#AskGaryVee Episode 111: Donald Trump, User Generated Content, & Ted Rubin Asks a Question

“on using curated content?” – Avinash, great question. You know, it’s funny, I’m not
a big user of curated content at all. And UGC, user-generated content, is a thing that a lot of brands
at Vayner have played with. You mentioned Guy. Guy has done a ton of that. You know, I think it’s
a very smart tactic. As a matter of fact, I think that I’ve not done a good job in using it. My biggest problem with
user-generated content is the same reason that
I don’t give quotes to other authors even
though I get bombarded every week of, “Can you give me a quote?” If I’m gonna give you a
quote to your book, friend, I need to read it. I don’t read books. I don’t have time to read those books and the reason I have to read it is if you see something
stupid in chapter 17 and there’s so many people
saying so many stupid things about business and marketing and social that I’m scared to give my name on it because then I’m endorsing you but then you’re saying like, here’s the way to hack
Twitter and it’s wrong. Or here’s my point of view
on Pinterest or it’s wrong or here’s how to manage
people and it’s wrong. I’m not on the same
side as a lot of people on a lot of things. It’s just the way it is. And that doesn’t allow me to do that. It’s the same reason
user-generated content scares me because I feel that if I’m
curating it, I’m endorsing it. And who has time to go
down the rabbit hole? It’s why so many of you hit me up and say, I wanna, you know, I just got a spammy ass email that I almost sent to you
and I was like, forget it. It’s just like, it was like so ridiculous. It’s like, Gary, can you
give me an hour of your time to do this simulcast? Which I didn’t go down her rabbit hole but I think she’s charging for. And like, she had this
whole thing and it said, what’s in it for you? And it’s like, you get side
by side of 19 other marketers that she’s also arbitraging. The whole thing was so gangster. I don’t know, just a
lot of [bleep] going on. Next question, India. That had nothing to do with
the question at the end. It was just me ranting of how pissed I am. But my point was that she’s
user-generating content. Some of the names she had on there, like I flat-out knew were
people that are like ugh, lowest common denominator e-book stuff, and just like I don’t want to
be associated with that crap and like, first of all,
she seemed like crap but like, if she wasn’t,
did she know they were crap? Like, I don’t know. People are just not doing
their homework, India. – [India] It’s true. – I never did my homework, in school.

– [Voiceover] James asks, “should
I be writing unique content “on LinkedIn and Medium or
is it okay to repurpose “the content I’ve already
published on my blog?” – James, I’m a believer in both. The truth is we’ve been
testing both as a team. I do think, I think you can use, specifically Medium and LinkedIn, I feel very comfortable
in cross-pollinating ’cause I do think that
there’s some intellectual, above the brow, kind of,
similarities on Medium and LinkedIn so those are very comfortable. If you said, Medium and Snapchat, the same one minute video,
I’d feel uncomfortable ’cause I think the context
of the room is different. I think Medium and LinkedIn are similar. So if you feel like your audience and the context of the room, the vibe when you go into it, are similar then I think you can get away with it. And so we look at Facebook and LinkedIn and Medium having similarities but you guys see what
I’m doing on Snapchat if you’re not following me,
put up the QR code, DRock. Lot of editing here today. Gonna be here late on a Friday, no bullshit half-day
Fridays for you, DRock. Anyway, you know, I’m not
gonna do the same stuff on Snapchat that I’m doing, and I’m trying to do different stuff. But Medium and LinkedIn,
I feel fine with that. Now, I think we’re doing it
’cause we’re busy as crap and we’re pumping out a ton of content. You’re different than me. The people that are watching
are different than me. If you have the time, I think it’s amazing if you could start the for article with two
or three different lines in the first sentence that maybe even acknowledge of like I’d love to do and India,
this maybe something we should be doing. I’d love to start doing more stuff that’s kind of like, that start, that 99% of
the article’s the same but maybe the first two
sentences are something similar like, you know I’ve been seeing
a lot of people on LinkedIn and do blank. Like all of a sudden you
make it very contextual if you’re doing it in LinkedIn. Or, a common trend that we’re
seeing on Medium is blank. There’s some interesting contextual things you can do upfront that
an extra sentence or two change makes it even more native. So it’s something to consider. Cool.
– [India] Cool.

on the #AskGaryVee Show. – This is amazing. – Gary who? – Follow him, mother [bleep]! Hey Gary, it’s Matthias
Schaudig aka @mschaudig here from Germany. Just got a quick question. I just thought up my new
YouTube channel and blog and I’m putting out content
in German and English. How would you manage multilingual
content in social media? Thanks for your answer. – Do it again, the wink is amazing. Do it again ’cause I really enjoyed it. – To begin the whole– – Yeah, the beginning I didn’t fully get. – [Matthias] Yo bro, it’s your
opportunity to ask a question on the #AskGaryVee Show. – Gary who? – [Matthias] Follow him, mother [bleep]! (laughter) – Amazing. Matthias had an amazing, amazing video. Big ups to you, I’m glad to
give you some exposure in here. Make sure you leave a
comment in Facebook as well to like get more fans out of this ’cause clearly you’ve
got a nice buzz going. Not buzz like alcoholic, I mean, like, not buzz like I drink wine all the time when you’re not looking! (laughter) I mean, I mean, buzz like
you got some good energy. Look, I think, I think
you know to handle this better than I do. There’s certain questions
that come along the show that the truth is, I’m
not a practitioner in, I haven’t managed, I
mean our brands have and I would say the one thing
that I would think a lot about is if you’re handling
them in two languages, really use the capabilities
of Facebook specifically that allow you to only
target people that are, you know, German speaking with the content and then only English speaking. Huge opportunity there. Obviously English is a universal language at a lot of places at this point so there’s something to
think about there but I think it’s the targeting capabilities and with Instagram getting
Facebook’s targeting capabilities late this year, I think
you’ll have a chance where you’re able to segment properly and plan where your content’s going by language and region. And I think that’s super important and so I would say that it’s the organized planning upfront of the distribution of the content that you have more flexibility
around in today’s world that you should take full advantage of. There’s a lot of platforms that you can’t, Pinterest, Twitter, things of that nature and there I think you’re
just doing your thing. I’ve seen a ton of people manage both. I’m a big fan of something
with brands here talk called Spanglish, you know,
which is like Spanish English. I’m very intrigued by some
of the work we’ve done for Latino brands where we
start a sentence in a Tweet in Spanish and then finish it in English. Have you tried the
German English play yet? Where you actually are putting out content that has both languages in it. In the post and the copy
hack a little bit there. I think I just gave a lot of people a good little nugget there. I think that will work. I think you’ll see a real
over-indexing opportunity there, especially with the youth who
are playing in both languages and who grew up in
households where, like I did, with Russian and English. You start a sentence in Russian and you finish it in English. That’s how a bilingual works and I think you should play with that.

“the Donald running for president?” – Oh, India, you know I don’t like getting political questions. You snuck that in. I got caught for not
previewing them ahead of time. What do I think? I think this is America and everybody who wants
to run, should run. I’m very intrigued by the
story that’s come out about him hiring actors to be at his pep rally. I thought that was funny mainly because I was blown away that somebody would actually
do it for 50 dollars for the whole thing all day. – [Steve] You do know what it’s like being an actor in the city? – Clearly, I don’t. Because I think you can go to Goodwill for two hours, buy stuff,
and sell it on Ebay and make more than 50 bucks. Take that, all you actors. There’s a hack for you. I think that, I think he says a lot of outlandish stuff. I think that America is
more divided than ever on the left and right because people are self-selecting what they wanna listen to now because you do have Fox and CNN. You have the internet where you can go to very left and right places and I think it’s an intriguing
thing that’s happening in general in social media right now which is I’m very concerned that people are not getting
rounded scenarios to the world because it’s so easy for you to just go directly into what you believe and you’re having a very
intriguing thing happen in college where people are
seeing who their roommates are on Facebook before they go now, figuring out who they are, and then, kind of, asking out
and pairing up with, like, I’m a hipster and I wanna
room with a hipster. I’ve always been very proud of myself in doing controversial things like, for example, in
the height of post-9/11, going online, scared that I was going to Al Jazeera’s website
to watch the stream because I was, like, am I being, ’cause I already knew I was being watched before everybody knew
they were being watched. And I go I hope they’re not mad at this because I really do, you know, don’t forget I’m a
child of a Soviet family whose mother wrote a book report that Fidel Castro was the
bravest man in the world and believed it in her heart and soul that this little country right next to this bad empire America and then I grew up in
America and so, like, there’s always different perspectives. I think Donald will absolutely resonate with a small segment of
people on the right side. I’d be flabbergasted if
he won the nomination, but I think, my intuition net net is Donald has the capability of surfacing a conversation during this process that could be healthy. And I do believe that anybody
to the extremes of anything have that potential and I’m hoping that weirdly that gets people, reminds people we’re more aligned than we’re different and
right now it’s really intense in US politics in my opinion
on how separated we are and so my hope, as an optimist,
’cause that’s who I am. He brings a singular issue
during his short run, ’cause I don’t see him
winning the nomination, though he could, that
may actually bring value to the conversation. I’m intrigued by that potential probably more than anything. That was a pretty,

and Gary, the question I have for you is about all this talk you’ve had about self-awareness lately and I love the idea of
understanding what our talents are and what they’re not but my fear is that we’re gonna get into a mindset of things we can and can’t do. Robert Browning says, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.” I want people think that they can try and do a lot of different things and I’m afraid it’ll bleed to our children and make them start saying
what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. Let me know how you feel about that and how you can incorporate that into your self-awareness talk. – Ted, big ups to you. First and foremost, you’ve
been, you know, again, back to the theme of the show not digging fully deep, I’m not completely sure
but it’s been really fun to watch from afar of
you amassing an audience and people really respect
you and kudos, do your thing. I think this is a great
question and a challenging one. First and foremost, here’s
the way I answer it. This. Nothing completely one way
or the other is ever healthy. You should always be
pulling from directions, finding a blend. I will say that I think people
are way more, at this point, June 2015, in belief that
they can do anything, are good at everything,
should try everything, should work on their weaknesses so I believe that I’m being aggressive in starting a conversation
that lends itself to like drawing a line of
strengths and weaknesses that I think is very small. I do not believe this
is a big conversation. I believe modern parenting is like, hey little Steve, you
can do anything you want. Steve sucks at basketball. (laughter) He can’t do everything he wants and the amount of people
that want to play basketball for a living or sing or
wanna be an engineer. You know, like a, entrepreneur, I mean you know how I feel about that. So, I think that, Ted,
I think you’re right. I think right at this moment, my point of view on this is so small compared to the overall conversatIon that I’m going 100% all in and I don’t want to hedge
against it with your point which is correct because I think the whole
market’s hedging against it and thus, I’m just trying to crackle it. It’s the same way I talk
about social media marketing versus traditional TV. I believe in TV but I don’t
need to advocate for TV. 99% of the market’s advocating for TV. I believe that the
market, 90% of the market is advocating for you
can do whatever you want, you should try to do everything,
you should push yourself. They package it in you
should try new things and push yourself. I don’t think people
are talking enough about be very self-aware, know
what you’re good at, force yourself, guys, I don’t know if you’ve broken this down. Do you know what forcing yourself to be self-aware, do you know
what that process entails? Drinking a shit-load of humble kool-aid. Uh-huh, like it’s insane of how much, like, it’s why I talk about liking to lose. Like, it’s insane of how much humility I’ve had to instill to now
make it optically look like I have too much ego and self-esteem. So many of you, the first
time you consumed me, some of you, like I’m really
getting in my Facebook mentions as a lot of you have noticed. Plenty of people sharing my stuff and their friends are
saying screw this guy, ego for days, full of himself. I get it but what it actually is is the post game of me being really humble every minute of my life to recognize what I should stay away from. And I think people have
not gotten into that gear so Ted I would say that I
get it and I agree with you. And everything should
have a push and a pull. I just think the market is way, way in the direction of (pats Steve’s back) and I think that we need a
hell of a more a lot of like you kinda suck at that, you
may want to focus on that. Now, if you love that, then do it. But you need to know what
that comes along with which is if you love singing
more than breathing, cool but you’re gonna wait tables and you’re gonna make eight bucks and that’s great! Because guess what? I pay the price for doing what I love in a lot of different ways. And so that’s just life. That’s just life.