#AskGaryVee Episode 191: Influencer Marketing, How to Go Viral & Vlogging

“thing as a viral formula
to make things spread?” – So my point of view on this is
that, you know it’s funny, this is a good time, Staphon, I know
you’ll be editing link up the “6 minutes for 60 years” video. In the opening line of that
video I say that video is going to go viral. I don’t think there’s a
formula for going viral. I really don’t because if there
was there would be more people that could do it
40, 50, 100 times. I think there’s concepts. There’s concept over here which
is you goat or bait or get the attention of somebody who’s got
an enormous audience. You bring them value in some way or you
do something unique because everybody’s doing that to Casey
and she clearly did something that was stronger, better,
more interesting or just a moment in time. DRock was the thousandth person
that emailed me and said “I want to make videos for you.” At that moment I was ready, I
was open for it, it worked. So it’s a timing
thing sometimes. There’s going after
big wig to put you on. What Dr. Dre did for Snoop,
right? It’s a very common thing in the rap game. You give somebody a verse, it’s
a big song, they’re a big artist (claps hands) the game changes. That happens in
influencer marketing. There’s what I did with
the “6 minutes for 60 years.” When I made that video I knew
that I was making it for 30 to 60 year old entrepreneurs so I
targeted 30 to 60 year olds on Facebook who are also in
to Shark Tank and other entrepreneurial things
which gave it the match to get it going. So I think Facebook ad targeting
for video and I think influencer marketing putting them on
are two formulas that work. Ladies? – I think going viral sometimes
can actually hurt you. If you look at that guy that
leave Britney alone guy and he’s known for that forever. Personally, I would prefer
to grow slowly, organically authentically, raw, real and
really create content and maybe that takes longer
than going viral. – Let me jump on this I think
that’s a tremendous point of view and that I push hard. I will say this I think that it
comes down to how good you are. If Beyoncé went viral
at 16 off a video and she actually had a the chops. Now we get to find out what
kind of chops that she has. So I’ve seen people go viral
and stay because they’re great. – They have staying power. – Sure, I watched Jerome
I watched Rudy, I watched Nicholas, I watched he
whole Vine movement. I was very close to Brittany I
watched all their, we picked Logan Paul to win a contest
that’s how he got his career started in a contest we
created here at VaynerMedia. So he went viral in that moment
but he had to have the skills to hold on to it. – Right. – Look tried-and-true, at the
end of the day, if you don’t have chops, if you have
something to say you’re dead. – I think it’s important to have
a backlog of stuff so when you have that moment people will
stay for what you are creating. – You felt that, you felt a lot
of people saying so you had the moment, and this is all very
recent for you– – Yeah, so this was
two weeks ago. – So people came and they
got to see all the stuff you did in the past. So there like wait a
minute you’re good. – Yeah, yeah. – And by the way, I apologize
to cut you off because I get yelled at for
that, I know, I know. I don’t interview for a living. I bet you, I don’t know this,
I’m going to text him and ask him I bet you Casey even looked
at that in order to make his decision for it to
even have happened. – Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s super important to
put yourself in a position where you have the right
context for a viral video. Make sure that when you are at a
point in your career or in your life to where those
people are going to stay. – Right, didn’t you have something
that somebody told you about running a multimillion dollar
business that you have to run a business like a multimillion
dollar business even if you’re not a multimillion
dollar business. – No, I had some advice along
time ago I was setting up a business and the guy said what
do I do I have no idea I’m just getting out of school. He said set this business
up, this had more to do with accounting, set this business up
like it’s a multimillion dollar business so that you’re
prepared for when it gets there. – So do that with your YouTube. Do that with your
social media accounts. – If you’re going to have 1
million viewers, set it up so that when you get those million
viewers they want to stay. And they’re like
wow this is legit. – Your content should be
marketing like your marketing to 10 million people. – As long as is
authentically true to you. I think the biggest mistake that
people make is fake the funk and I do in a business context you
might have seen these characters back to guys being jerk offs,
you have all these guys faking entrepreneur life like
they’re winning but is not true to them so when I hear you guys are saying which is right
advice I just want to make sure that everybody means that
means as long as it’s true. It means the behavior, not
rolling like you did it or acting like you’re already famous. – Yeah, exactly.
– India, keep us moving. – [Voiceover] Nicole says,
“Blogging since 2009.

“I know my target audience. “I post regularly and
promote all social. “Numbers won’t budge. Thoughts?” – My advice, personally,
would be to keep at it. It’s something that I
literally do seven days a week. There is not one day
that I had taken off in the last five years. You have to just crush it. You have to keep at it. – Did you ever get any
pushback to the word skinny? Skinny is one of these new
politically incorrect words like three years ago. – [Man] I wondered that too.
– You wondered that? Great, so I’m
answering the questions. You know it’s interesting, you
been doing this for a while. You’re actually in a better
place where I don’t think the word is as controversial but
24 months ago there was heat. Did you ever feel it? – All the time but I like that.
I like heat on me. There’s things I talk about on
my blog are camel toes, boob jobs, vagina steaming and
enemas like I could go on and on. I talk about really
controversial taboo subjects that no one wants to deal with. Having the word skinny
in the title is really fitting for the brand.
– Understood. – When you’re talking
about coconut lube the words skinny just–
– Fits right in. – Coconut oil is amazing
for lube though it really is. (laughs)
– This is a tremendous show. – Everyone go home and try it. You will not be sorry. It’s your birthday, DRock?
(laughter by all) – I think that there is
one thing, I do think that there is the
three, four years and then you have your moment. You look at it and it happens
all the time in real life. Amy Schumer, Amy Schumer’s
career has been going on for a decade. Kevin Hart, Kevin Hart was
working at that shit for 15, 12, 14 years and you
have your moment. The problem is, one thing I want
people to know is, it’s not your numbers growing, it’s
how do you feel about it. Currently my Snapchat
numbers are not growing. I’ve hit my kind of 30,000 views and I’ve been there
for about a month. I feel fine with that because I
feel I’m getting better at it. I know what I want to do next. I know I’ve been studying on
other things because the book has been coming out. I feel content with myself
even that’s against the numbers. Too many people, and this is I’m
sure we all think about, you’re going to be
thinking about it when you see
the podcast numbers as you start this new venture
this market is absolutely way too deeply focused on numbers. Now, Nick and Romando,
people buy on numbers, I get it. You make your short
term money on numbers. – Short. Not long game. – That’s right, short-term
money on numbers. So I would say, who is
the person again India? – Nicole. – Nicole, I would say if you
feel like you’re moving the needle and you feel
like you getting closer. And you can taste it,
none of us can tell you, then you keep at it. If you been watching right now
and you’re been trying to build your brand for 24 months, 36
months, you felt completely stagnant, both in the
numbers both in the heat you don’t get recognized. Less selfies, no selfies. No mentions, no friend even
knows you’re doing it, if you feel stagnant, I actually
compare this to wrestling. So stick with me, I know you
talk about coconut oil but I’m going to talk about WWF
wrestling for a minute. When you look at gimmicks,
gimmicks is like when you’re Mr. Perfect or your Red Rooster or
or what have you there are a lot of wrestlers that have three
or four gimmicks and then they become Stone Cold Steve Austin. And they been four the
things and it didn’t take but the new thing works. But the difference there
is that the character. I could’ve stopped doing the
wine thing and started a Jets thing and I could be
on ESPN right now. And then I did a business thing,
I have three things that I probably could have done as me. Wine, business and the Jets. Now I’ve done two. I may become a
Jets sportswriter. If you have other interests, if
you have a blog about root beer or skateboarding but you’re
also into clothes or jam or rollerblading if you feel very
stagnant for two or three years your system and your
thing might be right but your topic may be wrong to you. It may not be that moment in
time so that’s another version to think about this if you feel
in your heart and numbers a 24, 36 months stagnant. Because I do see people, I know
people right now, because I’ve been doing this since ’06 who
have been doing the same thing for 7, 8 years and there’s
nothing that’s going to happen. – Talent, you always
talk about talent. – It’s real.
– Yeah, it’s real. – And interaction, I think
interaction with people. – It is real. You have to have talent. If you don’t have talent in this
industry I think you’re going to get washed away. You have to know who
you are, like you said. You have to remain
authentic to yourself. If you think you have the
talent to be a blogger then blog every damn day. – How long were you doing
YouTube before this moment? – I started YouTube
in 2012 and then I was consistent this past August. – What happened in August
that made you get really going? – I was like I want to build
a business someday and I know having an audience is valuable. And so I just started
with travel vlogs. I love filmmaking. I love making videos. It wasn’t hard for me
because I love doing it. I also think that interaction
with people is so important. You can look at the numbers all
day but who is mentioning you on Twitter, who is retweeting
things, who was favoring things. – Is Twitter an
important platform for you? – Yes, it has
been so interactive. I only have about 5,000 followers
but everyone is so interactive and it’s an awesome– – Do you interact with
your YouTube comments? – Yes, I’m glad you
asked that question. When I had 3,000 followers
I made it a habit to comment to every single comment. Every single comment. It’s hard to do it now. – It’s so crazy to see all you
guys spur up from all of the theses that I
wrote seven years ago. It’s so crazy. – Yeah, I know.
I read Crush It! recently and I was like holy
shit he predicted the future. – Yeah, yeah.
– It is weird. – I’m telling you, I read that
influencer chapter today in your new book it’s refreshing to have
somebody with such a loud voice say it because it has been
what we have been thinking and working on and saying
five, six years now. – Sure. – Tell them about what happened
recently to me on a shoot ’cause you’ll appreciate it. – This kind of goes into
influencer marketing as well. A brand recently brought her
on to offer her voice and her perspective and it
was a video thing. Four videos, 30 seconds they
brought her in and they said hey going to stick to this script
you’re going to do this thing and had 15 people on set they
completely got away from her voice and it was like– – What’s the point?
Why do you want me– – I got fired up about
it because I said this brand’s on its way out. – It’s on its way out. – And it made me fired up about
her because her brand– – So what happened?
Did you do it? – No, I did it. I did the script
I did what they said but the point is they could’ve
hired a model or an actress to just read it. They don’t need a blogger. I’ll never do it again. Ever. – Using her voice and trying to
get her audience– – If they’re not going
to use my voice– – They had 15 people there, we produce six of those videos
in three hours with three of us. – They micromanage everything. I think brands need to let the
influencer do what they do best. – Well, let’s look at DailyVee. It’s literally DRock
and GaryVee and it works. You don’t have five
people following you around. – The curated things out. I think it’s on its way
so out, so done. – The bigger issue is the
people that follow you know that’s not you. – Yes, exactly.
– That’s what it is. That’s right. And there’s
no money that they can pay you that makes
it worth it for you. – Yep. – I mean I had early deals for
Wine Library TV before this was a real thing and a car company
wanted me to drive a car in to Wine Library. It was so wild and it was so
early days, and I was like, it was a lot of money at the time
and I didn’t do it because even then back in ’07, ’08 people are going to
think like forget it. Gary sold out. That was so scary. It’s so different now. – It’s a little bit more
accepted now but we refuse to sell ad space on the site.
– Yeah. Now, if I would’ve grown
up during this time, I would’ve done it. Back then it was just so… There wasn’t a single
video on YouTube that had 1 million views
when I started. This was 2006. How old are you in 2006? – I was in sixth grade. – Yeah. You know what I mean, it
was a different world. India, keep us moving. – Hi Gary! I’m Piper Reese from
@PipersPicksTV and I’m here at the Nickelodeon 2016 Kids
Choice Awards Orange Carpet.

the Nickelodeon 2016 Kids
Choice Awards Orange Carpet. I’ve done over 700 interviews
since I was seven years old and I’ve also been pitching a
scripted TV show concept. Eventually I want to expand
to an online TV network sort of thing so I want your
advice on how to monetize. Where do I go from here and
when can I interview you? – Oh my God!
– That’s amazing. – So Piper I’ll save you a
ton of time let’s do it ASAP. Tell me where you’re at,
get to New York, call me. – That was pretty impressive. – Actually sorry Piper, text me. That was amazing. What do you guys
think about that? – I think that when she talked
about how to monetize the short game is to go for brands, the long-term game would be to continue her hosting on YouTube,
push it on her platforms and maybe even grow it in to
sort of a brand where she has a clothing line.
I mean she’s adorable. She has this red hair that is
different she could do something with that.
– Yep. – Make her own little
network. I mean honestly. – Yeah. – And I also think right now,
it’s not about the ads, the pre-roll ads, it’s about who the
brands who want to work with you and that makes
sense with your brand. – Right. – If you have hover board
sponsor a video no one’s going to care. (crosstalk) Find things that work
with your brand and integrated into your content.
Don’t, you know– – I think I will definitely
have you on the show. You’ll interview me and during
that show I’ll give you much more detailed answers
because it’s really predicated on your situation. I don’t know the
financial situation of your parents’
or your situation. There are so many things, I
hate giving general advice when there’s an opportunity
to give specific advice. Since were going to be
hanging out, I’ll go there. The longer you can wait,
the more you will make if you’ve got the talent. I think that’s a real KPI. I think the other thing is, I
noticed all the things you had there I would aggressively
start looking at musically. I don’t know what you guys are
doing with musically either one of you are on it. But I think that is the absolute
platform of junior high right now and it seems like
that would be a very smart place for you to go. I would continue to be first
mover in new places because I think that you’re at such a
young age were that can be a big, big, big advantage. Supply and demand is different
on musically that it is on Snapchat, Instagram or YouTube. We’ll have specific advice
for you Piper very soon. – That was cool.
– That was cool. – Now you guys.
What do you got? – I was thinking of questions
and I pretty much know all the

answers that you would, yeah.
(laughs) I’ve been watching
your stuff for a year. I’ll give you a question a lot
of people had was if they’re trying to start a YouTube
channel, in your opinion, how do you break through all of the
stuff that is on there right now. – We’ve talked about it,
you know the answer. Talent is the variable. I really do think
self-awareness, that’s why put it on this cover of this
book, is super important. I spent a lot of time. There were three things I
could’ve started with and I went with wine because I knew I
wasn’t going to be able to leave the wine business right away. I had a business to run so it
was the most integrated thing that I could do. You gotta think about
your subject matter it has to be true to you. All of us have multiple things
that are true to us so I would sit down and first say what
do I actually know. I know how to be a 13-year-old. I know a 13-year-olds
point of view on technology. Then I’ll go to YouTube and see
how many people are winning the 11 to 15-year-old technology
point of view content game. If there is nobody, there’s
somebody for everything almost, but if there’s not that many
people are nobody is really owning it, that’s interesting. Versus I’m also a great
skateboarder, oh crap, there’s 97,000 people
doing skateboarding. So first and foremost, I
would do for the white space. Number two, I do think that
YouTube’s a very difficult game and I do think that whether it’s
Snapchat, though that’s about to become very difficult as
well, I’m going to say it again, musically, or anything
else that pops, I think that using social networks white
space to drive awareness to drive attention matters. And then finally, we gave this
question early on, I do think the blueprint that you did with
Casey or if you’ve got a couple of bucks and can run ads against
people who are skateboard fans on Facebook there is
tactical things that can speed up your process. I do think influencers
are the way to go. I think that Piper, recalling
it all the way back, should absolutely spend all of her if
she loves it spend all her time going to every histogram
account, every YouTuber, every Twitter account and replying and
saying “Can I interview, can I interview?” That’s probably what she’s
doing she’s interviewing so many people and the truth is that
one more ask is one more at-bat. So I would say that. – And something to that, 70% of
the stuff that I’ve done on my YouTube channel is
about other people. Series like creative space TV
or anything it’s all about– – You’re siphoning
people’s audience. – Exactly. And I’m leveraging other
people’s voice– – 100%.
– for me and I promote it. – And by the way, I haven’t
looked enough but I’m going to make some assumptions
here, everybody does that. It’s you have to be good at it. What you clearly have
done is you brought value. When I put stuff out I really do
it, it’s because somebody sings a book review of
mine and kills it. Somebody that has
to bring value. If you’ve got a big audience, everybody’s trying
to get to you. Everybody’s trying to siphon
your fans and link bait you. It’s can you bring value to
that community and that person. – You know it’s funny,
that’s how she started. She started interviewing models,
Instagram– – My whole platform has been
not competing, collaborating. – Yeah, it’s huge.
– Of course. When you’re starting from the
bottom you absolutely either need money, you need an absolute
unbelievable skill set of talent or you need to siphon awareness
from other places but too many people want, too many people hit
up people like hey you have a million followers on twitter
can you give me a shout out? No. – What kind of value
are you offering them? – 100%. And really not even structuring,
not even the email saying what can I do for you for you to do
this for me, it’s just doing it. You didn’t text Casey and
say hey I’m going to do this for you. You did it. – And I had 4,000 people who
really cared about me because I built that relationship with
my YouTube audience for years. at the end of the video I was
like let’s Tweet this to Casey to get it to him people
were stoked about it. – Jace Norman, the Nickelodeon
star, did the same thing to me. All of a sudden got on
a plane I had 7000 tweets the Norman maniacs or whatever
they call themselves. All right, your question. – Okay, my question is when did
you decide to build and why your

personal brand
instead of focusing on other people’s brands? How did you decide to put all
of your eggs in this basket as opposed to putting your eggs in
a bunch of different baskets? – For me it’s actually
because I’m a business operator. I built a big wine retail and
e-commerce business before I became GaryVee. Don’t forget, very different
from you guys and most of people’s tracks now. I was 30 years old and
had built a business before I ever made my first video. I didn’t grow up
in this generation. If I did, I probably would have.
We’d probably be laughing right now and showing videos of
baseball card kid Gary saying buy the Frank Thomas rookie card. I just didn’t
grow up in that era. The reason I can build
VaynerMedia and the reason I don’t just live off of being
me, I always say I’m CEO of VaynerMedia, I run businesses.
I’m a venture capitalist who plays GaryVee at times. I like this, I like this. I think it’s important it brings
opportunity but at the end of the day in my purest form
I’m a businessman much more than I am a personality. What VaynerMedia did for me is it scales my my marketing skill set to deploy against people
or brands or my own brands. I want to buy brands in the
future so that’s kind of my play on that. – Love it. – I think for everybody you need
to really think about how you want to monetize this. Are you going to
deployed against the product? I had a deal from Target and
CAA to do a wineglass that I probably would’ve made
millions of dollars on. It would’ve been in every Target
store, it would’ve been the big wineglass it would’ve been
the product of the season. I didn’t think that I
could vig the outcome. And let me break
this down of things, the place where you want
to make your money is the place where you think
you have the most control. Not where you can
make the most money. – That’s great advice. – That’s something I
haven’t really talked about. So I’m glad, I feel
we got the something. (heavy crosstalk) – Can you like elaborate on this? – I’ll keep going. Books are an
interesting place that I plan. It’s one of the place I
monetize because I can control it. I sell the books. Not HarperCollins, not Amazon,
not Barnes & Noble’s, me. I can dictate it. Doing a sponsorship deal with a
wineglass at that point I wasn’t big enough to feel that I was
going to drive thousands if not tens of thousands of
people into Target to buy it. Maybe 1,000, maybe 3,000 but not
enough for Target to care if that was the only
people that bought it. So what you want to do is always
set yourself up in a place where the outcome is impressive to whoever you collaborate
with or the market. If you can sell your own music
direct to consumer digitally and you get 1 million
downloads, you did it. Now you have leverage. Everything is about leverage. And what happens is too many
people take the short-term money what happens then is
then there is a result. For example, I and I won’t call
them out because I don’t like negativity, but there’s 12 to
15 social media experts who get paid to speak and get paid to
consult whose books sold 2, 3,000 copies. if you’re so good at social
media marketing, then wouldn’t have you done that
to sell your book. These conversations are
happening behind the scenes, not publicly, I won’t throw them out
like other people but there’s people not hiring them or they
have them as a C class citizen because they’re like look at
their Bookscan numbers. I sold over 100,000 copies
of my book in the first week. – Wow. – And that’s a very big
difference, and by the way if I list some of the names of the
people that I’m referring to for a lot of people to follow social
media there like oh yeah Gary’s kind like that guy or that
girls kind of like Gary. No, we’re not. They didn’t build $100 million
business. They didn’t sell hundred thousand, and so for
me I have the audacity and the bravado because what
I preach is also what I use to create results. You guys are living and you guys
think I’m doing the right stuff and I’m an old dude. Right? I’m doing Snapchat right. I’m doing vlogging right. – I think that tells us that our
ship is in the right direction because there’s a lot of people
when we first started that was like what the
fuck are you doing? Why are you
taking these pictures? – It is cool that you’re
this age and you know how to do social media. – Listen, I’m almost dead. – Aren’t you the only social
media expert that’s ever been on the New York Times bestseller? – No, I’m sure there’s others
and I don’t even know where the line is about social media
expert what have you but look I have real results. Oh thank you this is a good
segue, guys think you so much I just found out it’s coming out
in a week or two #AskGaryVee made the New York
Times best-selling list. Four books that have done it,
thank you, but that’s like a weird list where a lot
of things are weighted, it’s how many I sold. I had a great conversation with
my editor yesterday, I’m a free agent now
and I can go to any publisher what have you and I’m like look, I didn’t get
number one which is what we wanted, right? I think it’s
number six on the list. She’s like this is bullshit. she was mad she wanted to be
higher because an algorithm not just copies sold. I said don’t cry for me. You’re
not giving my next deal based on if I was number one or number
six. You’re giving me the next deal based on how many
that were sold. You made $3 million in revenue. You have to know
what your North Star is. All right, any
question you would like. This is a bunch of marketing
people, businesspeople,