MicroVee: Which social media platform is right FOR YOU? |GaryVee Podcast Moment

0:00If you're just starting a social media journey or trying to figure out which platform actually deserves your time in 2025, this episode is gold. Welcome back to another episode of the Gary V Audio Experience. In today's episode, Gary breaks down his beginner roadmap to social media marketing. From the smartest platforms to post on depending on your business type, to the overlooked formats that actually work. Whether you're selling t-shirts or SaaS, this one gives you a crystal clear strategy to stop guessing and start executing. Let's get right into it. For you today, what would be the top three platforms to be on?

0:32Because there are so many. And what would you do on each of them? If you were starting now, what would you do on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook? Yeah, so I think, again, back to the earlier point of self-awareness, if you're selling B2B, all of a sudden LinkedIn is number one, right? If you're selling, if you're a SaaS, if you started a SaaS business, if you're listening right now and you want to, or you sell to lawyers, you have a service that sells to lawyers, then LinkedIn's gonna be number one globally for sure, with YouTube shorts probably being number two because YouTube is a search engine and a lot of people search there so that would also be good if you were into SaaS.

1:11And then probably in that scenario, I would then say if you're selling a B2B service, after those two, probably Facebook grounded in a Facebook group with then Twitter X being probably fourth. If you're selling SaaS, Instagram's probably a distant fifth. Snapchat, Pinterest, they're super far away in that scenario. if you're selling t-shirts to 15 to 25 year olds all of a sudden tiktok becomes number one instagram probably becomes number two in that scenario and youtube shorts is number three right so i think for a lot of people that's that reality for broader markets i think that if you're really trying to sell something like to the broad consumer call it for everybody who's 25 to 55 Well, now you start getting into Facebook still being an incredibly powerful platform for selling.

2:09I do think that organic TikTok for branding is exciting. Instagram, again, becomes a stronger selling platform. But both of those scenarios require ads more than organic reach. Whereas TikTok, you can win on organic reach and kind of capture lightning in a bottle. So, I hope everybody appreciates the answer. It is contextual, but I think as far as the answer to what you would do inside of it, obviously there's a lot of science and math of what time do you post, how long is the copy, I think a couple things to look out for. Number one, the best YouTubers in the world, starting with MrBeastDown, spend more time and more money on their thumbnail than you could ever imagine.

2:53So number one, for everybody who's gonna do video, and again that's a whole nother conversation because for some people it should be written word, some people should be doing audio, some people should be doing video. But I think the thumbnail on video is incredibly important. I think the first three seconds thing that Dustin and I were talking about on our trip this week is, do we need the hook from the thumbnail to be delivered on in the first two or three or four seconds and we really believe we do. we believe that if my hook says you know 30 to 40 year olds you should be thinking about LinkedIn and if my opening line is like before we get into that you know like you might in two seconds you may lose that audience and so I think a lot of science around the art I think a couple of other things there's a lot of ways to do it let me encourage some people one thing that I've been noticing is on Instagram you could just take a photo of something right you were here with your a friend this weekend in New York.

3:54You can take a photo of like a nice picture that caught your eye in New York, take a photo. But if you then wrote three paragraphs, really great ones, because you're a great writer, about the concept of enjoying the weekends to reset, of the concept of busyness and chaos, and controlled chaos is an effective way to be an entrepreneur. You could write the, you know, curiosity. I've been to New York seven times, but I've never gone down this street. Like you could take a photo of anything, a banana, a car, a tree, a bird, your backyard. You really could take a photo of almost anything and then write three or four paragraphs that are very thoughtful about a point you're trying to make.

4:42Now all of a sudden you don't need a video and editing team. You could do it all by yourself. And for a lot of people listening, they're not great on camera, they're not great with their words, but they're incredible writers. And so it's around self-awareness of the style, the content, and then there's strategy around the distribution depending on your business. And so that's one main theme. To keep getting very nerdy and deep on your question, the other thing to always look for is underpriced attention. The thing that I know you know about me over these last seven, eight years is that I have a very strong skill set in understanding where there's more organic reach against consumption and when to do it hard than most people and that's been a big part of my success.

5:32You were there when I was yelling about Musical.ly and TikTok when that seemed crazy to almost everyone. You weren't there but people that have been following me all the way back to 2005, six and seven, there was an incredible amount of content and passion I had around YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. I mean I wrote Crush It in 2008. Came out in 09, but I wrote it in 2008. That's 15 years ago. Long time. So I think that I constantly look for the underpriced attention. It's always most exciting when it comes up in a new platform, but new platforms only come around every three, four, seven, nine years.

6:15Then when it's not a platform, it goes into the things we just talked about. The strategy within the platforms. I talked about recently, and it's already lost momentum in a month, but a month ago, I was incredibly excited about posting a meme and then a video on Instagram, a two post carousel. I saw that. And I see incredible opportunity in that. again, almost talking to Dustin, I'm almost having my own meeting right now, one thing that continues to work for me is taking headlines that are happening in pop culture business and doing a green screen and talking over it. That model continues to work better than if I just looked in camera right now and talked about it.

6:58And even when the green screen video is not great quality, like it doesn't look good but it works. Correct, to your point, my last one, which did really well, I was in the car and the light was hitting a different way and it wasn't like my, yeah, it was like distorted. That's right. But I think that that's, I think a great strength of mine that I would encourage people to consider is constantly trying new formats. You know, I'll use you as an example. We've talked in the past, whether on DM or Twitter or in a VFriends Discord or like this, about like, hmm, I'd like to get more traction. I want more views on my videos.

7:40And something that I don't think I've given good advice on in the past to you or the hundreds of thousands of people that have asked me is, look, if you have the same exact format, format, not you're talking about different things, but it's camera to face and you post it as an Instagram reel and you're doing that 50, 100 times, and you're not getting really the results you want after 100 times, you've gotta change it. You've gotta change your format. Maybe you bring on a guest. Maybe you go to green screen. Maybe you go to written word and picture. I think, you know, I always think about that concept of like, you know, the definition of insanity is like doing the same thing over and over and thinking you'll have a different outcome.

8:21So I do think, I wanna give permission to a lot of people out there, like, if you've done a hundred, and I think that's the right thing, if you've done a hundred of the same format per se, and you're really, really getting nowhere, and you're now six months in. You know, you should challenge yourself to try different formats. Not talk about something different. Just talk about the same thing in a different... You know, like, look, I believe in 40 to 50 core things and then I layer what's happening in the world at the time and new and different formats and platforms. And I think there's something there, there.

8:58No, that's good advice. I'm gonna try that. Because I love doing reels, like I love doing the video. and some work, some don't. And then something that works on Instagram, then I put it on TikTok, it doesn't work over there. Yeah, TikTok's a whole different animal. It's so hard. Yeah, it's hard, it is hard. But I think, you know, I remind people like yourself, myself, I say this to myself all the time, if you're looking for something special to happen, it's supposed to be hard. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Like, I hear, you know, right? Like even, right? Yeah, it's supposed to be hard. Yeah, like I was in this, I was, where was I?

9:30Oh, Friday night, I was in an airport lounge in Dallas, and this gentleman, maybe like a 60-year-old guy, he was a real yappy guy. I was trying to get a little work done before my flight to LA, but he wanted to talk, and I'm about that, he had no clue who I was or anything like that nature, we were just talking. And he got into something, and he was like, it really seemed to me that this was a gentleman, and I confirmed some of this through the conversation, you know, really, really came from rural America, really like came from nothing, nothing and made a life of himself. And, you know, it was really nice and his son was getting married in Tennessee in a couple weeks.

10:06Really enjoyed the conversation. But he kind of talked about, you know, how hard he worked and then he was talking about what was hard for him now. And I kind of had this fun moment where I was like, hey brother, like you of all people know, like you didn't get to this point by accident. You don't have to do the next thing, but it's not going to happen without hard work. And so I think, you know, yeah, I think people ask to be known, to get compensated for being themselves, to sell books, to speak, to sell things. It should be hard because 99 % of the world works for someone else.