Top 8 Social Media Marketing Tips That Still Work in 2025

0:00Podcast Nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement. as you probably heard at this point because I had John from Stan on the show. I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.Store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan Store Challenge which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly, by my overall content. The tech stack, all these features and the minimal costs per month that Stand Store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that I envisioned when I wrote Crush It, when I wrote Crushing It and this overall thing I'm thinking a lot about lately which is the individual empire, right?

0:48This creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me, you've got the ambition within yourself but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan store Stan dot store but specifically I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I want to get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things so if you want to go see those cool things go to GaryVee.com slash Stan S-T-A-N now to the podcast this is the Gary Vee audio experience

1:36I had to pay a newspaper to put an advertising in the newspaper. I had to pay a cable company to run my TV commercial. I had to pay for a billboard to show my sign. I had to pay the marketing direct mail company to make a flyer and send it into your mailbox so you would see it. I had to pay. Today, the attention of the world lives in here. The things that dominate here is gaming and entertainment and social networks. People here complain that they're not getting a lot of views on their videos on Instagram or TikTok or these platforms, but they have forgotten that it's free. Let me say this nice and slow.

2:33Today, if you were to advertise on social networks, the cost of showing up, not making it, but showing up is free. This is crazy. Google, which I used a lot, Google AdWords. How many people here do Google AdWords pretty aggressively for their business? A little higher, I just want to get a sense. A lot of you. Google charges you money when somebody clicks. Not everybody converts. You try to figure out if the amount you pay, do enough people convert, that it's worth your money. But it still costs you money. The social network revolution is insane. It is free to build brand. Most people in this room, most people in Brazil, most people in South America, most people in the world do not produce enough content for how big the opportunity is for free attention.

3:36That is the biggest elephant in this room today.

3:44For you today, what would be the top three platforms to be on? Because 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, And back to the earlier point of self-awareness, if you're selling B2B, all of a sudden LinkedIn is number one. 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 sell, 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.

4:25and 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 and that's the area and YouTube Shorts is number three. 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.

5:23I 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

5:52Now, what's the importance of diversifying your content? I love you for that. Clearly, maybe you've been, you know, I've been a little bit loud about this last 60 days. I'm writing a new book next year. It's going to be called Day Trading Attention. So I've been in it, trying to teach everybody how to win on every platform, TikTok, YouTube, because social media is the current place where attention is. If the metaverse comes, I'll be telling you what to do in those fucking headsets. I don't care where attention is. cable TV 20 years ago I'd be writing books like cable TV 40 years ago regular TV regular TV 80 years ago radio how to hack radio I just want to know where the attention is Spotify rap caviar is important today it used to be called TRL it used to be called The Source I don't give a fuck I'm agnostic to what platform has the attention I just want to figure out where it is I want to be great at it I don't hear social media I hear TikTok and then I double click.

6:46TikTok regular post, TikTok live. Different. I don't hear LinkedIn. I'm not just where you put your resume. No, no, I hear that's a social network. Double click. There's regular posts. There's video. There's written word. There's pictures. This is science. It's skill. So diversifying content is the number one reason that the person on the other side of this video right now is not popping off like she, he wants to. People get stuck in ruts. they got something that worked for them or they're comfortable with and they're posting the same shit they posted five years ago on Instagram even though a ton of people are now on TikTok and Instagram so there's less it's different and we've already seen all that shit from you and they get tired.

7:30We all grew up with shit that was hot as fuck and then three years later it was less hot because we got it. That's why Madonna was a beast. She was like, oh, I got you four years now I'm a material girl now let me go on a cross and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be Vogue and she just kept mixing it the fuck up. Remixing, kept remixing. We understand. And by the way, we see that all the time. There's the people that have one pitch and they're hot for three years and we never heard about them again. Right? And then there's people that are fucking icons. Why? Because they diversified their content.

8:04That's major.

8:09The best YouTubers in the world starting with MrBeastDown spend more time and more money on their thumbnail than you could ever imagine. So 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?

8:46And 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 friend this weekend in New York. You could take a photo of like a nice picture that caught your eye in New York.

9:21Take 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, now all of a sudden you don't need a video and editing team.

10:09You 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 skillset 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.

10:54You 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, 2006, and 2007, there was an incredible amount of content and passion I had around YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. I mean, I wrote Crush in 2008. Came out in 2009, 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.

11:38Then 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, you know, 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.

12:21And 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, I was like distorted. That's right.

12:41Content. I always said to myself, do I got content or I'm just documenting my journey because I'm going to let this shit whether you record it or not. So what's the difference between content and documenting the journey? Yeah. There was a moment, there was a kid in here, it was a big moment for me, it exploded for me. We were just chopping, and I just, because thank God I was filming back there, and I just said, he's like, I don't know what to make. I said, document, don't create. Right? People have shoot days. I'm an influencer. I'm on today. I'm going to make stuff. That's commercials. That's TV.

13:12That's fine, by the way. That works for a lot of people. People like you and me, and a lot of people out there, we should be documenting not creating right because what we do is just who we are you know the best shit you ever said the best shit I ever said it's lost I said some shit to my sister the other and I'm like motherfucker I wish that shit was filled you know like so the difference is not a lot the key for everyone is to be self aware of who they are some people this is what blew me away maybe this hit you too as my life started I started rubbing elbows with different kind of people. I'm like, yo, some of these comedians and actors suck in real life.

13:55But in the context of doing it for film, they're beasts. And then I did enough TV and different shit. I'm like, oh, this shit's slow. You go do a movie, you're like, da, da, da. All right, back in the trailer for three hours. I'm like, fuck this shit. For other people, we like it. Raw, clean, authentic, no bullshit, no fucks with it. That works for us. So for everybody on the other side, there's two groups. There's the people that should do it the actors way. They should make the studio proper. They need to memorize their lines. And then there's us, more improv. We're more SNL than we are feature film.

14:29Improv, live life, on stage, in the kitchen, around a dinner table, chopping, stoop life. It's that shit. And so, cool. Neither is better. The key is, does everyone on the other side of this know who they are? and are they trying to force it?

14:50What is universally true for everyone in this room, regardless of where you are on the journey within this industry, is that the far majority of individuals, humans here, and companies are not taking advantage of what's happening in LinkedIn right now. So just from a pure practical standpoint, there's so many wants and dreams and hopes and things that you want to happen in this room and one of the most significant opportunities to make that thing happen is actually knowing how to make content for LinkedIn and actually posting it and actually reaping the benefits of it. LinkedIn right this second is acting like a social network more similar to what Facebook was in 2013 and 14 and the land grab for B2B companies and B2B2C companies that I've watched over the last two years grow and explode and really, I won't use the word exploit, but just so everybody understands, no ads, just taking advantage of best practices to create organic reach is disproportionately the underpriced attention, the underutilized move of this collective room.

16:02You can literally make videos and pictures and run$25 to$50,$100 on LinkedIn against employees of venture capital firms and reach them and not have to go to conferences and pray that you'll run into them in the hallway to pitch them your startup. And this is results tomorrow. LinkedIn content for your business. You can literally reach everyone. So many people's agendas here today is to do business development. Right, you'll listen to my talk, but what you're worried about is what's gonna happen out there and what's gonna happen tonight. That's why you're here. That's the actual business. The fact that I know that scales 365 days a year, if you spend the five or 10 hours to do research on how do I make good LinkedIn content.

16:48By the way, there's an incredible website that will tell you everything you should do. I know some of you are taking notes. I'll spell out the website for you. G-O-O, thank you for doing that. That made my fucking morning. You can literally type in, how do I make LinkedIn content for an insurance SaaS company enter and get obnoxious amount of results with best practices? This isn't about when I talk about this stuff, they're like, Gary, but how do I do it? That's like saying, how do I get into shape? Everybody here knows how to get into shape. It's called stop eating shit and go to the gym. Doing it is hard.

17:31I promise you that if every person here leaves, And does proper, because there's the right way to do pushups versus the wrong way, does proper LinkedIn content three times a day that they would see miraculous results for their business a year later.

17:51Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey, have changed the NFL's business. Without the NFL being part of its plan at all. That's right. What is the attention message from that? I know you're a big NFL fan. Yes, I am. Like, is there a message in that? Yes, of course there is. It's actually one of the biggest parts of the book, which is that everybody on earth underestimates pop culture. What happened with Taylor and Kelsey is they're cross-pollinating their platforms. So if you're a mechanic in Detroit, like I said in this post on social, you're not thinking about hitting up the Thai restaurant down the street to do a piece of social media content.

18:28I know that's true today. Yet, that's the kind of left-field post that will get people's attention. And so what I see there is, what do I think about pop culture? I think it's one of the most significant currencies on earth. What if you're lucky enough to have an employee that works for you that's first name is Travis and another one that's first name is Taylor? Like literally you're a law firm, Travis Johnson, Taylor Smith. Maybe they're both guys because Taylor is obviously a name that can go in either way. You can easily use the micro moment of the infatuation of our society to do something clever and silly.

19:04What people don't realize is that little clever video on Instagram that only got 90 views. One of those 90 views is someone who's actually considering to hire an attorney and they actually like the fact that you were a little silly and not buttoned up and you made them feel more comfortable to reach out to you to work with your law firm or your dentist's place or your, like, people are very linear. They don't realize how big pop culture is and how they can factor into their boring business. I had a gentleman reach out to me who asked, literally I used a concrete cement business in one of my analogies in a piece of content.

19:40He literally owned a asphalt business. He literally started to make TikToks even though he thought it was the wildest, craziest thing he'd ever heard and it literally has doubled his business. An asphalt seller, like guy that comes and redoes your driveway, made a couple TikToks, one went decent, another one went viral and literally, if I recall properly the email, a business that was doing$800 ,000 a year servicing a local area, I think he was in Wisconsin, is now doing 2.5 million. The tears were coming through the email. But most people who are listening to this podcast who are in a B2B or like a different kind of business are not thinking how TikTok can work for them.

20:24Right, and pop culture doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have your celebrity endorser. Correct. You're playing off of what the conversations that are going on. It's like being good at a cocktail party, right? Think of this as your social media marketing. You go out tonight and it's a fundraiser of your local PTA or the school or it's the banquet for the high school basketball team. Are you the kind of person that comes to that event and you're enjoyable to talk to and have a circle around you? Or are you in the corner by yourself? The reality is being an introvert and not being comfortable in that is incredibly appropriate and awesome as a business You'd like to think that you're trying to market and get business and so to me there's so much more permission for creativity Than people allow themselves, but you know like people continue to like wear their suit and tie in their LinkedIn profile And like they don't understand the room is what I also ultimately think I think like you take the most stuffed-up person you know.

21:24Literally, I want everyone to close their eyes and just think about the most buttoned up, stuffy, rigid person you know. I promise you, if that person goes to Las Vegas right now with their best friends from college for a weekend, they're going to be a different version of themselves than you know them. And I think businesses and brands have more permission to be contextual to the room they're distributing the content in. When I make Facebook content, I'm thinking about parents. Because I know the demo's going to be older. Those are going to be different videos that I'm putting into TikTok where I know they're gonna be youngsters.

21:56The words and the videos and the slang and everything I say and do is different. Yet I believe most people are just making a video and then pushing them out on these channels and expecting for it to succeed. They think of it as distribution. I think of it as a place you have to be contextual to win the room.

22:16I would just ask maybe what would be some advice that you have for someone who's just starting off? What are some things maybe you've seen specific to the fitness industry, but it helps scale and then maybe just in general, eventually I'd like to kind of grow my own kind of personal brand, even down the road, step away from the gym, just kind of grow online. Amazing. Everything I just heard, and as you can imagine, there may not be a more cliche stereotype than the fitness dude who built a fitness business on social and then decided to teach everybody how to build business and build a personal brand.

22:49You're like in my pocket. The answer to the question is, you need to post 30 times a day on social media. But you have to be good at it. So what you need to do is what I just said about AI. You need to start Googling and YouTubing and podcasting and educate yourself on something I call SOC. Strategic, organic content. Not just posting happy fucking Wednesday and hoping it works. Like why are you posting? Let me just pull it up right now. Watch this. They're like this. I'm going into my phone. I'm going into my content team, WhatsApp. and apologize, I need to run to a meeting so I'm gonna run out pretty quickly here so I apologize.

23:26I'm gonna scroll up. Here it is. Here we go. This morning at 7.21 a.m., Mackenzie on my team said, good morning, I need you to post at 5.04 p.m. and 7.07 p.m. on Instagram. One needs to be a carousel, one needs to be a reel. This is called the science behind the art. I'm not out here posting randomly for ha ha ha. My social media strategy is not the following.

24:03All of yours is. I need you to understand the thumbnail. The first three seconds. What time you post. How many words. Which platform. What's going on in LinkedIn carousels that's different than Facebook carousels. Facebook Reels. What are broadcast channels? Do you know what the fuck is going on? This is now the television. And until you understand that, you are leaving money on the table, back to scaring them. This is how it works, brother. Right now, everyone, most likely, is just leaving double growth on the table. And then it becomes the thing that puts them out of business. And so, please take this serious.

24:45What you need to do, how many times a day do you post? I know it's nothing. How many? probably once a day, probably once a day. And some days not even, right? Yeah, some days not even. Right. It'd be better about one a day and flooding the stories and stuff. Think about where I am in my career and where I want to go and where you are, you want to grow. You're day one. I shouldn't be the one in this relationship posting 55 times a day. You understand? Yeah. You will get customers on LinkedIn. You will get customers on YouTube Shorts. You will get customers on Snap Discovery. You will get customers on Pinterest.

25:17And you're in the best business. You're in the visual business. Take your shirt off and let's go. I gotta go.