A Step-by-Step Social Media Guide For Businesses

0:00There are many people who have gone from zero to millionaires in a matter of months on social media. These individuals have tried it and it has not worked. Many of them have decided that means social media does not work. I would love to be a professional footballer or NBA player or a professional athlete. I just am not talented enough to do it. The people that stood up have not found the way to be good at it yet. We just decide, especially in business world, well, I tried it. It doesn't work. No, no, you don't work at it. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. I believe every B2B company in this room must post a video and picture every single day on LinkedIn thank you, thank you very much sir I needed that actually, thank you for that wasn't the loudest clap either but

1:01I need everybody to this is a really fun moment in this talk. I am aware of what's happening with SMBs and how much they post on LinkedIn. I am looking for 70 % of this room to post one to two to three videos a day on LinkedIn. A day. That is like batshit crazy to most of you as you hear that coming out of my mind. many of you have never posted once for your business on LinkedIn, ever. And I'm asking you, bless you, and I'm asking you right now to post one to three times a day. Let me explain to you why I'm asking you to do that. I stand here before you today with all the accomplishments, all the business things.

1:57My current business is a B2B business, my agency. We have gone from zero to$400 million in revenue in 13 years. And when you unpack why, a stunning percentage of why is because of the content that I've put out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Podcast. My friends, the way the world actually works, why people believe in their politics, why people believe in their religions, why people believe in their ideologies is only grounded in one phenomenon. It's called communication. Words, audio, written, and video. Words, words. We are living in one of the greatest eras of opportunity for small businesses in the history of the business world.

2:52For many here who have been in business for a long time, as you know, we have to pay for advertising. If you want to buy a billboard or a full page ad in the magazine in your industry or buy a booth at a conference or do Google AdWords, you have to pay. I don't know if you've heard, but social media is free. It is free. Of course, you can spend money running ads on it, but it is free. You can post a video right now on LinkedIn and LinkedIn does not charge you. Also, the way that marketing on social media now works is not the way that I built myself up. From 2006 to 2018, in that 12-year period, social media marketing was like email marketing.

3:46You had to get people to follow you first. And then when you posted, they saw it. The advice that I just gave about posting one to three times a day on LinkedIn, especially if you've never posted before, was not good advice four years ago because you had no followers and when you would post, you would have nobody seeing it and you would do it for a month and then you would send an email to one of your friends and say that Gary V guy is an idiot. it. Today, if somebody listens to me in this audience, somebody in this room in three weeks on their 10th day of doing this will get their biggest lead for their business by posting organically on LinkedIn.

4:38And instead they're going to text their friend and say, that guy, Gary Vee's a genius. This is because in the last three years, the way social networks work has changed. We are no longer in social media. We are now in interest media. How many people here use Instagram or TikTok sometimes? Raise your hands. Hi, please. Very high for me. Great. Most of you, All of you, most of you know what I'm talking about. You know that in the last several years, definitely in the last year, you can feel that the stuff that you're seeing now on your social network feed, on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, is stuff you're interested in, not necessarily people that you used to follow.

5:25The algorithms driven by AI have changed. You are now seeing things of interest to you. So if you are selling a B2B product or a B2C product here. The technology is so advanced now that the AI algorithms know what you're posting about and are putting it in front of people that might be interested in it. How many people here have, and this is very important, and remember, this is very important. Lying is the devil. So here's the question. How many people by show of hands in their business have tried to do social media and it has not worked for them. Raise your hands. Hi, actually, can you stand up if you're one of these people?

6:13It's good. Blood circulation works. Don't lie. Don't be lazy. I just want to see who's tried it and it's not worked. This is a very important moment in this talk. I appreciate that. Let me explain to everybody. Keep standing. Sir, back up. Thank you. This is very important. These individuals have tried it and it has not worked. Many of them have decided that means social media does not work. What I need everybody to understand is that's not true. What it means is the people that are standing just suck.

6:50This is very important. You can all sit down. This is a very important thing. There are, I don't think it's lost on anyone, whether they were sitting or standing, there are many people who have gone from zero to millionaires in a matter of months on social media. I would love to be a professional footballer or NBA player or a professional athlete. I just am not talented enough to do it. The people that stood up have not found the way to be good at it yet. This is incredibly important. We just decide, especially in business world, well, I tried it, it doesn't work. No, no, you don't work at it.

7:40The ROI of a piano for me has been zero dollars. The ROI of a piano for Elton John has been billions. Social works, it is unequivocally guaranteed. I sit on B2B SaaS companies, on service companies. I see it every day. I have watched people that sell service and their time and software as a service. I have watched dozens in the last 12 months double, triple, and quadruple revenue by going all in on making content on LinkedIn. 70 % of this audience is capable of that outcome. The problem is they have to get good at it. When I look at the slides that I have up here and I look at all those books that were written, All they are doing, all of my best-selling books, all they've ever done is talk about what social media is doing now.

8:37What worked on social media six weeks ago is different than what works now. But I need everybody to hear me on this. It's free. It's free. It's fucking free. Like, do you understand? Think about how many people here are B2B companies that are fully reliant on their sales force and their salespeople and don't like that feeling being at the mercy of their salespeople. How do you get around that? You build a brand and the customers come to you. This is an incredibly important moment because I'm gonna explain why. The only thing, is it up there? Yes, the purple book up there is called Day Trading Attention.

9:25That is ultimately my thesis. all of my wealth creation, all of my success, all of my professional happiness is grounded in that thesis. I day trade attention. If I had the honor of being at this conference in 2000, I would be talking to you today about Google AdWords and email marketing. Because in April 2000, that was the underpriced attention. That's where people were, but not everybody figured it out. How many people here are absolutely annihilating it on LinkedIn and getting unlimited amounts of growth in their business because of it? Raise your hand. One, two, three, four, five. Out of a thousand.

10:13In a room that has 70 % B2B mark companies. That is the opportunity. That. and so what we're living through right this minute is one of the great opportunities in business history for B2B and B2C. TikTok is insanity. You wanna know why people are addicted to it? B2C people, one more time, you sell to consumers. I mean, as passionate as I just was for the B2B crowd because LinkedIn is a movie right now. It is remarkable. LinkedIn is acting like Facebook 2012 right now. There's a ton of attention on it. and there's few people actually crushing it. But for the B2C people in here, TikTok is insanity, one post.

11:03LinkedIn, you need multiple posts over time and you build momentum as you guys know. Momentum, right? You could have a post that leads to, what's great about B2B is one new client can make the whole thing worth it. But LinkedIn is more like proper working out, You know, like discipline, eating right. TikTok is steroids. For the B2C crowd in here, the insanity that is TikTok is insane. One post, one. I've watched countless t-shirt companies, fucking vitamin drinks, like supplements, deodorants, sneakers, like you name it. I have seen unlimited businesses in the last year have one single post, double, triple, and quadruple their business.

11:59This is a game of volume. This is a game of test and learn. This is a game of not being discouraged when 93 posts in a row do nothing. This is a game of listening to the comments. This is a game of understanding. I'm gonna give you, I don't think it's up here, nope. I'm gonna give you a URL. I put out, Day Trading Attention, my book that talks about this in detail, is 20 pounds, whatever it is. I don't even need you to buy it. I'm so desperate for people to do this. I put out a 44-page deck for free on the internet. And by the way, actual free. When you go to it, good news, there's no like, it's free, but then you give me your number and I only show you four slides and then I want 800 bucks.

12:44It's fully free. pure brand, pure karma. It's garyvee.com slash attention. I'm going to talk about this at nausea for the rest of my talk in the Q &A and from your questions, but I can't go into the level of detail that I went into in that deck. I need a dozen people to leave this conference today and realize whatever you think you do for a living is actually secondary. the primary thing you do for a living is make content for social networks. Marketing is offense. Everything else is defense. Even sales. Because sales, you become vulnerable to who's driving the sales, unless it's you. This is a profound moment in business history and it will go away.

13:36Within the next decade, we will walk away from the mobile device because I don't know if you know this, but the big tech companies are gonna get us into robot form. The glasses are coming. I'm sure you've heard about this AI thing. My friends, it's a really important time and the opportunity is substantial. I'm gonna take a hard pivot away from where I'm at right now on content on the internet, but I'm gonna put one last cherry on it. To recap, when I think about businesses that I'm trying to help grow, I'm an investor in, I'm on the board of, that are call at between one and 10 million that I'm trying to push to 50 million.

14:15And I've done that now three times in my own life personally, and obviously I've been involved in a lot of companies that do that as well. When I think about that, I think about what I've spent the first 20 minutes on, that I know whoever is best at the current moment in marketing and understands how to outflank everyone grow exponentially. We're clearly beating that horse right now in a real significant way. there is a second part that actually gets you there. And so I'm gonna ask you some questions. By show of hands, and again, vulnerability and truth really matter in this environment. By show of hands, how many people have a real strong number two that is not a family member?

15:05Raise your hands. Raise it high. a real strong number two in their company. Great. By the people that just raised their hand, how many people really are caught because then they have to go back in if that number two leaves tomorrow? Raise your hands. Be honest. Raise them. So about half of the crew, clearly for the other half, they go into their brain as they say, well, I have a number three. or a number four. For the 100 people that just raised their hand, the quickest way to build a big business is to have a number three, a number four, and a number five. This is a very important point. This is clearly why most businesses stay at one to two million in revenue and never grow.

16:01The number one, which is you, is trying to take money out of the business more so than investing it into more people or is not doing the thing I want to talk to you about next to actually build it, which is the following. The reason I took my dad's liquor store from three to 65 million in five years and the reason I took VaynerMedia from zero to 100 million in the first five years was because over 50 % of my time in the first five years of my company were spent with my employees, not my customers.

16:39when I think about why did I come here and what am I trying to accomplish and what am I trying to help with to this audience, I think about what can they leave with tomorrow and I want to pound two things. One is the organic social media that you don't have to pay for and we're talking about that and two is if you go home next Monday, when you look at your calendar, if you clear that to spend half the day to learn what I'm talking about with the day-to-day content on the social networks and the other half to spend one-on-one time with your employees. How many people here have one to three employees?

17:23Raise your hand. That's it. One to three. It's going to be a lot, I'm sure. Raise your hand. It's good. How many people are three to ten? Raise your hands. Ten to 50?

17:37over 50, over 100, over 200. Cool. For every person in this room, including over 200, I want you to spend next three months having one-on-one meetings with every single employee you have.

17:59When I think about my career and what I think about my observations of the businesses that I've seen grow, I've learned something, which is do not be in the middle. What I mean by that is this, my friends. Spend all of your time, if you're in this room, on things that can explode your business, marketing, and things that can retain it. Non-scalable behavior with your employees. Most people play in the middle. this part that we're talking about is profound this gentleman here has over 200 employees when i said for the people that even have over 200 one-on-one time i watched his reaction and i watched him go to notes what this gentleman will learn and what all of you will learn whether you have three five ten twenty if you really get in there if you really get in there you will start to change the culture of your business.

19:02You will build a family business instead of a business. And when you build a family business, something remarkable happens. It's called retention. And the longer you keep the same people that you want around, the bigger your business becomes. But it requires something that most small businesses struggle with, which is actually caring about your employee. And I don't mean caring about them from the lens of you want them there because they're going to help you make more money. I mean caring about them. Genuinely caring about them. Like the meeting I had with an employee yesterday for 15 minutes on Zoom when I told her she should quit my company and start her own business because she is ready.

19:56Let me say that nice and slow for everybody one more time. Like the meeting I had yesterday with a woman in my company when she was talking about how she's trying to strive to get to the next promotion in my company and I looked her in the face over Zoom and said, I have a different idea. I think it's time that you quit and start your own company and I'll be your first customer. the second you realize the biggest misnomer in business, which is nice guys do not finish last. It is not a dog-eat-dog world. When you start realizing karma is actually the most practical strategy in business, when you actually go there, not with what's happening right now, as I'm talking right now, there's many that are hearing it and are being cynical and thinking that's cute, that's a nice ideology.

20:56No, no, actually. When you actually understand that truth, you build a much bigger business. I've watched time and time again, including my own father, people be selfish for what they want, which completely limits where it can go. and I'm gonna say something else and I'm sure this is not lost on a lot of you. The world's changing. You know how we love to make fun of Gen Z, right? They're lazy, they're so entitled, all that. Plenty are but many of them just have options. Instead of working for you for 50 ,000 a year they can make 100 ,000 a year just being on TikTok making videos about Jell-O. The world's changing.

21:48we are actually going to a very interesting place that requires businesses to compete for talent. We are not going to be able to afford to compete just with money. We are going to be required to bring more humanity to the table. You understand? Got it? You can clap on that one, sir. Yeah.

22:19I believe that if you leave here and start next week with the ability to separate the things you do in the middle that matter less, and you focus on two core principles, one, and there's a lot of people here that have under 10 employees. This is a piece of cake. If you have under 20 employees, when I was zero to 150 employees with all those companies, it was every week. It was every two weeks. Build that bond. Get it tight. Too many people think that running a business is better when you run it with fear. It's better when you love it with love. Fear works in the short term. We better hit these numbers or I'm gonna fire you.

23:04Works in the short term. But in the long term, it is optimism, hope, and actual care. Get to know them. Let me tell you what comes along when you build a culture like this. Everybody tells you things. You start actually knowing what's going on. They start working harder. They feel committed. It's a big deal. Marketing. B2C companies, one more time, by show of hands. I don't care what you think about TikTok, like China this or politics that. Everybody who's B2C who raised their hands, three TikToks a day. Two Instagram posts a day, two Facebook posts a day, two YouTube short posts a day. I'm talking 10 pieces of content a day, a day.

23:59Not once every two weeks and you want your Instagram grid to look good. Nobody gives a shit about your grid. Your individual pieces of content find its audience now. You can have no followers. Good news, when I was doing this for the last 15 years, In 2006, seven, eight, nine, I was trying to get everybody on Facebook and Twitter. And that was great. And everybody who listened, it was really great. And then we got into 11, 12, 13. And that was like a really, it started to become more real. But the people in 2012, 13, in a meeting like this, kind of felt bad that they hadn't started. In 2006, seven, and eight, they felt behind.

24:36Oh, my competitor has 10 ,000 followers. I have none. They were crippled. Then 14, 15 came. We had Vine, Snapchat. Things were changing. Then Instagram came, changed. Then we had TikTok musically, that really changed stuff. Here's the greatest part. In 2012, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, when I would do this to this audience, it sucked for a lot of people in the room because they felt behind. And they would sit at a table and someone's like, yeah, I got 10 ,000 followers and they didn't even start yet and they didn't even start because they thought it was over. You know what's so fun for me to do this in 2025?

25:15you could have literally, and many of you have, completely crapped the bed on social media for the last 15 years. You're a zero. You tried for a few minutes and you stopped. You never got going. A zero. And literally, it doesn't mean anything anymore. I have worked my face off for 15 years to amass 55 million followers. And now it's been a complete commoditized game because you, you loser, have never posted once. And if you make a good piece of content tomorrow, your piece of content is gonna get more views than mine. That is a level of meritocracy and opportunity that should inspire every person in this room.

26:03Number two, you need to look yourself in the mirror and I will tell you this is, I can say this with confidence. all of you know that you can do way more for your employees way more you get those two things down like really down and you will see substantial consistent growth in your business let me tell you a couple things about content here's a huge one for all of you as you're thinking about because I know what you're thinking let's say you're one of the dozen people in here right now that are kind of inspired by this, you're like, this makes some sense. I'm ready to go. If you're sitting here and you're listening, but you're also thinking, the next thing you're thinking is like, how the hell am I going to make that much content?

26:49Like, what am I even going to talk about? Let me give you a couple insights. One of my favorite things about social media is you can make content that asks your customers and prospective customers questions, and they will tell you the answer. the number one reason I love social media is for the consumer insights the more you know about what the person you're trying to sell something to is thinking the more likely you can sell them one of the things that all of you even if you're kind how many people feel like they're actually solid and actually here's a good question how many people feel like social media is helping their business raise their hands great a lot for all of you the one thing you can add to your game definitely is realizing if you're thoughtful about how you make content, you can ask your customers every question.

27:42What more do you want from us? What flavor do you want? What information do you want? Like literally asking the questions in your content. The other thing you need to think about, and this is going to be hard for some people that are just starting your journey. One of the keys in the content you make is you can't be selling in every piece of content. Whoever provides the most value for free wins. In social, whoever provides the most value for free wins. So think of yourself more as a provider of value to the customer you're looking for than being the seller of your stuff. Because remember, if you're providing value, if your bio has your website on it and what you're trying to sell, they will find you.

28:33They will convert. Finally, because I'm ready for the Q &A, Brad. I'll be here and I'm ready. I'll wrap up right now. But I want to leave with this because it's in the air. AI. I talked about it already. Robots kill you. Yes. In fact, I'm going to drop a bomb on you because I like predicting a little bit with the future. This is facts. I believe there are many people in this room that children or grandchildren. Let me think here. Let me look around. Yep. Many people in this room who have, how many people in this room have a child in their life, whether it's theirs or you're the grandparent of, of a child that is under five years old?

29:13Raise your hand. Raise it high. Beautiful. Let's clap it up for that. That's the best.

29:21Now here comes the fun part. 15 % of the hands that just went up that child is going to marry a fake person

29:41I'm saying this mainly because I'm looking forward to getting an email from you in 20 years like I get every day from others from things I said 20 years ago that is titled how the fuck did you know