their account(s) and understanding their likes, dislikes, and activity on the app. 

There are so many people out there who focus on top level metrics like follower count when trying to determine which accounts to contact. The truth is, even though follower count can be important, there are tons of instances where accounts with large followings actually produce zero ROI for a business. For example, some big accounts may buy their followers, or do “follow for follow” tactics to grow their numbers, etc. 

In other words, follower count does not equal attention! Focus on how they’re actually using their platform. 

REMEMBER: Pay Attention to Engagement!

Even if the account you’ve targeted only has 190 followers, they may have high engagement. If every single post that Instagram user creates has 60 likes and 20 comments, REACH OUT via DM. If the relationship between their following and their engagement is strong, that means that they have their audience’s ATTENTION, which is so crucial in today’s digital world. 

Pay attention to micro-influencers that are within the region you’re targeting. They can provide tremendous value to you and your business and all it takes is a single direct message to start building a relationship. Look at their posts and consider: Do they interact? Do they engage? Do they post regularly? Do their fans like them? 

This is the key to success. 

3. Bring Them Value

Now, it’s time to bring the value. My one reservation with this article is that it may turn a lot of you into spam bots — that you’re just going to copy one message, go into DMs, and start pasting it everywhere and end up getting banned by Instagram for spamming random accounts. That is the opposite of my intention. The point of this post is not to simply help you reach the most people, but to get you to understand how you can bring people value. 

Right now, your entire energy is predicated on, what can I get out of this? Of course, you can DM The Rock, Warren Buffett, Tyra Banks, or some founder you love, but if you don’t consider what that person actually needs or wants, you will never get through. This is the number one key for success: if you are not providing value, they will not respond. 

The key to any tactic – and this is THE tactic – is to provide more value to the other person, especially when they are the one with the leverage. Formulate your proposition and prepare to do what is so crucially important in today’s digital world – network. 

Remember, your value proposition is this: how can you help solve the problem they are currently experiencing, or the problem they haven’t thought of yet? 

4. Direct Message

This step is easy, but a lot of you still don’t understand how to send a DM. 

Open up the app and go to the profile of the user you’re trying to reach. Instagram has made this nice and easy with a “Message” button on the home page of each user’s profile. Click that button to begin drafting your message.

Not sure what to say? Check out this 2017 YouTube video where I literally walk you through some suggestions on how to DM for product placement, how to DM celebrities or people with big followings, and how to DM for your small business by location! 

5. Rinse and Repeat

Success is a numbers game. Be prepared to get 100 no’s for every yes. Most people won’t even reply, but don’t get discouraged and don’t be romantic. It’s part of the game. Many people at the top have similar skills. A LOT of companies, individuals, and influencers can bring you A LOT of value and opportunity. Needless to say, most individuals are fairly well connected, and many might be friends or employees of the person you are trying to reach. 

For example, The Rock might not DM you back, but a third or fourth tier celebrity might. The CEO of Versace might not hit you back for a fashion internship, but another lesser known fashion brand might…and if you spend a few months or even years getting experience at that smaller brand, a bigger brand (or influencer) might take you more seriously. It’ll help build your personal brand too. 

Getting one “yes” will build your foundation. Keep the ball rolling and use your work and speed to gain momentum. You will need to be doing this 10-100-500 times a day. It’s all about putting in the reps. 

Now You Have To Deliver

Once you get the opportunity, you need to deliver! Don’t be upset if you DM 900 people and 2 say yes, but then you fail to deliver. Ultimately, skill and execution are everything. Direct messages just help you get your foot in the door — they are the entry point. It’s up to you to do the work. 

You have to make sure your Instagram account and your execution is on point. You can’t just DM a celebrity with no prior experience and say that you want to make videos for them. You have to show that you can execute and provide value to back up your offer. Start by making awesome Instagram videos for your friends, or your uncle, or your dog. Do something to show that you can execute and make great work! It doesn’t cost a lot of money. If you have a smartphone and access to the internet, you can not complain! 

Start a blog on Medium,or  create a podcast with your phone on Soundcloud and interview your friends. Check out How to Start a Podcast for guidance. Start taking photos and become an iPhone-ographer. Help your friends edit their vlogs. Whatever it is, you have to do it. You have the resources available to you. Walk in to your local hardware store and say, “Hey Rick — I know you have never heard of Instagram, but it’s a really cool platform and I think it could drive better conversion to your business through hashtags and promotional content.” Follow up with, “I make videos and would love to make your hardware shop a 30 second ad to help you launch your social profile.” 

Please guys. I want you to win. 

Making a video on Instagram may literally take you 10 minutes from concept to execution. If you are just starting, frequency of content is more important than quality. You just have to put something out and see how the world reacts. Then, you can learn and grow. 

Recalling The Arbitrage of 2003 Email Marketing and Blogs

So, you might be asking yourself, “Gary, isn’t this just messaging people on social media? Why do you care so much about it?” 

My answer is that an opportunity like this comes around once in a decade — where a new platform arises and you have unprecedented access to individuals you never had before. That, and I’ve seen it before. This same thing happened in the early days of email marketing in 1995/1996 and again in 2003/2004 with the first set of internet blogs. I remember the day when CEOs were sending out email newsletters and marketing themselves! All the while, leaving their phone number as the contact number for support. 

The first adopters (those “in the know”) and usually working at the top were well positioned as early adopters looking to try the latest thing. People who had multi-million dollar salaries in business and media would open themselves up to the internet with the ability to comment, contact, and connect. 

Why Do I Think Instagram is Important?

Well, what’s the one difference between Instagram and your app? 1 Billion+ users. This is what I had to say back in 2015: 

“I think that Instagram will be easily one of the top two social networks in America and globally. It’s going to be a major force. It’s a beas; it is the current social network of the moment, and I think it’s an incredibly important platform… and I’m very, very bullish on it. As somebody who day trades attention, I think it’s massive.” 

Clearly, this played out. Some individuals literally have 100+ million followers on the platform. 

Whatever your approach, here is the one way I promise you that you will not build your Instagram profile: by not doing anything. By sitting and having a beer with your friend and complaining about how hard it is to build your account. Enough. Search the hashtags, click them, look at the accounts, see how you can bring them value, DM them, go in soft, bring more value, rinse and repeat. Two, three, four, five thousand times. Whether or not you’re going to go all-in on Instagram DM like this article suggests, you should still take the platform seriously. Very seriously. Instagram is a behemoth of a platform with a slew of increasingly innovative features and updates, including the popular Instagram Reels.

What If I’m a Small Business?

I go to a barber on the Upper East Side. His name is Manny and he had never used Instagram in his life (until I showed him how, and now he’s crushing it ). His entire business is built on word of mouth. So, here is another example of what Manny should do to use Instagram DM networking to his advantage. 

If you are a business trying to sell, use your audience and grow your reach through DM. For Manny, he can search the Upper East Side, and see everybody who’s posting in the area. You can literally see that someone recently posted from a nearby restaurant, click on their account, and message them saying, “I like your Instagram account. If you would like a free haircut, I’d love to have you come by.” What’s great about this is that these are all individuals who already like to share their lives on social media. So if they come, it’s likely they’ll give you a shout out. This is word of mouth on steroids. 

THE FUNDAMENTAL KEY is always and forever providing other people with more value. 

Click Here To Tweet

It is absolutely going down on Instagram DM, and I just don’t see enough people taking advantage of it. 

What If I’m an Influencer?

Even better. If you’re an influencer, DM can be a tremendous asset to engage with your fans. Just sending a simple message like “Thank you ” can mean the world. Your followers aren’t just fans — they are your supporters. Think of answering and sending DMs as customer service. 

I had a conversation with football superstar Brad Wing and this is what I had to say: 

“You should check the Giants hashtag and literally just DM that person. Just say “Awesome,” and they’ll be like, “Holy crap.” It will open up so many doors and provide the human element of being an influencer that so many of you lack. All of a sudden, when you do that and engage with them as the Giant’s punter – whether they know you or not – you will win. Before you know it, that same fan could be setting you up with a business meeting or their brother happens to be the VP of sales at Reebok and wants to do a shoe placement or a sneaker deal.”

What If I’m a Musician or an Artist?

To me, vlogs are the answer. DM’ing Drock on Instagram to get your song on DailyVee is the answer. Every single rapper, every single artist should literally DM and message every single vlogger that has 100,000 views per video and give them free music to put in their vlogs. This is literally how simple it is. If you are good enough, you will win. People have no idea how much influence they can get from having their music in one random vlog. Having an influencer listen to or promote your work is the ultimate word of mouth, and three years from now, some random person discovers that episode and happens to be an exec at a huge record label like Sony and your life is literally forever made! 

It’s all just work. Three of those 79 people say, “Yo, send me a song, a shirt, a quote, a photo.” One of those three that you send a shirt puts it in their store, one popular model with a million+ followers walks in, wears it, takes one picture and away you go. 

Hustling. 24/7 on Instagram DM. It is THE opportunity. Direct messaging is available via phone OR your computer, so there’s really no excuse not to take advantage. 

GO DO. 

Thank you for reading! If you found value from this post, say hello to me on Instagram and share this article with a friend. 

The post Instagram DM: Direct Messaging to Network appeared first on GaryVaynerchuk.com.

How to Buy Your First VeeFriends

I have spent the last year imagining, creating and developing a project called VeeFriends. Now — after all the hours spent researching, learning and of course, drawing — my vision has come to life. I invite you all to the inaugural auction of my personal NFT project which launched Tuesday 5/11 at 5:55pm ET. For those of you who have been keeping up with me on Discord or Instagram, you know it’s not something you want to miss!

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This article will teach you everything you need to know in order to make your first VeeFriends purchase, but before we get to that, I want to say thank you. You all have been the most “Patient Pandas” imaginable, and it has been so exciting seeing my community asking questions and getting educated on the crypto world these past few months. I could have done this project with fiat money or credit cards but I didn’t. That’s because I know that this is the future – all things digital, crypto, NFT — and I want to make sure you are all ready for the shift! 

That being said, you shouldn’t buy a thing — mine or otherwise — without first doing your due diligence, your research, your 50 hours of homework. If you’re starting now, don’t worry. I will link to all the latest blogs you need to check out to fully understand what I’m doing with VeeFriends and the larger context of the NFT market throughout this article. I also encourage you to join my Discord group, which has become an epic networking community — 140K members strong! — for all those interested in supporting or learning more about the project on a moment-by-moment basis. 

For now, Team GaryVee and I will get you set up to buy your first VeeFriends today! 

WHAT IS VEEFRIENDS? 

VeeFriends is an ambitious NFT project centered around characters that have traits I truly believe in and want people to aspire toward. It is also a blueprint launch or example for anyone with an audience on how I believe a truly valuable NFT project should be developed and executed.

HOW VEEFRIENDS WORKS

VeeFriends started as a collection of characters conceived and hand drawn by me. All the characters have alliterative names — like “Adventurous Astronaut,” “Courageous Cockatoo,” “Empathetic Elephant” or “Independent Inchworm” — which correspond to the most positive attributes that I value in myself and others. Most importantly, VeeFriends makes use of the smart contract technology of NFTs to provide real value to anyone who owns one. 

There are 268 characters in the VeeFriends world and a total of 10,255 tokens. These tokens are broken down into three categories: 9,400 Admission tokens, 300 Access tokens and 555 Gift Goat tokens. Every single token is also a ticket to VeeCon, a yearly multi-day superconference that I will throw over a three-year period (2022, 2023 and 2024). This conference will be an iconic event rivaling some of the greatest conferences in the world around entrepreneurship, marketing, ideas, creativity, community building and more. 

VeeFriends is bigger than art or drawings; it’s about IP, community and legacy. It’s the beginning of an intellectual property empire that I will be building for the rest of my life. VeeFriends is my Harry Potter, my Hello Kitty, my Star Wars, and I will be spending the next 45 years making these 268 characters mean something in culture — from television to video games, streetwear, consumer packaged goods and more!

Now that you have a baseline understanding of what VeeFriends is all about, I will kick it over to Team GaryVee to explain the auction and purchasing process. 

Team GaryVee here

Hey everyone! We couldn’t be more excited for the launch of VeeFriends.com. To prepare yourself for the drop, let’s go through the process you’ll need to follow step-by-step. First, please note that VeeFriends cannot be purchased with fiat money or credit cards. In order to participate, you will need to be set up with ETH in your non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet. To learn more, please check out one of our recent blogs, 4 Steps to Make Sure You Have Ethereum in Your Wallet.

HOW A DUTCH AUCTION WORKS

VeeFriends will be sold according to a Dutch Auction style. This means that each token will have a ceiling start price and every millisecond that the auction is live, the price will be DECREASING until it hits the floor end price. In this case, the lowest cost tokens will start at 2.5 ETH and auction down to a floor of 0.5 ETH. Once a token hits the floor, it will no longer decrease in price. 

GAS FEES

On top of the auction price of each token, you will need to be prepared with enough ETH to cover gas fees. Gas fees are the additional costs of performing transactions on the Ethereum network. Think of them like an Uber surge charge – the more people active on the Ethereum blockchain at the time you’re trying to make a purchase, the higher the gas fees will be. Unfortunately, this is just a part of how the blockchain works, and neither Gary nor MetaMask or VeeFriends can do anything to reduce them. It is important to note that even if you lose or cancel your bid for a particular token, you will still have to cover the associated gas fees. VeeFriends does not control or receive any portion of these costs.

That being said, you do have the option to edit your gas fee amount – we will walk you through this process a little later in the article. Generally, the higher your gas fee, the faster your transaction – aka, the better your chance of winning your bid! If you really, really want a particular VeeFriend, you may consider paying a higher gas fee to speed up your transaction. Alternatively, paying lower gas fees seems like a good idea upfront, but may hurt your chances. Like paying extra for next day shipping, higher gas fees are sometimes an unfortunate cost of convenience. 

Ultimately, you should only pay an amount you are comfortable with and make sure you have enough ETH in your wallet to cover both the price of the token itself and the gas fees needed to complete the transaction. 

VEEFRIENDS AUCTION SCHEDULE

The inaugural release of VeeFriends will be a 5-day auction event held exclusively on the official VeeFriends website starting Tuesday, May 11 at 5:55pm ET. Each day at 5:55pm, tokens will drop and have a 20 hour auction period until they hit their floor price. Take a look at the full auction schedule below! 

STEP 1: CONNECT YOUR METAMASK WALLET 

Now, you are officially ready to buy your VeeFriends! First things first, you will need to have a non-custodial crypto wallet. For ease of use and accessibility, we recommend MetaMask. While you can go the mobile app route, we recommend using the MetaMask desktop Chrome extension for the best and easiest experience. If you don’t yet have a wallet, check out our blog How to Make a Cryptocurrency or NFT Wallet, but we have also provided a video walkthrough below:

Once you have your MetaMask account set up with ETH, go to the VeeFriends website and click the large “Connect Wallet” button in the top right hand corner. Then, click “MetaMask.”

STEP 2: CHOOSE YOUR DESIRED VEEFRIEND

Under the “Auctions” tab at the top of the screen, scroll through to browse the VeeFriends collection. You can search all tokens, or search by the Admission, Access and Gift categories. Check out the posts below for a crash course on how each token category works!

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A post shared by VeeFriends (@veefriends)

STEP 3: MAKE YOUR PURCHASE

Once you find a VeeFriend you like within your budget, click “Buy Now,” and a “Checkout” page will appear with a Token ID and the auction price as well as your balance:

Click “Proceed to Payment.” A pop-up will appear letting you know that your purchase is “In progress.”

At the same time, your MetaMask Chrome extension will also open with a notification pop-up:

Here you will see the gas fee with an option to “Edit.” If you are comfortable with the listed gas fee amount – and you have sufficient funds in your wallet – you can click the blue “Confirm” button. If, however, you wish to increase or lower your gas fee amount, click “Edit.” This will bring you to a screen where you can choose between “Slow,” “Average” or “Fast.” Remember, you will have to pay the associated gas fees regardless of whether you win your bid or not.

Gas prices will vary based on the network usage at the time of your purchase. You can check current gas prices via websites like Gas Now and Eth Gas Station, and historical gas prices via Etherscan. Also, check out this helpful resource to learn more about gas fees and transactions. 

Important Note

Once you’ve entered your desired gas amount, click “Confirm” and you will see that your purchase is now in progress. Once you get to this stage, it is important to be patient while your transaction is pending – this can take several minutes! Sometimes, people think their bid has failed when in reality, it is still pending. If you attempt the same bid multiple times, this builds up a queue that must be cleared or canceled. When this happens, you will be charged gas fees to cancel each transaction. For this reason, we recommend that you do not repeat the same transaction over and over so that you don’t lose excessive money in gas fees. 

If you have a rejected or failed transaction when purchasing your VeeFriend, wait, reload page, and make sure the VeeFriend is still available for sale before repurchasing. Do not keep clicking retry, as this can result in multiple gas fee transactions. To confirm your NFT transaction was completed, visit Etherscan (https://etherscan.io/), search by wallet address, select the drop down menu next to “Token,” and it should display your tokens. VeeFriends will be listed under ERC-721.

You can also easily check the status of your bid via your MetaMask Chrome extension in the “Activity” tab. If it’s still pending, sit tight until your transaction is complete. 

After a successful bid, your VeeFriend will be visible in your MetaMask wallet. Congratulations! For a visual demonstration of the exact process you need to follow to buy your very own VeeFriend, please check out this video breakdown: 

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VEEFRIENDS GIVEAWAYS

This project represents Gary’s lifework up until this point and for the next 45 years. For that reason, he wants to make sure that you guys — his OG community — are able to benefit from it! Gary understands that many of you may not be able to afford some of the token prices and gas fees, so to make sure you can still get in on the VeeFriends magic, he’s doing some free giveaways! 

To be eligible to possibly receive a free VeeFriend, please make sure you are all set up with the following:

Join the VeeFriends Discord community, a growing network of over 140,000 peopleMake sure you are keeping an eye on the channel #giveaway-info in the VeeFriends Discord 

Do not worry. Gary has reserved a large number of tokens specifically for giveaways, so stay tuned and stay ready!

TAKEAWAYS

Let’s go over the steps one last time: 

Once the site is live (5:55pm ET), take some time to browse through it and understand how it all works! — the token types, Dutch Auction, gas fees and purchasing processConnect your MetaMask to your Chrome BrowserBrowse the VeeFriends collection and choose your desired token Make your purchase and enjoy! 

VeeFriends is officially here and we can’t wait for all of you to see what Gary and the team have been working so hard for. 

Thank you for reading! If you found value in this article, please share it on your favorite social platforms or send it to a friend interested in VeeFriends today!

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