#AskGaryVee Episode 31: Is it Better to be 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,

– [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