Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 58

Business Indecision, Employee Recruitment & Artist Management: #AskGaryVee Episode 182

On this episode, we have a surprise guest and I talk about how VaynerMedia recruits employees.

Questions answered on this episode

Have your ever dropped the ball on making a decision due to over thinking it?
Do you expect your own employees to work like you do? Does it affect your opinion of them?
LinkedIn seems to be the standard for recruitment. How do you recruit and is LinkedIn part of the process?
What brings you peace? There is such fun in the hustle sure, but what brings the calm and ease for you?
If you were an artist manager, what is something you would have your artists do that artists right now aren’t leveraging?

Resources from this episode

My definitive take on the current state of Twitter
All the details on my upcoming Super 8 live stream event
Pre-order the #AskGaryVee Book
Paul’s Instagram account

Question of the day

How many books are you going to buy?

The Future of Instagram, Employee Turnover & How to Make Money as a Teen: #AskGaryVee Episode 181

On this episode, I talk about where Instagram is going, high employee turnover rate in the agency world, and staying productive while drinking.

 

Questions answered on this episode

What do you think about Instagram in the next 2-3 years from now?
If TV is the radio and phone is the new TV, what is the desktop computer?
What do you think is the best market for a teenager to start selling things?
When you go out for some drinks, how many do you have and still stay productive the next day?
What are your thoughts on employee retention in the digital marketing industry? Is the high turnover normal?

Resources from this episode

My newest Medium: Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
Pre-order the #AskGaryVee Book
Marketing in the year 2016

Question of the day

Do you like your CEO?

 

Why I’m Excited About the New Audio Recording App Anchor

One of the things I do to scale my content is record my thoughts in memos and then share it with my team.

It was Stunwin before, now it’s India. Historically, it’s just been whoever is writing for my team. They transcribe whatever I say into a blog post and that allows me to scale that kind of content. I’m quicker in audio than I am in written word. Most of my books are done the same way. I record thoughts or I do three or four hour phone calls with my writer Steph Land. Anyway I can organize and record my thoughts and deliver it to them to turn into written word is important to me.

For that reason, I am personally very excited for Anchor, but also the enormous potential it has.  Anchor is an app that allows you to record and share soundbites of yourself talking. These soundbites are called “waves”. Anchor’s tagline is “The World’s First True Public Radio.” The ease of using the product and the concept behind it make me very excited for what it can be as a platform. My original thoughts, in all their randomness, can be done on Anchor, and then I merely forward it over to India and the rest of my team for a Medium or  blog post.

I’m going to try and use this platform as the base—the match the ignites the bigger pieces of content that we have been writing. I’m excited about this opportunity to have a platform that can keep records of what I’ve said and when I’ve said it as well.

This audio platform has me pumped and I’d love your thoughts on this process for creating content if you’ve been working similarly to me.

Oh, and of course, this post was an audio recording on Anchor before it was a blog post here Check it out:

You can follow me on Anchor: find me by searching for Gary Vaynerchuk.

DailyVee 014: Twenty-Four-Seven-365

In this episode of DailyVee, I give a talk at LinkedIn, and have a full busy day of meetings. Also, we had an all-hands meeting at VaynerMedia, so you can see how insane that is.

 

Guest list

Brandon Marshall
Ben Leventhal
Stephen Ross
Ndamukong Suh

Resources from this episode

Resy App
LinkedIn Pulse
Apply for a job at VaynerMedia

Music in this episode

MadReal

 

Flying with a Wounded Wing: Why Twitter Still Has More Than a Chance

Dear Twitter,

I have always loved you and I always will. As I sit here writing this, I can’t help but think how excited I am about our future.

Everyone is saying #RIPTwitter, but I still believe in you. And I’ll tell you why, starting with where you started and why you succeeded.

The Launch of Twitter: The Internet’s Cocktail Party

Launched in July of 2006, Twitter was a platform that experienced consistent and steady growth for many years. What made Twitter unique was the infrastructure and psychology that coincided with the rise of mobile text messaging. They hit the coveted one million user milestone and within two years a billion tweets had been sent on the platform. In 2009, when the platform was just under three years old, Nielsen put out a report stating that Twitter had grown 1,382% year-over-year.

What Twitter looked like soon after launch in 2006

A tweet was very similar to text messaging. In fact, Twitter was one of the first mobile social media platforms. Users could set up their phone to tweet from it; send an SMS txt and the tweet would appear on your profile. Don’t forget that Twitter was launched a year before the first iPhone was released. The fact that Twitter built a product around the mobile phone culture right out of the gate is significant: it created a new social pipeline.

Despite confusion surrounding what Twitter was (the staff made a pretty bizarre video explaining its purpose), it obviously had a massive appeal to internet users.

Essentially, Twitter was a room in which you could openly jump into people’s conversations. I always called it the cocktail party of the internet. If you brought value to the conversations, you would be accepted and welcomed, instead of treated like a creep stalking around the internet. Very few places at the time on the internet acted like that (in fact, very few places still do).

You could probably make the argument that Twitter was one of the most significant things to happen to my career.  While running my family wine business, I used Twitter’s search for market research and to find new customers. I could search “Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio”  and find out what everyone on the platform thought about it, what they were saying, and who was looking to buy. Later, as I achieved a sort of cult fame status with my first YouTube show, WineLibraryTV, Twitter helped me grow my personal brand. It allowed me to respond to people one by one, on a personal level.

@montanatriplett nice, which Pinot Grigio

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) September 4, 2010

A new social pipeline, the quick blogging style, the similarity to texting: all these things were great for Twitter.

But there was more, much more, that attributed to its success early on.

Three Reasons Why Businesses Use Twitter

When Twitter first launched, there were three major aspects to its functionality and culture that pointed to it becoming a great success in the world of social.

The first is something that we have always seen for every successful platform: disproportionate attention and consumption by the end users. The amount of eyeballs, you could get on one tweet compared to the trouble of sending one tweet? Insane. The ROI was solid.

Secondly, the platform itself had incredible word of mouth capabilities. If you know about business, you know that word of mouth can be one of the most effective ways to grow awareness at scale and at cost. Twitter’s retweet button was an incredible invention of a new social psychology. The idea of a “retweet” as an endorsement and as a way to “share” someone else’s content within your feed and with your followers, was relatively new (outside of blogging). Now, it’s a common thread seen across all social: share this, reblog that. But Twitter was the one that made it mainstream.

Lastly, because it was a public domain of people sharing thoughts, ideas, and opinions, it created an enormous database of consumer insights. If you were willing to sift through it, it was a goldmine to find people you or your brand were looking to connect with. Like I said above, I owe a lot of my success to Twitter. Twitter search helped me build my business and personal brand. It was enormously fruitful and helpful. And best of all, it was all free.

All these things set Twitter up for enormous user growth. The platform was criticized for feeding into an era where people mindlessly share thoughts. But, it became so much more very quickly.

When the Mars Phoenix found water on Mars in June 2008, they announced it on Twitter. It proved its effectiveness at connecting to real time cultural moments when Oreo tweeted during the Super Bowl. And maybe most significantly, it showed that it could be a place to go for real time updates on major news; tragic events like the Boston Marathon bombing and world news like Arab Spring had their first breaking moments on Twitter.

Needless to say, I had faith. I bought Twitter stock and I was excited from what I was seeing. It had strong platform usage. It was a destination for breaking news. It popularized effective platform functions.

With all these things poised in Twitter’s favor…what happened? Why is Twitter’s user acquisition at a standstill, and why are their ad products failing?

The Realization That Twitter Might Suck

Sometime in 2011, I started to notice that the content I was putting out on Twitter was not getting the attention that it used to. I went on Next Wave and talked about my concerns, about  how I thought Twitter was starting to have a noise problem. Everything was down: reach, conversion, engagement.

First, I looked at myself. Was I doing something wrong? I audited my content. Then I looked at other accounts to see if there was a similar trend. I realized I was seeing the first cracks in the armor. The attention was slipping. As someone who is obsessed with day trading attention, I was very concerned. Tweets just weren’t maintaining the same engagement as they used to.

Additionally, simply not enough people were using the platform. In those first two to three years of Twitter, television, the number one attention platform at the time, was falling over itself to promote Twitter. Every newscaster on every show had their Twitter handle, the bird symbol was at the end of ads. TV promoted it far more than it promoted Facebook. And yet, the user numbers just did not reflect that. It didn’t catch on, at least not at scale.

 

Users on the platform started to tune out. The culture of following a lot of users had backfired and now there was too much noise on the platform and there are not enough ways to filter through it. In the same way that e-mail marketing was ruined because of sheer volume (and because marketers ruin everything), Twitter had too much—it was too loud. The value of tweeting was decreasing.

As the value for users decreased, it naturally decreased the ROI for advertisers and their clients too.The CPM on Twitter was very high and still remains one of the highest today. Too much noise meant that that disproportionate value that had made it so valuable was disappearing.

My agency,VaynerMedia, used it heavily as a community management tool in 2009 and 2010. Nearly every brand we managed was on it. As the platform evolved, I wanted us (and still want) to still be using it like that. I thought we would have to be stupid to not take advantage of all the free data, conversations, and content being created about our brands. It was, and still is, an incredible customer service tool. But the marketplace wasn’t convinced; they didn’t see the value. The noise volume was just too high. And, unfortunately, 99% of brands are only interested in pushing out content; they don’t want to use it as a listening tool.

It was a cocktail party, but nobody was really listening, just talking.

I sold half of my Twitter shares in June 26th 2014, for $41 a share. I stayed on the platform. I remained active. But I couldn’t justify the investment any more. I was concerned about where the business as going. In fact, I probably kept half my shares more out of loyalty than anything else.

So, where does Twitter go from here?

The Future of Twitter

Twitter needs leadership to evolve the product, and that is exactly what they are doing.

The two major things Twitter needs to solve for are the algorithm of the dashboard (what content shows up in your feed and why) and length of tweets. Recently, Twitter has questioned these functionalities and that’s a great sign for Twitter. Without a doubt, these changes should have come sooner. But they aren’t trying to grasp at what used to make it great; they are looking to change it drastically. When a platform can be unromantic about itself, it sets it up for a much better shot at success. Similar to when Snapchat got rid of the “hold to view” function, or how Facebook routinely shifts and evolves its newsfeed algorithm, if Twitter can move on from what used to define it and create a new space, it could have a bright future.

A great example of this is when they switched from “favoriting” a tweet with a star to “hearting” it with a heart. It felt like a small shift, but it was huge in that it was indicative of Twitter accepting that they fundamentally needed to change confusing parts of their interface.

Twitter has also done a good job in continuing to try and double down on owning real-time moments and a live experience. They introduced native video opportunities in 2014, and views and usage grew very quickly. They bought Periscope in 2015—a live streaming platform with an appealing and easy user interface. And, most recently, they introduced “Moments.” Moments is their real time news related product: it brings together all the most talked about topics of the day in one tab.

A company is only truly failing when it refuses to accept change or adapt to current situations.

Because the thing is, I think Twitter is a fantastic platform. Yes, I sold my shares. That might make you question my opinion right now. But I look at Twitter the same way you might have looked at CBS a few years ago. When you’re the fourth place network, things aren’t going great. But if you can make the right moves, the right choices, at the right time, you can become the number one network. It’s no different for platforms.

I have faith in Twitter as a platform. It’s a powerful tool for social utility and a great social network.  

The exclusive cocktail party that it once was is now a water cooler of the masses.

The things that I talked about in the first part of this article still apply and are still relevant. The word of mouth. The public forum. The search features. The conversations. All these still make Twitter a very strong platform.

I believe that Twitter has enough scale and enough brand equity to succeed. It brings value to those who know how to use it well. If Jack Dorsey makes the right two to five decisions, the company could start the momentum as a product in the right direction.

They just need one big hit.

Virtual Jam Session and Q&A Viewing Party

VaynerNation,

I’m fired up to announce that I’m going to do an exclusive virtual Q&A event across 25+ undisclosed locations in the cities. This event will only be open to self-organized groups who have purchased at least 15 books from select sellers. What I need are 25+ dedicated volunteers from the VaynerNation to form these groups and help coordinate the parties at each of the locations listed below. Want to be one of these volunteers? Keep reading.

Become a Party Coordinator

To be one of my leaders, you’ll have to apply to be the coordinator for one of the 26 locations below. As a leader, you’ll be in charge of:

Rallying a crew of  at least 15 Vayniacs and entrepreneurs to come together.
Making sure they purchased a book at the official viewing party location.
Coordinating with my team to make sure your viewing party watches together on the day of the exclusive jam session.
You should reside in or close to one of the listed cities.

Take a look at the locations below and apply at the bottom of this page. My team will be looking out for your submissions and will be in contact with you if you are chosen to help lead this event. At least one will be selected for each location.

Locations

Tempe, AZ
Corte Madera, CA
Pasadena, CA
San Francisco, CA
Santa Cruz, CA
Boulder, CO
Denver, CO
Madison, CT
Washington DC
Coral Gables, FL
Naperville, IL
Lexington, KY
Brookline, MA
Cambridge, MA
Okemos, MI
St. Louis, MO
Oxford, MS
Rhinebeck, NY
Portland, OR
Nashville, TN
Austin, TX
Salt Lake City, UT
Manchester Center, VT
Lake Forest Park, WA
Milwaukee, WI

Apply to become a Party Coordinator:


First Name*Last Name*Email*

Phone*Twitter HandleInstagram HandleLocations*Tempe, AZCorte Madera, CAPasadena, CASan Francisco, CASanta Cruz, CABoulder, CODenver, COMadison, CTWashington DCCoral Gables, FLNaperville, ILLexington, KYBrookline, MACambridge, MAOkemos, MISt. Louis, MOOxford, MSRhinebeck, NYPortland, ORNashville, TNAustin, TXSalt Lake City, UTManchester Center, VTLake Forest Park, WAMilwaukee, WIWhy should we pick you to be a party coordinator?*

Video submission link (optional)

Terms and Conditions*By submitting this application, I agree to covering the cost equal to the amount of unsold books (up to 15 copies) at the store I am supporting.

I agree to the terms and conditions.

 

 

Twitter Users, How to Ask for Help & Beating Jet Lag: #AskGaryVee Episode 180

On this episode we talk about how to ask for help, Twitter’s changing product, and the one thing I would tell the whole world if I only had thirty seconds.

Questions answered on this episode

No new twitter users registered between Oct and Christmas last year. Thoughts?
How can I use a diploma and years of experience if they are in a field I don’t currently want to work in?
How do you take down your defensive shields about asking for help?
You travel so much–what are your tricks and tips for overcoming jet lag?
If the next thirty seconds of #AskGaryVee were broadcast to all 7 billion people on the planet, what would you say?

Resources from this episode

Super 8 Live Stream: All the info you need
A Full Comprehensive Guide to Snapchat
Pre-Order The #AskGaryVee Book
Barter for The #AskGaryVee Book

Question of the day

If you could buy a Super Bowl commercial, what would you say in it?

Marketing In the Year 2016

If you clicked on this article thinking that I’m going to tell you to make a Facebook page, boy are you wrong. Maybe I would have said it in 2007, but guess what? It’s 2016 and it’s about time everyone started marketing like it.

Unfortunately, it seems like most everyone is still marketing like it’s 1999. Some people even market like it’s 1979.

The mistake they are making is this: they are not following where the consumer attention is going. And in marketing, we need to be placing importance on attention, not impressions.

It might seem like a no-brainer. You might be thinking that consumer attention is all any marketer thinks about. While that may be true, they’re not putting any follow through to their lay-up. They’re spending millions of dollars on TVC, on print; things that no longer have the attention to justify the cost.

Make Your Marketing Strategy Mobile and Social

It baffles me that so much money is still spent on forms of advertising that are not beneficial to the consumer, nor where the current consumer attention is. Pre-roll ad views. Commercial breaks on streaming sites. These are the “impressions” marketers are focusing on. Why? There are better places money should be spent with bigger upsides. Great marketing should feel like a renovation, not a rehash of what has been done before.

For a consumer to get excited about something, to be compelled by something, it comes down to attention. Attention, not impressions. They need to really consume it. That is the game.

There are two places right now that companies need to be focusing to win their marketing game. One is mobile, and the social networks contained within mobile. The second is video.

Anyone who doesn’t realize that the cell phone is exactly the same thing that the television was in 1965 is completely ignoring the future. When an ad comes on, when pre-roll shows up, people reach for their phones. As soon as the experience they were trying to have is interrupted by an invasive ad, the phone is where they turn to continue being entertained. Plus, the phone is always there. As you read this, is your phone within five feet of you? I thought so.

Within the world of mobile, there are so many opportunities and ways to make content that can get a consumer’s attention. Write an article on Medium. Create beautiful images on Instagram. Test out as many different kinds of posts on Facebook as possible to see which does best.

But the medium with the most consumer attention right now is video.

Video has always been the deepest way to engage an audience. The wide and fast success of television and movies shows us that; the internet hasn’t changed that at all, but it’s certainly made it more apparent. And not only has it amplified the importance of video as a way to connect, it’s also put the tools to make it into the hands of so many more people. Creating engaging content has never been easier, and the social networks that are winning big right now are winning because they have placed such an emphasis on video.

So, who’s winning?



Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

The Evolution of Facebook Video

Facebook video for my brand has become the best way to reach my fans at scale. Couple that with their video ad products for sales and direct response and the fact that they’re the greatest data company of all time for marketers and you have some serious reasons to invest in Facebook video ads and video content for Facebook.  If you’re creating video content for YouTube, and not putting those videos onto Facebook as well, your brand or business is losing distribution – not to mention relevancy. YouTube should honestly be concerned; Facebook is already on its way to becoming a massive competitor when it comes to video marketing and content distribution. They are sitting on an enormous amount of targetable consumer data. It creates the ultimate marketing machine.

Facebook’s addition of recommended videos is also fascinating because it shows that they are working towards become a destination for searchable video content. In a year, I think Facebook video will work a lot more like YouTube in terms of being able to discover new content.

Why Instagram Video Matters

Instagram won, and won quickly, because they saw two trends in social and jumped on them fast: photo sharing and mobile. Instagram was a mobile first app, and has remained basically mobile only the entire time.

A counterexample of this is Tumblr. The blogging platform started on desktop but was slow to build an app that its users actually wanted to use; it’s been in decline ever since (despite having a record number of users, it’s struggled to monetize).

Instagram is a mobile app with a utility layered on top that everyone wants to use. And attention on it is huge. It hit 400 million active users in September, has a comprehensive ad platform, and with Facebook as its parent company, the targeting capabilities are insane.

Moments on Instagram, located in the Discover feed, act like a news source for trending events. 

The Next Big Social network: Snapchat

If you’ve been paying attention to my content the last month, you’ll know I am big on Snapchat right now.

One major reason Snapchat is winning, and will continue to win, is not only its focus on video, but how you create video content. The storytelling capabilities around how people create content on Snapchat is fantastic. There is so much room for creativity, and it reminds me far more of a space like YouTube than Twitter.

It’s also an especially interesting platform because the consumer attention it has is very deep. Snapchat hasn’t quite matured or “sold out” yet, but it’s boasting an enormous amount of daily active users. In December, 36% of Americans aged 18-29 had an account, and they are now reporting 7 billion videos views each day, rivaling Facebook. But while the platform is big and has lots of opportunity, it’s still quite young. We are just now starting to see the first signs of Snapchat aging up. It’s about to go through its first 20-to-40-year-old renaissance, and that is very exciting. It’s a huge platform, but it still has a solid 24 to 36 months ahead of it that will be of great importance.

Attention, Not Impressions

The point is this: see where consumer attention is going and follow it. Consumers are spending the majority of their time on social, so you need to meet them there. And while on there, they are consuming video. So make videos.

Impressions do not equate to attention. YouTube is good at video, Snapchat has consumer attention at scale. Understand the emerging markets, understand where your consumer is, and meet them there. Don’t make them come to you.

DailyVee 013: Nice Watches & Ferraris

An action packed day with advice to a super tall German hitchhiker and more.

Get a calendar reminder about my Super8 event: https://askgaryvee.calreply.net/calendar

Be sure to Super8 Event: https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/super8/

Music By:

https://soundcloud.com/youngamericano

https://soundcloud.com/genesiselijah

DailyVee 012: The Chef That Grew Up

I don’t want to be a motivational speaker. I want to be a business man first and foremost. And the chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute.

It was an interesting day for us on ‪#‎DailyVee‬ 012. CNBC was following me around for an episode of a new show they are filming so there is a gap but we talk book strategy with my team and I finish my audiobook recording.

 

Music by: https://soundcloud.com/genesiselijah