Gary Vaynerchuk's Blog, page 61
January 12, 2016
DailyVee 004: Always Adjusting, Always
Yesterday was an interesting day. I was supposed to record the audiobook, but we got thrown a curveball. So what do you do? You hustle and adjust. I’m always adjusting.
So while the beginning of the day started out a little rough, it got better from there. I took a bunch of meetings with Vayner employees, filmed an episode of #AskGaryVee, and had a great jam session with the team that night. Check it out below:
Music in this episode provided by LilChief.
Why I Want to Put Myself Out of Business
I often tell my friends and colleagues that I’m in the business of being historically correct.
Whether it’s my agency VaynerMedia, Wine Library or a business I am still just thinking about starting, being right about where the market is going has always been top of mind for me. Once I have a strong thesis on future trends in the marketplace, I am able to go all in and execute on my strategy, predictions, and business plan.
While I do this, I’m showing and telling people along the way. I am creating content around my business tactics and plans, as well as providing value to my community through articles, videos, and any other means by which I can distribute information.
But there is one thing that I have become truly passionate about in the last year and a half and it’s this:
I want to provide my community with so much value that they don’t need my advice anymore.
I want to make my community so effective at executing on all my advice on company culture, managing growth, and social media that they don’t need to listen to me any more.
I want them to become educated enough as practitioners to start recognizing the themes and patterns that have allowed me to be successful in business.
Many people, when they first encounter my content, might think that monetizing my audience is my number one objective with the content I put out. If a new visitor comes to my website and watches one of my videos or reads an article for the first time, I’m sure they’re waiting for the next shoe to drop. A pop up during a video that says “For the real secrets, pay to join my club!”, or a banner ad that slides as you scroll through an article that says “For the rest, click to buy my $50 e-book!”
The thing is, those interruptions or upsells don’t happen with my content. Ever. In fact, the most I might ever ask for monetarily is a book sale once every two to three years (which usually amounts to $13 a copy).
So many people who sit in the world of giving advice, who retweet articles on Twitter and have the word “guru” somewhere in their bio, monetize a small subset of their audience at the highest levels and for the best information.
Monetizing my community is not what motivates me. Trying to put myself out of business does.
The reason that I won’t ever have the most views or the most books read is because my mission is to become obsolete to my community of marketers, entrepreneurs and small businesses. My mission is to create content around my major business theses, use the current communication tools to distribute those theses, and be the best context and content executor of this generation.
When that is your goal, you start having a shelf life with your audience. Your audience will consume, learn, grow, and then ideally move on from your content because they have used the information they learned from you to run a successful business.
I’m okay with that.
It leaves money on the table, certainly. I could pull back on my best strategies and advice, put up a pay wall, and make people pay for my best content. But that’s just not interesting to me. More importantly, I don’t think it’s noble, and it doesn’t drive me.
So go ahead guys. Put me the fuck out of business already.
January 11, 2016
#AskGaryVee Episode 174: Peach App, Interruptions, & New Year’s Resolutions
On this episode, I tackled the brand new app Peach and my thoughts on New Year’s Resolutions.
#QOTD: What is your early read on Peach? Had you heard of it before this show today?
#TIMESTAMPS
1:21 – Do you set personal and business goals for the New Year? If so, how do you stay focused throughout the year?
2:31 – You are incredibly passionate about Snapchat now. Snapchat’s been around for a few years. Why now? What’s changed?
7:13 – When I’m out of the office, I feel guilty about leaving my team in the office, even if I’m at a meeting. I’m scared they might think like “”the boss is all play and fun.” Any advice?
9:11 – Is a beautiful interruption in your consumer’s day a good thing or should everything be seamless?
12:38 – What do you think of the new emerging social media Peach? A fad or something revolutionary?
#BONUS
14:41 – End of show rant
#LINKS
DAILYVEE 003 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5YlNCwyDr8
MY NEWEST ARTICLE https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/4-common-company-problems-and-solutions-that-demand-attention/
#AskGaryVee Episode 173: Book Marketing, Snapchat Growth, & Tipping Points in History
On this episode, I talk about marketing a book, how to measure your growth on Snapchat, and how important young people are to brands.
#TIMESTAMPS
04:41 – How important do you think young people are to brands? Both in HR and consumers?
07:47 – How on earth do you measure your progress on snapchat?
08:16 -How do you tell your Manager that they overstep boundaries? (ie 9pm phone calls & micromanaging). Asking for a friend.
11:01 – Do you think there is a tipping point for Washington wines?
15:11 – I’m 13 and writing a non-fiction book, where do I start with marketing it?
January 10, 2016
January 7, 2016
January 6, 2016
Deploying Against the Snap: Takeaways from Snapchatting in Vegas & CES
I spent all day snapchatting in Vegas yesterday at CES, in my hotel room, during meetings and in between breaks. I was storytelling and providing value to my followers on the ghost.
And the one simple takeaway is this: if you’re running a business in 2016, you need to be thinking about Snapchat as a channel to grow your customer base. Period.
Even six months ago, Snapchat was still too young. I said it myself on DailyVee today. But now it is time to take your Snapchat strategy, or lack thereof, very serious.
I hope you’ve seen On Snapping My Way Through Vegas where I go deep into my point of view on Snapchat. Now I want to break it down here, highlight some key points, and get into the importance of this amazing platform.
Why Snapchat Matters
Here is why I care so much about Snapchat: because I haven’t seen this much consumer attention on one social platform since early 2007 and 2008 with Twitter.
If you have 1,000 followers on Snapchat, 900 of them will watch your story.
Let’s think about how insane that is right now, especially in a time when email open rates are at best at 25%.
Everybody wants to talk about reach: the number of visitors, the number of hits, the number of views. But reach has nothing to do with actually selling shit. Someone seeing a pre-roll ad doesn’t mean they watched it; they probably skipped it to get to the thing that they really wanted to see. That’s why not only the time being spent on Snapchat but also the way it is being spent is so significant.
Snapchat is about to win the attention graph.
How to Approach a Snapchat Marketing Strategy
Brands need to value the importance of this app, and soon, before marketers ruin it (as they always do). Take a step back in 2016 and really think about how you are going to use your website, your email, your packaging, and whatever else you are focusing on, to drive a following on Snapchat. Then, in addition to that, you need have a creative strategy within Snapchat itself. The creative needs to be native to Snapchat, and native to their Stories feature. Because the platform has so many unique nuances, making sure your content looks native is crucial.
But this is where we run into a problem. The problem is that there is not a single company that is ready to allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars in creative just against a Snapchat Story, 365 days a year. If one brand went completely all in on production fees to become the best brand on Snapchat by putting out a compelling Story, that would be huge. A full Snapchat story, for me, means making at least 7 videos and 7 pictures every 24 hours of the day.
Growing a Snapchat Follower Base
While every brand is going to have a different follower growth strategy for the snap, a lot of brands will go for the low hanging fruit, things like contests or “follow us and you may win!”.
This is not the best way to attack growing your Snapchat account.
The right thing to do is this: make an incredible Story, download one part of it, and then upload it natively to other channels so people are seeing what they’re missing. If the content is good enough, it will compel them to go follow your snapchat username to see the rest.
Content is always king. We say it all the time in marketing, it’s so cliche, but the problem is most people aren’t following it. Most content just isn’t compelling. Instead of going for the cheap move, basically paying or incentivizing users to follow the account with a sweepstakes, I say go for the great quality content and use your other social presences to share that content and make people come and watch.
Yes, it’s true that I preach about always tailoring content to a specific platform. So uploading a Snapchat video to Twitter might feel kind of weird. But when you’re trying to build something up, there can be space to play. Build a follower base by cross platform promoting.
Snapchats are Real Moments
The big deal here is this: Snapchats are real personal moments. When someone sends you a Snap and you can reply in real time, within minutes of it, it’s extremely personal. These interactions remind me tremendously of how I built my brand on Twitter in 2007 and 2008.
Do yourself a favor and Google search “How to use Snapchat”. Allocate time to learn the platform. Get close to it. Learn the functions, the capabilities. Many of the behaviors and gestures you need on it, things like swiping up to get out of a page, will become more and more common as the platform becomes mainstream.
As you can see from my latest vlog, I’m a real practitioner, I’ve spent time on Snapchat and put in real work and energy to understand what it’s about and how to use it properly to build your brand or business.
See you guys on the snaps @garyvee
DailyVee 003: Snapping My Way Through Vegas
It’s finally here: the third episode of DailyVee! This was a fun one. I spent the day in Vegas for CES 2016, and got really hot on Snapchat.
Along the way, I drop some serious knowledge about platform specifics and tactics, so be sure to listen closely for those.
Don’t forget to add me on Snapchat! My handle is @GaryVee. And read more of my #SnapchatSecrets here.
Music in this episode kindly provided by Brad Hicks.
