- On this episode, I talk about acting human
in an automated world.
I talk about East Coast versus West Coast.
And I talk about being over here
while you're over there.
(vibrant music)
You ask questions, and I answer them.
This is The #AskGaryVee Show.
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You're watching Episode 31
of The #AskGaryVee Show as you know
and 31 little fun fact on that number,
that is the newest number in my roulette gambling career
because Misha, that's right Misha my lovely daughter
was born on the 31st, that got added to rotation.
Xander, born on the 17th, he's my youngest,
but my Grandma already had that number
so no new number because of Xander.
Before we get into the questions this week,
I want to obviously talk about the new thing,
you might have noticed me mentioning it in the intro,
I am now doing an audio podcast, which is up on iTunes.
There's also a link right here (bell dinging)
and there's an RSS feed in that page
on garyvaynerchuk.com for all you Android users.
We're gonna be on Stitcher and, you know, all this other stuff
(bell dinging) probably this week, Google Play this week.
Really enjoying it.
Little fun fact for all of you that are listening right now.
Episode 29 and 30 of last week,
I was in San Francisco,
the audio quality wasn't great
so we decided to take it out of the rotation of the audio.
You're getting this one, so you'll see a little skip there.
Also, Episode 5 had that iconic issue
so you don't see that in the rotation.
For all you video peeps, now you have the ability
to take me on the go when you're running
or in the car, if you're not sitting down and watching.
Super excited about the podcast.
Please sign up. (bells dinging)
You see what I'm doing, DRock.
Sign up, enjoy it, pass it on.
Lots of people in the podcast world
enjoying that kind of stuff.
I'm excited to be a part of it.
- [Steve] Maurizio asks "I'm a self-taught
"social media marketer.
"Is it worth doing a course on it
"when I'm applying for jobs?"
- Maurizio, you know it's an interesting question.
I'm self-taught.
I didn't take any courses in social media.
I think it's done okay for me.
But in general, I'm not a good student either.
I never took a real substantial course
in business or marketing either
and that's worked out all right for me.
I think this is an answer that really matters
based on being self aware.
I think if you find yourself as somebody
who, in general, being a self-taught social media expert,
in general, I'm cynical to that.
I think 99% of you are clowns
and are just reading headlines
and are not practitioners and don't go deep.
I'm even scared of you taking a course
because most of the courses I've seen
when I've come and spoke at that class,
when I vetted the teacher through
the, them interviewing me process,
I've realized they were clowns.
So in a whole Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus
kind of environment, it all scares me.
I would tell you the thing that most matters to me
is to become the most surgical deepest
knowledgeable practitioner you can be.
But I can't really answer this for you.
There's too many variables.
One, are the courses good?
Two, are you the type that actually can learn
in that environment?
I can't.
On the flip side, by being a practitioner,
that's the best way I learn.
So that's a whole lot of ego and bravado
and I apologize for all my listeners on iTunes
that aren't used to this but I'm just spitting the truth.
Social media right now is in a very awkward early stage.
If you go back and look at the early internet marketers
of 1995, six, seven, eight, nine,
they were spewing a lot of crap as well.
So it's a difficult time.
I would say this, in five years I'd feel
a hell of a lot more comfortable you taking that course.
- [Steve] Chase asks "On an average day,
"how many impressions do your tweets get?"
- Chase.
- [Steve] Oh I was gonna say--
- Chase, stick there Steve.
Chase, this man has done the work,
give him the credit.
Give him the air time.
Steve.
What is, what is the answer?
- So, his 28-day average is 240,000 impressions per day
and that's 6.7 million over the last 28 days.
- There you go, that is the answer.
And let's give you a better answer
to everybody overall because I'm not sure what that means
or if we care, the more important question is
"How many of those impressions cared?"
What I can tell you is in 2011 when I had 100,000 followers
on Twitter, I was getting more engagement,
more interaction, selling more books,
getting more people to watch my videos because of it.
This speaks to the thing
that I most care about in the world.
The supply and demand of attention.
Nothing else matters.
Going to platforms early on
when there's early tribes there
and they're paying more attention,
that is to me the upside of jumping into Snapchat early.
The upside of jumping into new platforms like Vine early.
You look at the first people that over indexed it on Vine,
they are massively internet famous right now
on YouTube and Snapchat and Instagram
and other places along with Vine.
The ones that are popping now on Vine
are not getting to that same level.
So, the impressions, the reach, it matters,
but the depth is what matters the most
and more importantly, the attention of that consumer
on that platform.
When something's new, it's a little more sticky.
When a new song comes out,
you listen to it a bunch of times
and then it gets into rotation.
Twitter right now is in rotation
in a social media world
versus where it was four or five years ago.
So though my top line followers are more,
it's my depth that I worry about
and that is a thesis and a strategy
that all of you need to figure out across the board.
- [Steve] Robert asks "Back in the old school days
"of hip hop, were you East Coast, West Coast, or both?"
- Robert, Biggie changed my life so I'm East Coast.
But I will tell you something.
I'm gonna throw you for a real curve ball.
Specially cause it's good times in Cleveland right now.
I'm a little bit more Cleveland.
I was all in, I mean like let's put all the pieces in here.
I was all in on Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
Take me to the cross roads,
every time East 99 is where you'll find me.
So I'm a little bit more Cleveland.
- Hey Gary, it's Jason Calacanis.
Love the new show and just a question for you.
Short or long videos?
I like long ones, you do short ones.
Who's right in this situation?
What's the value of short versus long videos?
Explain.
- Great question @Jason.
Fun to see some of the internet famous peeps
showing up on the show.
You know, it's funny, I hear him say
"I like long ones, you like short ones."
Wine Library TV was 30 minutes everyday
so I've been in the long game
unless he's talking an hour which is fine.
But like now we're getting into nitpicking.
I like both.
Here's what I would say.
Avatar, three-plus hour movie.
People sat, listened to it, loved it.
A tremendous Jerome Jarre,
my partner in GrapeStory,
six-second Vine video, people love it, sit through it.
I actually think, Jason, and VaynerNation,
that length has no variable on quality.
You need to play within your length
but you can watch an hour and forty-minute movie
and think it sucks, right?
Or you can watch a six-second Vine and think it sucks
to counter my earlier point of those quality outputs
within those time lengths.
So, to me, which one's better?
Both, cause I'm a positive guy.
Somebody would say neither.
And I think it comes down to what are you doing
within those constraints and I think it becomes contextual.
The skill it takes to make three-hour feature film
is very different than the skill it takes
to make a six-second Vine video
or 15-second Instagram video
to capture somebody's attention.
So, that's my answer.
- [Steve] George asks "What's your take
"on marketing automation software?"
- George, the key here is, you know,
I'm not a huge fan of automation.
I've talked about that ad nauseam.
Matter of fact, once and for all,
because it keeps coming up,
and I know a lot of people are now new listeners on iTunes.
If you ever get a Tweet from me
or reply to a YouTube comment
or a reply in the Facebook comments
like I did all weekend, it is me.
There is no outsourcing of my engagement.
I had to make a video to prove it this weekend.
I don't know if you guys saw that.
Like to prove that it was me Tweeting.
It is me.
The way to humanize automation for people
that want to send out things is the follow-up.
So if you put something out and you schedule it,
not my style, I'm against that.
Because here's what's dangerous about automation,
specially in social and email,
for all the people, I had a lot of friends
and I killed them on this.
Let's go back to a very sad day.
The Boston Marathon massacre, right.
After that happened, over the next hour or two,
the amount of people that Tweeted
promotional buy my book, check out my show,
sign up for my course, my friends.
I was emailing and DMing them saying
"You are ruining your brand.
"There are forty people right now that will never
"respect you again because of what you're doing."
So in a world where everything is real time,
scheduling is dangerous for those anomaly moments
where you can look really bad.
Don't let mainstream media pick you up
that you're promoting your book
after the President's been shot
or a building's been exploded
or terrorist act happened because that can be the end
of your career completely.
To me that is not worth the upside of the automation.
But if you go the automation route, fine.
Here's how you make it human.
You act human behind it.
You put something out, people are engaging with it,
you come in humanly and engage it.
This will be always a debate that I'm in a minority
which is I want to scale the unscalable
in a world where people are trying to use modern
technology to scale.
It's as simple as that.
I'm counter cultural.
I'm over here, you're over here.
You're over here, I'm over here
and I will stay here because I believe in it
and I believe in it not because I'm romantic
or Zen or such a great guy.
I believe in it because I think it sells shit.
You've been watching Episode 31
of The #AskGaryVee Show.
Here is the question of the day.
Two-parter.
One, and this is for the YouTube comments
than anywhere else.
One, are you going to sign up for the podcast?
Yes, no. It's quite simple.
Don't let it get complicated.
Number two, for all you iTunes people
that are listening right now
or Stitcher or anybody who's listening on the RSS,
jump into my YouTube channel
and answer this question for me.
What can I do to make this a tremendous
audio podcast for you?
You keep asking questions,
I'll keep answering them.
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