Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 31

8 Strategies for Personal Branding Online in 2019

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.

But the issue is, people see others getting ahead in the short term at the expense of their long term personal brand. And so, they get tricked.

Instead of being patient, they go for the quick sales. They keep trying to convert customers on the first interaction. They try to extract money, instead of creating an experience.

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).

For example, if you had to put 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.

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.

Not saying you should never sell. But personal branding is a disproportionately valuable factor that most people just don’t focus on.

In this article, I’ve put together a mashup of strategies, tips, and advice on building a personal brand I’ve talked about over the years.

Hope you get a lot of value from it

6 Sales Tips on How to Sell Without “Selling”

1. Focus on branding over sales

If you have a personal brand and you’re focusing on selling courses and books, you’re limiting the upside of your speaking career.

This is something most people don’t realize.

When you’re focusing on selling books, you’re doing sales. Not branding.

The reason I’m one of the highest paid speakers is because my audience is so “bought into” me. I don’t sell you $1000 courses or seminars. That’s why so many people are willing to come to Vayner4Ds or pay for a conference ticket to hear me speak.

The best advice I can give anyone aspiring to build a well-known personal brand is to hold off on monetizing their audience for as long as possible. The longer you go without monetizing, the more economics you’ll build on the back end.

The reason why 15-year-olds love brands like Tommy Hilfiger or Fila today is because they built on brand. Not because they had a sales funnel. It’s the same reason why Spiderman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman do so well at the Box Office.

The only caveat here is that you need enough sales to not go out of business. But build as much brand as you can.

2. Lose your ego around your craft

Scaling a business to the next level takes two very important traits:

Humility and patience.

The reason most people aren’t able to scale well is because they have ego around their craft. They don’t want to hire someone who might do a better job than they do, so they create arbitrary hiring standards in their own heads that no one can live up to. That way, they scratch their own egos at the expense of their business.

The second big thing is patience.

When I walk into a sales pitch, I’m incredibly optimistic that the person on the other end is going to say “yes.” I’m completely convinced that they’re going to spend a ton of money with me.

And if that person tells me “no”, I’m not deflated. I stay just as optimistic that the next prospect will buy.

“Patience” is also about not buying fancy things too early. Most people are in such a rush to prove to their friends and family that they “made it” by buying a flashy car, and it creates a vulnerability for long term success.

My biggest business failures have occurred when I chose to buy fancy things over investing in  smart business decisions.

The real reason I passed on Uber was because I bought an apartment. If I had just stayed in the apartment I was in for one more year, I would’ve invested in Uber. And I would have an extra $400 million today.

Scaling is predicated on your humility, patience, and how “fancy” you want to live.

3. Go “all in” on LinkedIn as a B2B marketing strategy

2019 is going to be the year of LinkedIn.

Whether it’s through the written word, audio, or video, my biggest advice for you all is to publish an enormous amount of content on LinkedIn every day.

This is especially true if you’re in the B2B space.

The organic reach on LinkedIn is similar to what Facebook’s reach was several years ago. The ads are expensive because there’s a “floor” on pricing, but there’s a massive opportunity with organic content right now on LinkedIn.

Just putting your profile URL in your email signature (if you’re someone who emails a lot) is enough of a “match” to start your LinkedIn content career.

4. Create more ads on social media

I get some emails and DMs from people who tell me their Facebook advertising strategies aren’t working for them anymore.

Truth is, it’s only because their ad got “saturated.”

They run one ad for a long time, convert customers from it, and after a while, it starts to lose its effect. And on top of that, the feed gets more competitive.

The answer to this is to just make more content. If you make more content contextual to the audience, you can tailor messaging to very specific types of audiences — everything from 42 year African American people to 23 year olds joining the military.

 

Targeting 42 year old African Americans on Facebook

The narrower you go, the higher CPMs you’ll pay. But your advertisement will be more specific and more likely to get your audience to take the action that you want them to take.

5. Spend money on influencers – even if some of them “don’t work”

When you’re running a business, you shouldn’t be sitting around predicting whether an influencer is going to be around in 5 years or not. It doesn’t matter. If they control the attention, you should pay them to promote your products now as part of your influencer marketing strategy. 

I don’t overanalyze which influencers I pay. To me, it’s just about whether they’re underpriced or not.

For example… if you had the option to buy a $400,000 home for $3,000, the smart move is to take the deal — even if you don’t have all the little details figured out yet. Even if the seller requires you to buy 2 or 3 other homes at $3,000 a piece.

Cast as wide a net as you possibly can. Hire hungry interns to work for free (or low pay) to DM influencers all day and map out which influencers are underpriced and which ones aren’t. 

6. Use content creation as your leverage

If you think back to high school, there were a lot of kids who were ranked “in the middle” in terms of popularity at the start of freshman year. But by the end of the four years, they rose up to, say, the top 5-10%.

A lot of them weren’t “meant” to be popular on paper, but they figured out the system: If their parents weren’t home a lot or just didn’t care, they had the chance to host parties for the popular kids. And the fact that they were the “host” dramatically elevated their brand.

Same thing applies to B2B marketing.

If you’re the “host” of events or dinners where your target customers are attending, your elevate your brand in their eyes and give yourself a much better chance of closing the sale.

If you’re in B2B, you can host a niche podcast and email people that you normally would pitch. But instead of sending them a sales email, send them an email inviting them to be on your show. A lot of upper-level executives have tremendous insight and knowledge on their industry, but don’t have the name recognition — so they’re not frequently asked to be on podcasts.

And once you build that relationship, you’ll be stunned how much easier it gets to get their business.

Watch the full video here: 6 Tips on How to Sell Without “Selling” 



4 Keys to Make Decisions Faster

1.The “right” decision is always the fastest decision

You never really know whether you’re making the right move or not.

I find a tremendous amount of freedom in knowing this. You’ll never know the alternative of whatever choice you make, so there’s no reason to overthink.

Ultimately, what matters most is speed. Speed trumps everything.

In my day-to-day, I’m moving unbelievably fast. I’m quick with my clients. I’m quick with hiring. I’m quick with saying “yes” to new ideas. I’m quick with testing new things with my personal brand and my business.

Too many people are crippled by whether they’re making the right hire, choosing the right job, or picking the right strategy.

My advice to those people?

Instead of trying to make perfect decisions, create more opportunities.

Create more 10-15 minute meetings to open the gateway to new relationships. Run more marketing tests to give you the opportunity to find a strategy that works. Create the “volume” you need to give you a better shot at finding those opportunities that will lead to success and happiness instead of debating what’s going to work.

Instead of trying to make perfect decisions, create more opportunities.
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2. “Debating” is often an insecurity in disguise

So many people use being a “perfectionist” as an excuse to procrastinate. 

They have an “all or nothing” mentality and want to make sure it’s done “right” and thought through before they make any moves.

If you’re debating between several different options, the answer is pretty simple:

Just pick one.

If several options seem good, try them all. I’m good at a lot of things — investing, building businesses, building brand, dealing with people, etc — so I do it all.

But for a lot of people, the problem goes much deeper.

People are “perfectionists” because they’re insecure. A lot of times, they’re not sure if they’re actually good at the thing they say they’re good at. Maybe they’re afraid of other people’s judgement or they’re worried about how they’ll judge themselves.

This is the real reason most people procrastinate. They waste time or aren’t motivated because of a deep lack of self-esteem, insecurity, and fear of other people’s opinions. Most of these people don’t need another productivity tactic.

They need to build up their mental strength.

3. Have your “burger” so you can taste “side dishes”

There has never been a time in my life when I haven’t had one “main” project. I’ve never had a day when I didn’t have something that made up 80% of what I do.

In my 20s, my burger was Wine Library. Then, it was investing and VaynerMedia. Then, I added my personal brand. These pillars support me financially and are the gateway to wealth creation. That way, when I make decisions that don’t work out, I’m able to easily absorb the loss. It’s never devastating to me.

I always have other things going on.

Set up “pillars” in your career that you can rely on. For you, it might be a full time job while you work on different side hustles. If you’re young, it might just be trying out different jobs, internships, or traveling to figure out what you like. It might be a core revenue stream for your business while you try out other ones.

Too many people have a lot of side dishes, but no burger. Because of that, a lot of them aren’t in a place mentally where they can absorb the losses that come from bad decisions, which is why they get slow.

When you have a core pillar that supports you financially, you’re more willing to micro-fail when it comes to trying other things. Ultimately, that means you go faster.

4. Be okay with making mistakes when making decisions

I get so many things wrong.

I passed on Uber twice in the angel round because I bought a new apartment.  If I had just stayed in my original apartment for one more year (instead of buying a new one), I would’ve probably made that investment, and today I would have an extra $400 million.

That was a loss.

I’m also constantly fixing and improving VaynerMedia from mistakes I made in the previous year.

But I’m okay with losing for two reasons:

First of all, I don’t care what you think about my loss. My L is my L. It has nothing to do with you.

You’re more than welcome to leave a comment and disrespect me when I make a mistake, but the truth is, I don’t care about what you think. I don’t value your opinion over my own because you don’t have full context.

Second, I know my intent is in the right place.

I’m obsessed with intent. It’s the “north star” of every decision I make. As long as my intention is in the right place, I know I’m a good guy. And along as my intent is in the right place, I’ve won.

I implore you all to get really self-aware about why you procrastinate… why you have a hard time putting in the work… and why you’re not executing faster. In a lot of cases, it goes deeper than laziness.

Once you figure that out, you’re already halfway home

The Dubai Tour Recap

To close out 2018, the team and I dropped an EPIC 7.2 hour episode of my trip to Dubai.

This was for the day one GaryVee supporters. For the “graduate students.” For the ones that get it, but want — need — another perspective. I decided to put together this very detailed recap for you so you can check out every topic I spoke about and dive into the vlog at any points that you want. Just click on the timestamps and it’ll take you right to that point in the video!

1:26: I’m en route to The Kris Fade Show for my first interview! I sign some personalized books in the backseat of the car and also use this time to go through my social accounts, showing love to my community. It doesn’t matter how “big” I get, I will never not do this.

12:05: I arrive at Virgin Radio Dubai, pumped to go on air!

16:25: I go live on air on The Kris Fade Show, The UAE’s #1 Hit Music Station and talk about my entrepreneurial journey from a young age and my two cents on the state of entrepreneurship, working on your side hustles and reevaluating your lifestyle and overheard, when I switch off, being team human, and engaging with my community. I also answer three questions from radio listeners that were invited into the studio: Boosting engagement with a small budget, how I stay motivated), and best practices for Facebook ads. I talk about my early investments, the Filipino Gary V, how I parent, and hear Kris Fade’s young children read some of their favorite quotes of mine on air. I speak about not worrying about other people’s opinions. Also, they made me a theme song!! Above all, it was a pleasure chopping it up with everyone in the studio!

57:21: Answering a question from one of the evening hosts on Virgin Radio Dubai about starting a clothing brand.

58:17: I travel from the radio station to my next venue and get briefed on the audience I’m about to speak to. As many of you know, I’m always trying to provide as much value as possible for each specific audience that I speak to and this is one way I try to contextualize my upcoming speeches.

1:03:26: Banging out a quick Instagram swipe up with Drock in front of a beautiful backdrop for when we start promoting this vlog!

1:03:38: I do a brief interview with Maha where I talk about why I’m in the UAE, some advice for the youngsters living here, and how I think about traveling to different cultures around the world.

1:12:57: I arrive at my next venue and meet the hosts for the Breakfast Roundtable at Burj Al Arab.

1:21:55: : Spitting some fire at the breakfast roundtable! I open up talking about my thoughts on long-term brand marketing vs short-term sales funnels…notice how I incorporated my briefing on the audience from when I was in the car this morning

The Best B2B Marketing Strategy for 2019

When companies ask me what B2B marketing strategies they should leverage, I always tell them the same thing:

The “High School Party” Strategy.  

Think back to high school…

For a lot of “mid-tier” popular kids — kids who weren’t the coolest —  an incredible opportunity came up in during sophomore or junior year.

If their parents traveled a lot, weren’t home much, or just didn’t care, they had the ability to host parties for the cool kids. And that made them dramatically more popular over the years because the popular kids needed a place to hang out.

Many of them started out say, “lower middle class” in terms of popularity. But they rose from that level to the top 5-10%.

These kids weren’t necessarily built to be popular on their own, but “hacked the system” and figured out how to elevate their brand. You might know a few kids like this if you think back to high school. You might have even been that kid yourself.

(Not that popular high school kids are necessarily “better” humans — they were just good at figuring out the game).

What people don’t realize is… same thing applies to B2B marketing. Imagine if you could be the “popular kid” among your clients and customers — and get them to give you business on the back of that popularity.

You can get to that level faster than you think.

Social media marketing has made B2B advertising so much easier – yet most companies in the space just don’t see it. In B2B, you know exactly who you’re targeting. You know exactly whose business you’re trying to get and what they look like.

And you can target that exact person through Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or LinkedIn.

The best way to do it is through the “High School Party” Strategy.

It’s what I want you to do in 2019.

Here’s how you can apply it B2B (and high ticket B2C):

Hosting small in-person events using social media

Leveraging Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and LinkedIn to create and promote in-person events is an unbelievable opportunity.

You can position the event however you want.

If it were me, I would do it around wine because that’s authentic to me. But you could host a dinner, a golf competition, or a number of other things.

Here’s a very tactical example of how you would do this if you had a business that sells to dance studios:

Step 1: Run ads at low cost 

On Facebook, the broader your reach is, the lower your cost will be generally speaking. Pick an area to host your event that has a lot of “ideal clients”, so you can run ads at a lower cost.

If you have a business that sells to dance studios, pick an area with a lot of dance studios. To target people who own the studios, you might target people within a certain radius who are admins of a Facebook business page who are also interested in dance.  

Step 2: Record an authentic video ad 

Record a video straight from your phone or webcam. Keep it as authentic as possible.

Say something like this:

“Hey Phoenix, I’m going to be in your city soon! We rented out a room at Johnny’s Steakhouse — I’ve seen the great Yelp reviews and I’ve been wanting to go there for a while. We got some incredible food and wine, and we’re going to be putting on a 20-person dinner where we’re going to talk about the state of the union of dance studios.

Things like opportunities in social media, how to make more margin, how the TV shows have affected us, the macro trends, and more.

My family’s been in this business for 35 years, and I’ve worked in it for 15. I think we’ll have an awesome conversation.

Please fill out the form and I will pick 20 of you to join us for a private dinner. Can’t wait to see you!”

The reason I’m such a big fan of “raw” content is that people can tell that you’re being “you.” This is super important on a platform like Facebook where your content does both branding and sales (so you don’t hurt your brand while you’re trying to convert).

Step 3: Put all the information in the copy

Include the event details plus the Google Form in the copy of the post.

Step 4: Design the survey with an open-ended question

In the Google Form, include one open ended question where the answer will give you an indication as to whether or not you can convert them.

You can invite the people who give the “right” answer to this question to your event.

Step 5: Host the party with a captive audience

Let’s say you spend $500 on Facebook ads, and pick up a $1000 tab at the end of the dinner. For $1500 all-in you’ve got a captive audience where you’re the host of the party!

Hosting the event doesn’t have to be super complicated either. If you’re introverted, you could literally prepare note cards in advance, and start the event by saying something like “Thanks for coming guys. Today we’re going to talk about the state of the union of dance studios. Let’s go around the room and share our two cents.”

Starting a niche podcast

People in B2B always complain about not being able to “go wide” when they create content. But the truth is, many B2B companies don’t need to go wide.  Even if you have 1500 people listening to your niche podcast, that could be enough to do millions of dollars a year in revenue!

If you’re the host of a small podcast in a niche, and you’re reaching out to experts or thought leaders and asking them to be clients on your show, you’re essentially “inviting” them to your party.

You’re telling them that they’re valuable enough to be on your show, and it plays to their ego. You get a valuable guest, and they get to send a link to their buddies from college that they were on a podcast.

And you’ll be stunned by how much easier it becomes to get their business. If you’ve got a popular podcast in a narrow niche and your guests are senior execs at the companies you’re trying to do business with, they’ll be so happy to be “fake famous” that they’ll just give you the business.

Hosting an event or “owning” the medium (i.e. podcast, vlog, etc) where the popular kids (i.e. the people you want to get as clients) want to hang out is an unbelievable arbitrage in 2019.

The host always wins the land grab.

You Can’t Love It Just When It’s Convenient

Entrepreneurship has had an incredible rise in culture in the last 10 years, and so much good has come of it.

The rise of the internet has made becoming an entrepreneur so practical. We are all living through incredible, historic times right now.

However, when something becomes “cool”, we see an awful lot of people aspire to be something that often they are not. So many people aspire to become entrepreneurs, but they overlook self-awareness. That’s why everyone jumps in. Everyone thinks they are gonna be the next Kevin Rose, Mark Zuckerberg, or Sara Blakely.

It’s my belief that we are coming to an end of this “golden era” of the “new age” entrepreneur. But I’m optimistic.  What will rise is a “cleaning up” and a “reset.”

Many of you here reading this will be able to focus on building a long term business and company instead of focusing on raising rounds from VC’s and playing the role of CEO. You’ll actually become one

5 Tips for Growing Your Business With Influencer Marketing

I think influencer marketing is going to have an incredible global era for the next decade, and we’re just at the beginning of it.

Everyday there are brands that go from $0 – $15 million in sales with no overhead or infrastructure on the back of influencers on Instagram. If you’re not working with influencers, you need to be.

In this article, I drop some advice on how to grow your business with influencer marketing.

1. You Have To Give Value To Influencers Before You Siphon From Their Audience



If you’re just starting out your business, influencer marketing is a chicken or the egg game: You want influencers because you want them to bring the thousands or millions of people that pay attention to them over to your product, service, brand, etc., but you might not necessarily have the capital or resources to pay for a partnership.

The only other option you have is to get very personal, and very creative. Think of what would bring value to them, not just you. For example, if you want to partner with a male fitness influencer in New Jersey, and you know he likes the Jets, send him a custom Jets jersey when you send over your product.

If you want to partner with a female fashion influencer, and you know she has a pet dog she adores, send her a customized item for her dog when you send over your product. Personal touches and practicing kindness like this will go an extremely long way in increasing your chances of garnering publicity from influencers in the early stages of your business.

2. Influencers Want To Work With People They Know — Or At Least People They Like



I want to completely eliminate the “but I have no money” excuse. So here’s another way you can go about it:

Find out on which platform(s) the influencers that you want to reach out to spend the most time on. To be clear, this is not just where their biggest following is. They may have their biggest following on Instagram, but only post there once a day and spend a ton of time of Twitter. Or vice-versa.

Once you find out where they are most active, go through their last 5, 10, 15 posts and add your two cents to the conversation.

Keep doing this with their new posts as well. Don’t even think about asking to work with them until you’ve built up some rapport, or at the very least some context. Then, go in for the ask, the right hook. If one out of every 80 influencers say yes, and you want 20 influencers, that means you would need to reach out to 1600 people.

So get started

How to Monetize on Instagram: A Step-by-Step Guide to Get Companies to Sponsor You

A lot of people ask me how to monetize their Instagram account when they’re starting out in business.

I talk a lot about the mindset behind creating content — things like caring about your audience, giving 51% of the value, staying patient, and playing the long game. I start with making sure people understand the “religion” because if they don’t, the tactics won’t work long term.

But in this article, I wanted to do something different.

I wanted to create a practical piece of content that talks about the details (i.e. the “dirt”)  behind monetizing your Instagram account by getting advertisers and sponsors to pay you in exchange for your audience’s attention.

One caveat: Most of you aren’t ready to monetize. Bombarding your audience with ads before you had a chance to really provide value just isn’t a good idea.

But assuming you’re at a place where you’re ready to think about taking sponsors and advertisers… you’ll find this article super valuable. I’m going to talk about everything from picking advertisers to reach out to, all the way to what to do if they say “no” or don’t buy.

Enjoy

The Best Marketing Strategies For Hip Hop Artists

I’ll be honest, I don’t “get” hip hop music.

When I listen to music, I don’t listen to it for the beats or the hook. I listen to it for the words.

I’m fascinated by the story element of hip hop — the analogies, the clever cultural references that make me laugh, and the raw truthfulness in the lyrics. For example, a big reason why I love 21Savage so much is because he mentioned Randy Macho Man Savage (my favorite wrestler of all time) in a song.

That’s what people don’t get about Biggie and Tupac. A big reason why they were all-time greats is because they were talking about real life. They were telling the truth. They were being vulnerable.

In this article I’m going to talk about my advice for hip hop artists who want to dominate the music industry in 2019 … coming from the perspective of someone who understands attention and human behavior.

1. Do more collaborations

Collaborations are huge because they allow you to “trade fans” with other artists. Especially when they’re outside your direct demographic.

If you’re a rapper, one of my biggest pieces of advice for you would be to do a collaboration with a country star tomorrow. Get a Latin trap artist to sing the hook of your next track. Hit up R&B stars that used to be huge 10-20 years ago.   

People grossly underestimate how much this matters.

Think about it… the entire genre of hip hop took a massive step forward when Run DMC did a collaboration with Aerosmith. Most people don’t understand how much Kendrick Lamar’s collaboration with Taylor Swift mattered to his career.

There’s only one asterisk:

It has to be authentic. You shouldn’t do collaborations just because you think they’ll get you more awareness. You should do them because you like the music.

2. Put out as much music as you can

The number one piece of advice I have for artists is to put out music every single day.

Most artists hedge against this because they don’t want to dilute their craft. But here’s the thing:

People only remember the hits. They forget the other stuff. If you put out 100 songs in a row and 70 of them don’t get traction, there’s no loss. People will only remember the songs that hit.

So if you’re a talented artist, the upside of having 100 “at bats” is enormous. All you need is one song to reach the right person to take your career to a whole different level.

The downside is practically zero.



3. Hit up vloggers to feature your music

Remember all the artists who got huge because their songs were always playing in the intro of Madden or NBA Live video games?

Same thing applies to vloggers.

DM every major vlogger that has over 100,000 views on their videos and give them your music for free to put in their vlogs. Having an influencer listen to or promote your music is the ultimate word of mouth.

Three years from now, some random person (who just so happens to be the executive at a major record label) might discover that episode where your music was featured, and that’ll change your life forever.

4. Stay focused and consistent over the long term

I’m obsessed with long term thinking.

When it comes to music or business or anything else, you need to start making decisions based on legacy vs currency.

For me, I don’t care about having stuff. I don’t care about “keeping up with the Joneses.” Even when I didn’t have much money, I never made a decision predicated on how much I could make. As long as I had my rent and basic stuff covered, I was good.

I just believe that I’m going to be an all-time entrepreneur with a huge legacy, and everytime I “cash in chips” I’m just slowing myself down.

There are only two things: legacy and currency. Too many people sacrifice their legacy for short term cash with the mindset that they’ll “reconstruct” their legacy later.

But here’s the problem with that:

Everything is on the record.

We know Jay-Z did a Budweiser commercial.

To me, the biggest key is to never waver from my truth. Even if I have no money and even if I have all the money.

I don’t want to put pressure on anyone to be anything other than themselves. But just understand that everytime you go for short term money, you take a couple of “pebbles” out of your legacy.

If you got value from this article, I would love it if you could share it on Twitter!

Top 10 DailyVees From 2018

2018 was really the year I noticed more and more people go out and “document” their own journeys, which was super exciting to see. As always, thank you, thank you, thank you for all your attention and love this year!!

A common theme in these DailyVees: if you want to be great, you have to work your ass off and love what you do.

Here are the top ten DailyVees from 2018! Share this article on Twitter and let me know which one was your favorite