Anyone Can Use This Strategy To Win On Social Media TODAY | Grow With Video

0:00Hey everybody, it's Gary Vaynerchuk, author of the new book Day Trading Attention, that I'm excited about, CEO of VaynerX and VaynerMedia, a 2 ,000 person global agency, a content creator myself, and I'm excited to be here at the Grow With Video conference. Look, we're living through one of the great changes in marketing history right now, with the attention economy going all over the place, and obviously video, as someone who's benefited from that format since February of 2006, so 18 plus years and counting, I'm excited to speak about what I'm seeing in the landscape, in the marketplace, and obviously answer all your questions.

0:38I am humbled, I am grateful, and I'm excited to be here. What is up, Gary? Sean Cannell here with Think Media. I want to thank you so much for speaking at the Grow With Video Summit. Question for you is, what are the current trends and changes in the social media landscape that we should be paying attention to if we want to specifically get more reach, get more reviews, get growth right now. Everybody feels the rising competition. So especially if I'm starting from scratch or if I feel plateaued, what should be the mindset that I have and what should be the actions that I take in light of the current state of social media at this exact moment?

1:19Thank you so much. Sean, thank you so much. I have a lot of thoughts on this, as you can imagine. Obviously, I've had the luxury of having you pay attention for a long time on this journey. Current state, more rigor. More rigor around thumbnails, copy, first three seconds, the hook, the science around the art is huge. And more commitment to short and long form collaboration. Meaning, doing long form video, films, podcasts, things of that nature, but also doing cut downs for short form and vice versa. The pyramid content thing that I put out years ago. The trends that I think are interesting are pushing the boundaries of the creative.

1:59Meaning, Dustin, you know this, that whole model on TikTok on the stitch where it's like a viral video and then you act in it, right? Like somebody tumbling down a hill and then you tumble in and be like, and now what you should do is buy day trading attention. You know, that's a creative tactic, green screens. If I can get everyone here to understand, it's not as easy as it used to be. I used to be able to yell and be like, be on TikTok. And if you just did it, you won. Now, and back to why I'm like so focused right now, is we're in 301 course land, not 101 course land. So it's creative strategy, brother.

2:33I don't want to call it testing, but being dramatically more curious and creative. Different formats, written, audio, voiceover, humor, seriousness. How much can everyone be a renaissance man and women? How can you be a variety show? You just got to do a lot more and a lot of different stuff on every platform. so LinkedIn versus YouTube Shorts versus TikTok. It's complicated now and the rising competition's gonna get worse and you have AI content coming and you have just so much coming and so it's not gonna get less competitive, it's gonna get more competitive because what I was yelling about when I wrote Crush It, can you show it?

3:13When I wrote that book in 2009, was this is underpriced attention, let's go. And I've been doing it for the last 15 years but now we've hit an inflection point where people figured it out and really comes down to the creative now. And the algorithms create the organic reach. So it's a whole different world and it requires much more creativity and much more curiosity and much more humility. Those are the macro. And then tactically, you really got to understand how these things work and which platforms do what and what's happening in pop culture and how do you tie that into your business? How does Taylor Swift's tour a year ago when it's on fire, how does that factor into your business and can you speak to it or factor it in?

3:55So what's going on in pop culture and what's going on on platforms? I call it PAC, platforms and culture. And who are you trying to target? Too many of you are trying to get to everyone. Like if you know you're targeting 21 to 27 year old male carpenters, go more narrow when you make your content there. But that also means you could be selling to 42 to 49 year old moms in Seattle that drink high end coffee and yoga. You can imagine those two groups need different content. But if you're selling coffee or a book, you want both of them to buy. Get it? Hey Gary, what qualities do you look for in collaborators, whether they're on your team or potential clients?

4:29Robert, I look for emotional intelligence. I look for kindness and warmth. I'm very hot. I'm just like nice. And then you have to figure out if they're good. So I start with humanity. It's easier for me intuitively. Some people are not as good of judge of character. But it's easy for me to be like, oh, I like this person's warmth. Like, let's try it out. And then I try to over articulate to a collaborator or an employee about like what I'm looking for. Like, hey, you're signing up for this. Here's what you're in for. So I over communicate reality. And then judging. So it's, you know, ICJ, right?

5:05Intuition immediately on personality. Clarity on what they're getting into. So if they say yes or no or if I see what I'm talking to them, they're hesitant. Which may lead me to bail out. And then judgment. and judgment and like analyzing. Maybe we want to change it. I see. You know, like once they work with you, then you actually know. You don't know beforehand. Once they know, you're analyzing and then you got to, you know, put deposits into that relationship and try to groom them. So that's how I see the framework. Gary, thanks for everything that you do. My question is about authenticity of my content and using my credentials to my advantage, but not feeling like an egotistical jerk when I say things like, I've won two Emmy Awards in my career.

5:50Maybe it's just me, but I need a little bit of help with this. First of all, that was really cool. Congrats. Those Emmys are pretty gangster. Look, I mean, I think like when I'm introduced and like a five-time, soon to be six-time New York Times bestselling author or he has this many followers, like, you know, it is what it is. Like you've won, like, look, I think this should land. Everybody here knows when someone's trying to brag versus when it's naturally in the conversation. Right? Like, you live in Beverly Hills, I get it. But there's a way to tell me that you live in Beverly Hills that is far more authentic and organic.

6:27I believe that most humans don't realize that they're animals, we're animals. And we can smell things. And I just think we're all very good at smelling when someone's not being authentically, when people are actually bragging, right? And so, look, if I had two Emmys, you would know it. It'd probably be right here. Right? Like, it's okay. You should be proud of your accomplishments. But don't force it. That's all. Don't force it. And I think that's really worked for me. Like, I'm happy to talk about my stuff and I'm happy not to talk about my stuff. There's plenty of times I'm on a podcast and they're like, plug your new book.

7:06And I'm like, eh. And other times where I'm like, the book. And like, it just, if it doesn't feel natural to me then I know it's not gonna feel natural to you. So, there are natural times in your content and your conversation and the way that you roll that you can integrate those two incredible Emmys and there's other times where you shouldn't because you know you're forcing it and you're forcing it into a conversation. Somebody was like, how was the weather? You know, it's funny you say that. When I won my two Emmys, it rained. That's very different than if you're talking about content and you're talking about, hey, Gary, you know, the golf, we think it should be from this angle.

7:41But look, not that two Emmys mean anything, but the reason those won was because we were coming from an aerial. And you see what I mean? Those two, you got to feel it. Hey, Gary. Joey here from the Coral Reef Talk. And I'm developing an online course. And I have an email list that's been growing by offering a free aquarium checklist. But how often do I need to send emails to the entire group so that they're interested whenever the online course drops? That's a great question. Joey, a couple things that I'm concerned about. One, when you acquire emails from a free thing like that checklist, it'll be interesting to see how quality the conversion is.

8:21But obviously it's a very narrow niche and so it should do pretty well. How frequently? Look, I think I would probably send an email to all of them to a live stream where they get to know you better. So instead of like the email being, hey, we're dropping a product soon, buy it. After they came in through a free lens. if you say hey we're doing a live stream from 9 to 10 p.m. on YouTube come here and in that stream you're kind of integrating selling I think you'll find a lot more success and so you want to make them aware that you've got something coming and you should do that and but how you do that matters the tactic and I think the tactic of driving them to live streaming and getting to know you better I think will convert them better in the long term.

9:09So you don't just go from free thing to buy my course. You go from free thing checklist to spend some time with me on live stream to the sale. And so I think find that middle step. Hey, Gary, if you had a new kids YouTube channel in 2024 based on positive moral values, how would you go about marketing that channel? Well, since I do have that exact thing coming with VFriends cartoons coming soon, I can tell you that you know pre-roll YouTube is a big factor organic TikTok is another factor those two stand out tremendously and then mom influencers on Instagram DMing them and trying to find ways to bring them value or at least respectfully making them aware of things those three things stand out my friend so pre-roll YouTube YouTube Kids is obviously huge that's going to give you awareness in that ecosystem TikTok is the place where you can go with youth content that there's a lot of consumption, even teenagers, younger.

10:07Parents see it, then they show their kids. And then three, obviously, mom influencers, if you're DMing them and you're getting them on board, there's a lot there. By the way, before I go to the next one, before I go to the next one, I realized why I just jumped in, and you gotta do a lot of it. Right? Like, you can't DM five mom IG influencers and be like, oh, Gary's thing didn't work. I'm talking like 5 ,000. which is like nine a night, 50 a night, for months and months and years. I reply to every single at GaryVee tweet from 2007 to 11, all of them, you can go look. All of them. As a matter of fact, you know what?

10:48I think we should go back and make that video. Show all of them. It's there, the receipts are there. Like that's gonna be some real work on somebody on the team, maybe the international team, but like going back all the way and finding them, like a three minute, four minute green screen of just like, it's just showing every single, like, with your voice saying exactly what you're saying. Yeah, like, I will even go even deeper but like, anyway, by the way, I don't want this edited. I want everyone to see what just happened. You're constantly creating content. Do you see what just happened? I don't want this edited out.

11:18I want you to see how my brain works of like, oh, I just thought something. Let me talk to my team. Let's go make something. Constant flow of content creation. That goes back to the first question. Sean, you gotta mix it up now. You gotta be better. Hi, Gary. Zach here. You're a master content creator and you have a large audience. Have you ever come up against burnout? And if so, what are some of those tips or things that you do to get yourself back on camera and in front of your audience? Thank you for taking my question. I would argue that I'm in burnout mode right now in some way. There's a lot of times where I'm like, I don't want to be filmed.

11:54I'm in such operation mode right now that, yeah, of course, I'm a human being there's gonna be times where I'm feeling it more than I'm not feeling it right and so you know the way I get back to motivation is it's not sustained because I love it like burnout that's sustained means that you hated it occasional little it burn micro burns instead of burn out is what I like every other huge I think a lot of people call burnout just micro burns right so like there's gonna be weeks and date there's definitely days there's even weeks and now there's even months where I'm like eh because I got out of practice pre-COVID I was just filming all the time it was just like my life post-COVID I'm so operational right now with BeFriends and VaynerX that I'm just head down and like it's kind of hard for me to get up on on these on these video days like we just don't live the same life Dustin and I don't travel 12 hours a day the way DRock and I did.

12:59And when DRock and I were doing that, I was in 40 different settings, a keynote and then meeting an influencer and this meeting and then back in the office for 30 minutes. Now it's like me in my office for 12 hours. That's not as compelling. And then even because I do that all the time, when we go and hit the road, it's a little hard for me to get back on the saddle. And so, yeah, it's an adjustment. Actually, when I post-COVID, when I traveled for the first time without a camera person, it was like weird to me. And the second time, it was like liberating. I'm like, oh, this is relaxing. And that made me not want to do it as much.

13:35And so like, it's all just interesting stuff. You just ebb and flow. Just don't beat yourself up. That's what I would say. Like, if it's meant to be, you'll get back on it. I'm not, you're motivated because you like it. You're motivated because you're ambitious. And so just follow that track. Hey, Gary. Carlos Salmoniego, Redlands, California. I am an enrolled agent. I actually represent people who have IRS tax problems. What would you say would be the one or two strategies that you would use in regards to video on how to attract more clients? Clients that have personal clients or personal or small businesses that have IRS tax problems and they're looking for somebody to help those IRS tax problems.

14:18Thanks again. You're welcome, my friend. That's pretty easy. I would go with, especially if it's you, Carlos, a very heavy green screen strategy. Take articles about IRS issues and make video overlay where you're explaining the issues at hand, right? So take articles from CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, tax.com or whatever the big sites are, things that you have things to contribute to and talk over them over the green screen. And I would focus very heavily on LinkedIn. LinkedIn now has its own For You page, just like TikTok and just like the algorithms work on meta and all these other platforms.

14:58And I would pound LinkedIn and YouTube Shorts, naming the YouTube Shorts videos based on search query of common tax problem questions. Because YouTube's the second biggest search engine. So people are searching in there for certain things. That's what I would do. Hey, Gary, if people are going to use AI to be able to search in the future, is there a recommendation that you have for businesses to be able to get their information out there in a way that AI will pick up to best utilize the attention from that? That is a very good question, April. The answer is content, content, content. We just don't know where and how and what yet.

15:33So video, written word, it's been content, content, content, content, content. And so really, really, really doubling down on that heavy, that's the answer. Like, the answer is we don't know where open AI, first of all, we don't even know which AI is going to win. Right, is it going to be Google? Well, then it's going to come from the same basis of their web stuff, but probably a whole bunch of other stuff. So just content, content, content, content, content. Hey, Gary, thank you so much for taking our questions. My question is this. How do you stay focused when there's so much going on in life?

16:08So, you know, squirrel moments, things that just come up and everyday tasks. what kind of fences or parameters do you have set that keep you on an open track to getting what you want done done? Thank you. My friend, really good admin infrastructure. So having people really care about my time. So my schedule's hardcore. It's really fragmented 15 minute meetings, 30 minute meetings, really tight on my time. and then so it's one is black and white one is gray that's what works for me tactically the calendar the admin admins and calendars the gray is not judging myself like when I do squirrel out or when I do get distracted I'm a human being and I don't dwell it's kind of like the reason people don't get into shape right they go well for a week then they have a big meal they don't even realize they didn't really go up five pounds there's water weight there's all this but they're all bent out of shape and then they like give up whereas if you just got back to good behavior the next day you're good that's how i am with business i see a lot of people spinning out when they're not so my question is um what actionable advice would you offer to someone balancing a family and a demanding career who is um looking to embark or the desires to embark into youtube entrepreneurship without compromising their family life and job security?

17:40This is a great question. Look, so job security, that means you're trying to do this as a side hustle at first with the hope that it brings you value in the future plus family time. Honestly, patience. If you're going to allocate a lot of time to your stability and a lot of time to your family, that means that you're not giving as much time to your dream. There's only 12 to 15 hours a day, you know, 17 18 hours max in a day. You're breaking that up into things. One is your peace of mind and sanity, right? So that's gym, that's watching TV, that's laughing at a YouTube video, that's talking on the phone with your friend.

18:22The other is family. The other is your stability, like you mentioned, your job. And then the last part is your dream. What's my advice? To give your dream as much time as possible because you would never get to your dream if you don't give it time. You don't want to have that come at the expense of the other things, but there's a cost of entry. And so as long as you're good with your dream coming true in six years instead of two years, well then you can allocate more time to those other things. If you're not okay with that, you have to realize that that means that you might have to have a cost.

18:55Everything in life has a price. That's just the reality. And so I think it's just, everyone's balance is different. I thought, I work crazy, right? but I grew up in a place where the fact that I'm home on Saturdays is like insanity. Insanity. I grew up the first, from 14 to 34, I worked every Saturday and my father worked every minute and Saturday and Sunday and so I thought when I was a grown up, I worked later because of technology but I don't know like I thought I was around so much more and like had more work-life balance than my dad even though I was working more in some ways and so you know but if someone looked at my life and had a parent that worked nine to five they think I work crazy so everyone has their own judgment on balance when I hear that you don't want to compromise your family time or your stability, and I know that you're going to need some leisure, looks like you work out in the video, then that just means you're giving your dream less time and so you need to be patient.

20:16You're not going to get to your dream as fast as someone who's giving it 15 hours a day when you're giving it two. And that's okay. Two is amazing. You just have to be patient and accountable. Don't blame other people who are successful and be like, well, they got lucky. No, they didn't. They did it for 15 hours a day. You're doing it for two hours a day. I want to build a brand that combines the niche of gaming and personal development in order to share my journey of overcoming multiple disabilities on the way to financial, spiritual, and physical freedom. How can I combine these niches and connect with people who might be interested?

21:01I love it. Thank you. Such a great question. I think for you, what stands out for me is streaming, streaming, streaming. Like I think that, especially if you're talking gaming and personal development, I think you need to get on Twitch and TikTok live and start streaming live. And like, I promise you, three seconds into watching you, you're a motivation and inspiration for many. You just got to find them all and you got to put in the reps. And so I think, especially if you're talking about gaming, I think you need to be really seriously looking at Twitch or TikTok or YouTube live and stream on all of them.

21:38Use StreamYard, connect them all, go live, and just start putting in the reps just like I did. Nobody followed me until the first person. It's day by day putting out that content. And I think you doing gaming or talking about gaming videos, just being a streamer will crush. Hi, Gary. How important do you think other social media platforms are to YouTubers in 2024? Is it still worth posting content over there or should we just focus solely on YouTube? I believe that depending on how big you want to be, what you want to achieve, you want to have attention everywhere. That's the purpose of the latest book that I wrote.

22:13And so I think it's always been important for YouTubers to be relevant in other platforms. And I think the more you do that, the more success you'll have. Of course, you know, some will say focus on one thing. Sure, YouTube can be your house but the other social platforms have to be the restaurants you visit have to be your vacation have to be your place of work YouTube can be your house but you go to many other places your job you go every day and so that can be TikTok or that can be Instagram the restaurants you visit could be once a week that might be Facebook or LinkedIn and vacations like you can post on Snapchat once in a while and that's how I would do it alright last one Hey Gary Matt from Greyhacker we have an education channel and the views have been plateauing and there's so much competition.

22:57I wanted to ask you, how did you establish yourself as an expert that the audiences can trust with every piece of content that they publish? Thank you. Being branded an expert comes from being earned. You can't position yourself that way. You can just speak your truth and then the audience decides that you know what you're talking about at scale. And so that would be the focus, in my opinion, and that's how I would think about it. And so that's what I would do. that's what I see and that's how I think you should attack it. You don't get to decide you're an expert. They do and so just keep putting in the reps and follow the tactics of the other questions like put out more content, YouTube shorts, TikTok, Instagram along with long form YouTube.

23:40You just need more attention because competition's gonna keep coming. Everybody, thank you so much for having me. I hope this brought you value. I hope the book brings you value and I can't wait to see you in the real world.