“Can you rate my Instagram
on a one to 10 scale “and tell me how to improve?” – Yeah, let’s do it live. India great job, great question
so here we are whadafunk who I’ve seen plenty
of times in my stream. So here’s his clothing thing. I don’t, can you, can you,
what can you get here? I’m gonna rate it here. Let’s see what’s going on. Not a lot of engagement. – [Voiceover] Can you
turn up her brightness? – Let’s see, yeah. – [India] It’s the other way (laughs). – Just kidding. The pictures are tremendous,
let’s play this video. (hip hop music) I love it, I love the ghettoness. So, 1500 followers, ten, 15, 20 engagements. The engagements are a hair low. I mean I really like the
photos I just, honestly, I don’t think you’re
growth hacking enough. I think you need a lot more of a fan base. Whadafunk hangin’ at my
homies’ shop rich and faded. Yeah, I mean the content is fine. I mean I think I’d rate
it a six or a seven. I think at this point you’re
too small and you need to try a lot of different
things quote cards, zoomed in versions of the clothes. I think you could mix it up a little bit. How often is he posting India? While I’m giving the answer
try to give me a general range. – [India] Like once a day,
maybe like a little bit more. – Yeah I would go with three times a day to find your cadence and find your thing. I’d rather lose 10 to 20% of my audience to see if I can find the upside. Ooh that was a really
strong, good piece of advice for a lotta people on Instagram. Let me say it again. (warbling) That was me rewinding. I’d rather lose 10 to 20% of my audience by posting three times a day
if I was filling up their feed and make sure you’re being
strategic about those posts and doing very different
things to maybe find pay dirt as a thematic creatively for your upside. I’d also start reaching out at scale. You have products. You’re sellin’ hats and
shirts and stuff like that. You need to reach out all
day long, all day long in the comments. Go to Instagram, go to
people that have 5,000 to 50,000 followers that
are you know, got your vibe as a user, and leave a comment in their latest picture saying
I wanna give you some swag can we do something? You’ve gotta get more
distribution and awareness and I would do that by giving away product for them to give you shout outs
on their stream and siphon, siphon their audience. 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.

“when they write essays in
their Instagram captions? “We’re here to look at pictures,
not read endless shit.” – Reg, don’t say we. Say I. You are here to just see pictures. Plenty of people like Humans of New York, like all these things. People like the long-form
written context around a photo. Reg, you can continue to
just go through the photos, and you should, and do
you, and I appreciate that, and 90% of the people are
down for that as well, but I see an emerging
opportunity for people to write long-form copy on
top of photos on Instagram. India, do you ever find
yourself reading something that’s more than a sentence? Let’s get over, DRock, you’re not showing
India’s, you’re not gonna. Do you find yourself reading more, have you ever read two
sentences on Instagram? – Yeah, oh yeah. – How about three? Give me three. – Like, five, six. – [Both] Yeah. – Seven? – Yeah, some accounts, ya know,
that’s what they do great. They’re good at storytelling, and they tell the story in the captions– – And do you like it? – Yeah, I really like it. – See Reg? There’s no we. There’s you. You don’t want to read, but India, and platforms evolve. Like, that’s just the way it is, right? And so, the answer to your question is people are gonna do their thing, and you should say I
next time instead of we.

– [Voiceover] Daniel
asks, “How do you think “overly-edited photos and text overlays “affect the authenticity
of Instagram posts?” – Daniel, thank you so much
for a wonderful question. Just off the back of authenticity, so you must have been thrilled. I think it’s what you’re
trying to accomplish. I think that if you’re a photographer trying to catch the wild,
like, you can’t edit and put words over it,
but if you roll like me where a lot of things, like
you wanna inspire people to think differently or
make them feel something, it’s really powerful
to put a quote of yours on top of a photo. I really do think it’s the strategy, the will, the interest
of the content producer to really make this judgment call. What I like most of
all about this question is how Instagram really works. The ability to unfollow
somebody on Instagram is so easy, and this is
a subtle product thing that I don’t think people
spend enough time on. People’s ability to unfollow somebody feels so native as you’re
scrolling that, you know, at the end of the day,
content’s gonna find its audience if it’s
good, and whether that’s highly edited or super raw, or black and white, or booty shots, or inspirational quotes,
or whatever it is, it’s going to find its audience, and so I think it’s something that people should not overthink in either direction, right? It’s not a tactic that
automatically makes it pop, and it’s definitely not a
tactic that’s gonna cripple you, it just needs to be right. I actually think you’ve said it best, which is, authenticity has
nothing to do with the actions. It has to do with the seed
of where this comes from. If you authentically, like
me, want to put things like kill it or crush a face today, or whatever you wanna
say on top of a picture, that’s what’s coming from
me, that’s why I think my audience finds it attractive, in the same way that, if all of a sudden on my Instagram feed
I’m taking sunset shots of New York City, people
are gonna be like, “That’s not.” that’s not, that’s just not who I am, right? And that’s why I yell at DRock always trying to edit and shit, and that’s it, right? That’s it so, I think your
question’s got the answer in it, which is the word authenticity. If it comes from the heart to have quotes on top
of it and edit it, cool. If it doesn’t, cool. Cool?

– [Voiceover] Bruce asks, “Why is Twitter “so much like a wall
in a public bathroom?” – Bruce, this is a tremendous question. I think the, I would argue that it’s not. I would argue that Secret was more like a public bathroom because you don’t know who wrote it. And I think that what’s scarier probably by your rant is that people are actually putting their
faces behind these comments that you think are so lame or interesting or aggressive or however
you’re positioning it. So I would argue that they’re not. I think that they’re, Twitter’s much more like, you know, a cocktail party where people are just making statements or a gathering of friends or you know less of the bathroom stall. To me that’s Secret and all the other anonymous, Yik Yak, and all the other anonymous place. That’s more the psychology. You write something that
nobody can attribute to you. Bathroom business jargon.

“How many of you guys use Pinterest? We’re just finding our feet on it. What would like to see
from Kwan’s Kitchen? Kwan’s Kitchen, big
should out to you guys. I love the businesses that
are going into the trenches and actually asking their
users what they want to see. My friends, all you small
businesses out there, all you solo entrepreneurs,
Kwan’s Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant in Scotland, big ups here from USA. Bless you. From USA America. I’m very proud of that execution, because you’re gonna get
insight and see what happens. Somebody in the social media team, or maybe the owner of
Kwan’s Kitchen’s like, “Hey, let me put this out there.” And sure enough, some crazy
dude decides to pick it up and put it on his show where a lot of people are gonna see it. Great exposure. All my Scotland, I’m triple confirming this, So all my Scottish friends,
please if you’re watching The #AskGaryVee show, go visit Kwan’s, give him some daps. Don’t you agree, Steve? – Totally agree, yes. – You know, this is a great question. I think Pinterest is an
incredibly important platform. I think Pinterest, am I
too close to you, DRock? What are you sad about? – [DRock] I hit my stomach. – You hit your stomach with the bar? I got it. Kwan’s Pinterest, my
friends, VaynerNation, everyone who’s listening to this, Kwan’s Kitchen, not Kwan’s Kitchen. Excuse me, DRock’s distracting me. Pinterest. Pinterest is the
new social network for search. Right? It was a social
network, it’s a search engine. Pinterest is a search engine. People are searching on there, and they’re getting visual search. Andrew, I see you shaking your head. Get in here. Get in here. Get
over here. Come over here. Give me a hug. I saw you in the corner of my eye, right? You don’t get as much
air time as everyone. Why dont you tell. Kneel
down, because I don’t like when people are taller than me. – I’m already short. – Well, that’s fine, but
I’m really short, too. Tell the VaynerNation
what you do here. – I’m the designer for Gary. – Why were you shaking
your head so emphatically? What is your behavior on Pinterest? – Well, I’m not a huge Pinterest lover, but designing a lot of
your stuff on Pinterest people search for it, and
it seems pretty important. – All right. That was terrible. The bottom line is there will be no Ask Andrew Show any time
soon, keep designing. I get it, but I’m tremendous on the spot. Well, I am Steve. – I’m not disagreeing. – [Gary] Okay. Well, thank you. – Pinterest searching. – Yeah, I mean look. DRock, over here. It’s a search engine. It’s a search engine, it’s visual search. We’ve become all more visual. There’s a real visual revolution. And I actually think Google
should be shaking in their pants around what’s going on in Pinterest. I think Pinterest is a
tremendous ad product. So, I would say put out a lot of stuff, and put out a lot of stuff of
your dishes and your meals, but don’t make them stock photos. Get them out there. I would make infographics. I would make an infographic of the perfect Chinese food dinner. Where it’s like, step one, do this. Step two, like drink water. Step three, try this trick. Step four, you know like make it fun. Step four, like talk to your friends. Step five, play with the fortune cookie. Like, a really fun piece of
content that I could see going tremendously well for you. I think infographics over index. I think photos of the,
here’s an incredible thing if you have a physical location. What about photos of the
street that you’re on? That’s cool. Just take a nice photo of
the street that you’re on. What about you taking the lead, and you taking photos of the fellow business owners around you. There’s a lot of creative things. Act like a media company, put out content that’s interesting. Put out content that’s valuable to people. Not in your best interest. Not your menu, not your store. It can’t be all about you. It needs to be all about what
could they possibly want. Pinterest is growing in the male demo, because it’s just valuable. It’s converting into a
hardcore search engine. It’s going to be an enormously big deal. I’m all-in on Pinterest. I invested at Vayner/RSE in
the last round of Pinterest at an $11 billion dollar valuation. That I think is under priced massively. – Hi, Gary. So, I heard, to be the best,

“If you could only make one post “and then not post again for another year “on any platform, what would your post be? – That’s a great question. Who’s this from? – [India] Jacob. – Jacob, two things went
through my mind fast. Literally, I think fast. So as India is asking the question, I was like, the first one was gonna say, “I love you.” And then the second one– This is really– This may be– You know what, we need to
really think about this. This might be the question
that most sums me up. As you asked that question, the first reaction was, “I love you.” The second reaction is, “What
call to action do I want?” Which is like, “Buy my book.” or like, “Download my show.” or, “I promise I’ll be back “so sign up for my email newsletter.” It was literally, literally,
literally, literally, the two most polar opposite thoughts and that my friends, sums it up. That’s insane.

“I feel like it’s not as popular as it was “a number of years ago. – Jared, good question about blogging. Blogging, you know, what’s
happened with blogging, is blogging is massively important it’s just not the thing
that people talk about. Not only that, blogging became so big it become the establishment. I mean if you have a website and you’re putting out content on
it, you’re blogging. And what has also happened
is social networking has in theory become the micro
version of that blogging. And so now everybody in theory, as a matter of fact
Twitter was flat out known as a microblogging platform for many. Zak? Can you just show Zak’s face? (laughter) I feel like you were
hacking the show, right. Like you put them on knowing
that I would respond to that and then get on camera.
– [Zak] I just want fame. Got it, okay, okay, cool. That was amazing. Twitter was known as a
microblogging platform. So I think Facebook and Instagram and you know Medium, there’s platforms that
people are now using. Because what people
started understanding was they want exposure. If you’re blogging you
wanna talk to the world. What people aren’t as good
at is actually getting people then to come and see that. They’re relying on SEO back in the day and things of that nature. What people realized is that people are living in Instagram and in Pinterest and in Facebook and in Twitter. And so they’re now going to
the people and blogging there. You know, telling a story in your home and nobody’s there is quite lonely and not that interesting. That was what would
happen to a lot of people in the blogging sphere. Whereas going to town
hall and getting on there and grabbing a mic and talking, maybe some people will listen. But maybe that person was better. Everybody’s talking, everyone’s listening. So it’s just the evolution. The thesis of people wanting communicate on the Internet hasn’t changed, the formation, the way it’s looked at, the terminology that we
use, the new, you know, recarnation of it is just what
you’re living in right now. – [Voiceover] Soundspace
asks, “My business is

Big Ed Barnum here from Big Ed Barnum’s Bubble Barn and Garden with an important question for you: If my right hook is Watch my web series, what
are some appropriate, I should have stretched. Uh, jabs? – Actually, you know what Staphon, why don’t you do a little
walk around the office right now, this way
they’ll miss this question so that will make them
have to watch it later and then they can also see
a bunch of Vayner stuff. Big Ed, first and foremost,
as a hardcore WWF, not E, fan growing up, you feel like a wrestler, and this is a wrestler promo,
and that feels amazing to me. I just love that. You know what’s so funny? That’s what I want. I want people to go to GaryVaynerchuk.com. I want that, and I want
people watching my content. Get in here, Staphon. And I want those same things, and so I think that content
itself is the jab, right? Put out micro pieces of content. I’m a big believer, I think
that I’m hitting a golden era in my content production. Live streaming, my Snapchat
Stories game is up, my Instagram game is up, my
Twitter’s still on point, my Facebook fan page content is up, LinkedIn is stronger than it was before. Pinterest we’re still lagging. When you can really get our
Pinterest game up, right? – [Steve] It’ll happen
for Wine Library I think. – I know, but we’re talking
about me now, not Wine Library. Pinterest needs to get up a little bit, but you need to put out micro contents. The reason I wrote
“Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” is to get you to put out
different little pieces of content that still thematically ladder back up to what you’re doing on your website that are contextual for the platform. Big Ed, don’t get lazy on me. You’re Big Ed. Go out there and put out
content across the board, and don’t just make it, remember, the jabs need to be jabs. Don’t just make the
content where you’re like, my biggest idea ever is, dot
dot dot, go to my website. Your website will get
traffic as a byproduct, and you were able to throw right hooks on those social platforms,
but put out jabs of value to the audience where they
actually spend their time. Big Ed, they love you and they
want to go to your website, but they’d rather, more
than being on your website, be in all these other places,
and it’s up to you to be there and use that as a gateway
drug to get them back. (upbeat music)
– [Voiceover] Laurie asks,

– [Voiceover] Joy asks,
“What social media techniques “do you think work best
for promoting a book?” – Joy, I was excited about
answering this question ’cause I was gonna go tactical, but then Steve reminded me
that I’ve answered this a bunch in the past, and I wanna
give that context too ’cause he’s right, and I
wouldn’t have answered it, so kudos to Steve for
making the show better. When selling a book, you
need to be selling it months and years in advance. I am actively, right now,
selling the #AskGaryVee book. Let me explain. I’m putting out content, and I’m jabbing, and I’m building an audience, and I’m building a lot of new fans. As a matter of fact, question of the day going right into it, How long have you been following my work? Please leave that in the comments. Podcast people, jump out of the earphones, and jump onto the
keyboard and go to YouTube and answer this question, because I want a lot of
people in the VaynerNation to see how many people are only
two, three, four, five, six weeks in because this
show is getting virality, bringing people in, and then
thus creating a scenario where, I was just thinking
about what’s the scenario, got excited, anyway, creating a scenario where
I’m bringing value up front, I’m not charging for this. I’m not asking for anything. I’m not trying to make a
gateway to a product, no. I’m just building leverage,
and then when I launch in early 2016 the #AskGaryVee book, which is probably gonna be
a hundred to two hundred of these questions that I’ve
done over the last year or two, if I can get that far. That was a little bit of
a gateway drug preview to how many episodes I’m expecting to do. And two, a bunch of new questions, and three is kind of a cool idea I have. (ding) A lot of people here
who’ve watched every show don’t really need to buy the book, right? I mean, you’ve consumed it, but at 18 bucks or 22 bucks, they will because I’ve guilted them into it because I’ve provided so much of value. And so number one, you need
to provide value up front before you ever sell your book. Let me get into some tactics. One-on-one marketing. One of the biggest mistakes
so many authors make is they send out a bulk e-mail, and it usually says this. “Hey guys, I never normally do this,” I mean, that’s my favorite. You like that, Zak? “I never normally do this, “but I have a book coming
out next Wednesday. “It would mean the world to me,” Why? They want to be efficient. People want to scale. What I did last August was I went to Connecticut with my family and I, one by one by one by one by one, wrote e-mails to people
that I wanted to help. Alex in 12 years. Alex, hey remember I really
gave you a break in your career. You know, we’re great buddies. Hey, nice job last week, da da da. I’d really appreciate
your help on this book. Can I count on you? And I basically went one by one by one and scaled the unscalable,
and what it created was a landfall of a lot of opportunity. The other thing is you have to
cess the market of exposure. That year, August last year, the podcasting was really
starting to happen, right? And so I wanted to really focus on that. So I went and I did a ton of interviews with all the emerging podcast people ’cause I knew that was the arbitrage, and what I mean by the arbitrage was a place where you would get
bigger return on your investment than other places based on its exposure. So whereas three years ago I’d
want to be in the Huff Post and guest blog post,
that played itself out because Forbes opened it up, and a lot of other people did that move, but the podcasting was starting to grow, and now there’s so many more podcasts, so much more competition for those earbuds that it’s changed a little bit. It’s not as valuable to be
a guest as it was a year ago because of the game, unless
a certain podcast overindexed and there’s more, and you keep playing this. So it’s really tactical stuff like that, but it’s really about
scaling the unscalable. The truth is, you’ve gotta get
to somebody’s emotion, right? So that it goes from heart
to brain to wallet, right? Heart to brain to wallet, oh I like that. That could be a really nice picture. Let’s, maybe a t-shirt. Heart, can you make a t-shirt? Anyway, heart to brain to wallet is kind of the way I
think about selling books. First you gotta get them emotional, then you gotta make them
think there’s a value prop, and you’ve got a storytell to them why they should buy your book. What’s in it for them above the fact that they feel that they owe you? And then that’s when they
start pulling out their wallet. And so I do that one by one by one by one, and when I do interviews,
one of the things if you go back and listen
to all of the podcasts, Lewis Howes, Peflen,
JLD, any of those people, when I was doing those interviews, I barely mentioned the book. As a matter of fact, when they asked me questions of the book
’cause they were good guys and they wanted to get me exposure, I’d walk away from it ’cause
the only thing I want to do in those 30 minutes was provide as much value for that
audience as possible ’cause that’s the first step, the heart. Thanks for watching episode
41 of The #AskGaryVee Show.