The Art of Social Media Power Users featuring Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, and Peg Fitzpatrick

Hi, this is Guy Kawasaki and I'm sitting in rainy Silicon Valley where the weather is not perfect. We have Peggy Fitzpatrick in Keene, New Hampshire, social media capital of the world. And Gary Vaynerchuk. Are you in New York?

I'm in New York City, my man. Yep.

And Gary Vaynerchuk's in New York. And today's influencers, art of social media vip. Total awesome webinar hangout on air. Gary, Peggy and I, we practice all week how to swear so we could fit right in with you.

Yes, I have like some big strings of them that my husband helped me with.

I love it, I love it.

So, Gary, why don't you kick it off here, tell us what you're doing, talk about your latest book, whatever you're up to.

So these days I'll share with you, I'll kind of even go a little improv here. These days I'm very focused on running what you see back here, which is a 450 person agency called VaynerMedia. And basically you guys know me. I mean, obviously I wrote Jab Jab Jab Right Hook last year and obviously I'm out there speaking and putting myself out there at times. But the last 24 to 36 months have really been more operational and execution. Really the guy and the human being. I was from, call it age 22 to 30 before I ever even made my first wine library, TV, video or guy. The guy that you ran into when you were sitting in the audience in Las Vegas in those early conferences, that was really 35 year old me. So I kind of wanted for myself and maybe even to be very transparent for the market to remind everybody that I'm an operator. I take a lot of pride that in the last 36 months I've grown a company from 30 to 470, 70 people. And so these days I'm being the CEO of a top flight social digital agency. I'm also in January raised $25 million to continue my angel investing a little bit more formally in a fund called Vayner rsc. And that's doing really well, as in the companies haven't gone out of business yet.

That's a start.

That's a start. And yeah, and my public stuff, it takes the leverage of the relationship that you and I have, Guy, to be honest with you, to drag me into things like this though, that was my core 48 months ago. And so I'm really, really operational. I'm actually quite boring and practical other than I got itchy because, you know, I love the camera. And so a few months ago I started the AskGaryVee show, which is a two or three time a week YouTube show and podcast where I take questions from Twitter and I answer four or five questions in a 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 minute video. Very similar to Wine Library TV. And I'm enjoying it tremendously. And it's fun to be in tune with my community and find new people to get into the community. And so that's kind of my state of the union.

So you're telling me you're growing up?

I think that's right. But I also am telling you, but you know what guy? To my defense and from the nappy, I think that I'm reminding people who I was before people thought I wasn't grown up.

It's back to the future.

But Gary, you've always been about a business model. You've never been the social person. That's just, I mean you are social on live all the time. But it's always been about making money for the wine business or for, you know, it's not just a game, right?

Yeah. I mean, look, I think people bet on their strengths. I mean, as people who are watching right now, the ones that have gotten to know me in real life, it doesn't take a long while to know that the shtick on stage or the Persona on Twitter maps very similar to who I am in life. I really genuinely like people. It's why I like. I mean, I'm like the head of HR of this 450 person company. I like talking about people's conflicts. I like people. And so for sure, social works for me because it's in me. But equally to being someone who likes to be talking to or talking to people or with or in the game. I equally love building businesses and being a businessman. And so I'm not Mother Teresa. I'm not doing social because I think it's going to solve the world's problems. My filter to the world is very business oriented. I got involved deeper in tech, which was the web 2.0 movement that moved to social media era because I thought it would help my wine business. I started recognizing that I was able to see trends maybe slightly earlier than others. And there was financial ways, whether investing or consulting or building my brand or selling books or speaking, that there was other ways for me to play. And so that's exactly right. That's why I've never struggled with the kind of cliche what's the ROI of social media questions. Because I've been feeling the Effects, whether on my personal brand, which is the cliche way. So I take that out of the equation. I feel it in my wine business. I watch the conversion funnels of watching people come from Pinterest and buy $8,000 worth of wine or from a tweet. I know what the math is and the agency has allowed me across 100 clients to see it in different versions in verticals that I didn't play in. You know, I'm absolutely businessman first. And this stuff, if you really look at it, I've never spent much time debating the ROI of social media. I talk about it, but to debate it is a waste of time because it's a foregone conclusion. Guy obviously has been in the game longer than I did, but before I was known I was arguing the value of E commerce, specifically when it got to wine. I mean, people just thought that was ludicrous in 1995, 6 and 7. And so this is just much of the same. Back to Guy's fun comment of like, you're growing up. For me, I think I'm always going to be in a seesaw moment, right? I'm conflicted by my practicality and operation skills with the fact that I love the hyperbole and the personal brand and those things. And I think I'll go through these three to seven year chapters where I'll be a little more practical to remind myself that I'm worthy to get away with speaking or public or a TV show or whatever happens in my life. I think there is a little bit of a yin and yang, a little contradiction, but I feel like they pull very strong and create something nice. Cool.

Nice answer, Gary. I heard a great quote that you said. It's hustling is squeezing every ounce of juice out of the orange. That is 100% what I do. Any piece of content that I create, I literally will squeeze use every single thing. I will make it into every form of content that I possibly can.

It's something that I haven't historically been good at, something I envy. And I think Guy's done a lot of scalable, smart stuff in that. I know that you jam that way recently. Very recent as a matter of fact. Very quick little secret. The AskGaryVee show is actually the strategy behind that. By answering five questions and now building a content team around me, I'm turning them into medium posts and LinkedIn posts. And if you go to GaryVaynerchuk.com right now, you'll, you'll start seeing Buzzfeed and Business Insider Type of. I'm literally turning myself into Mashable and Forbes by building a team around me. I was too very honestly busy, like with the wine business or Vaynermedia, to do a good job in taking a piece of content and making it further than just a tweet, turning it into a quote card to be good on Pinterest, then turning it into an animated gif for Tumblr. But I think there is enormous value in that Peg, if you can either afford it or you can financially or have the time to really go into it. For example, I'm sad that Wine Library TV wasn't popping. Now I know so much more how to make it successful, not just the show. Chop it up into episodes for each individual wine, write articles about it, get them distributed by wine spectator. There's 17 to 25 moves in my tool shed today that I didn't use to build up that profile. And I think one of the biggest ones is what I call the DJing of content. Right. Taking a core thoughter piece of content and then making them consumable. How do I take that same picture and then put it on Snapchat and then draw a funny thing on top of me because I'm talking natively within that platform. That's what the book was about. And I think even I only wrote it a year ago.

That is this one.

Yeah. And so that's exactly what I believe in, Peg, as you know, because that's two years of thoughts ago and a year and a half of the book being out. But it's scary to me how much better at that exact game and more knowledge and more things I have to say about that subject because I do think that content is king. But the context of the platform that the content is being delivered on is a nuance that is separating the women from the girls.

You got it.

How many people watch one of your Gary Vee AskGary videos?

I think the View count right now, Guy, is somewhere between 20 and 35,000 per episode. I don't know how many unique. I don't know if somebody's watching it six or seven times, but those are the view counts. And yeah, and to be honest with you, I've spent a little less time, Guy, in the last 24, 36 months to try to be at the tippy top of my audience engagement. So I'm building myself back up, even in a little way. I mean, you know how it is as being somebody who's one of these individuals that has a lot of people's attention there's an ebb and flow of sometimes when you're like on when a book's out or, you know, like when we're on. It's kind of like being an artist that goes on tour. Right. Sometimes you go back to the lab and you work on the songs, sometimes you're promoting. So I see a lot of parallels to that. And so that's what we see.

So let me ask you this. Now that it's been a while since your book's been out, do you love Pinterest more? Because you didn't really love Pinterest all that much. Kind of broke my heart a little bit, Peg.

You know what? It wasn't that I didn't love Pinterest in that book. I mean, I love Pinterest. It was that I didn't feel like I had enough to contribute at that moment. I was deeper in other places. I knew the value was there. I wasn't. I didn't feel like I had enough expertise to go deep enough. And I like betting on my strengths. Right. I didn't even talk about YouTube, for example, because I felt crush it handled that. I've been a long time. And you can go back to talks five years ago about my POV on Pinterest, which is, I think when Pinterest's ad product in 2015 really gets to scale, it is going to be a major league competitor of Google search ad money because the conversion rates and the intent of the audience to buy things on that channel are extraordinary. So, you know, please let me apologize for the tone that you.

I was like, where's the Pinterest?

All that came down to was of the moment when I did that work. I didn't have enough depth to make that chapter as oomphy as it could be. But it wasn't my love for it. It was just my own skill set that I thought could deliver on in that book.

I'm just giving you a hard time. I explain Pinterest to Guy all the time. He's like, what?

The reason I wanted to answer it that way is. I think it's an important note. I think that one thing that I think a lot of people who've been fortunate enough to get people's attention, the fact that we're fortunate enough right now that some people want to watch this, I think there's a pressure to be all things to everybody all the time that you're this unbelievable. I think the reason I've been able to, for whatever people handle the way I act on stage or Things of that nature. When people peel away the layers. With me, the thing that I take a lot of pride in is by staying in the zone and talking about the things that I know, it's allowed me to be less full of shit than the sizzle that I naturally come with to begin with starts the process down. And that, in a weird way, has been my saving grace. And I think it's important for a lot of people watching here is stay in your zones of the things you really know. Don't feel the pressure to be the biggest expert on Yik Yak right now if you haven't even downloaded the app.

It took you 16 minutes before you said your first profane word. Gary, you are getting old.

So, Guy, you want to shoot a question?

I'm like, I'm just so amazed. I'm wrapping my mind around this. 35,000 views of his YouTube videos. Maybe do an Ask Guy series.

Hey, by the way, Guy, did I email you on this? One of the big things I'm doing for the show is I'm getting people to ask a video question. And very honestly, to make it very clear, it is a branding game. And so I'd love for you to ask a question. You guys, if you want to ask a question for the show and it could bring a lot of exposure to what you're doing here. I've got a lot of fun people lined up and it's just a fun thing for my audience. So tell me how to do it.

How do I do it?

Just record a 30 second question for me of any sorts that you want, and then I'll play it as one of the five questions on the show.

Just do it with video on a phone and send you the video.

Or I mean, if you want to use higher quality, that's fine. But video and phones are so high quality at this point, I'm more than comfortable with that.

Okay, we'll do that.

Cool.

So, Gary, have you experimented with native video uploading to Facebook? Yes, it's magic for 2015.

You're absolutely right, Peg and Guy, the view count on my show would probably be closer to 50,000 if I wasn't so bullish on Facebook. Native video and Peg, it's magic. I would add some color to what you just said. For the audience. It's Magic for December 10, 2014. Our intuition tells us it's going to be magic because it's obviously Facebook's own native product. So I think it'll always be at some level in magic. But Facebook feeds, Facebook feed is very Much this generation's Google natural search results, right? They're always tweaking. I'll give you one Medium. The blogging platform is magic for Facebook feed right now. I clearly see when I post a Medium article a higher awareness rate than I do if I do a LinkedIn post or things of that nature. So Facebook's always going to play algorithmic games of what they think is most valuable to their platform. Clearly they want to beat Google. They're not going to let Google, excuse me, YouTube videos that are natively posted in a feed get the same organic reach that their native product is. Plus the execution of their native product is incredible. You scroll, it starts playing, you have to hit it to hear the audio. It's so well done. And I've been, yes, I mean, guy, I've given up and think about this and this is going to make a lot of sense to you and a lot of other people listening. I'm giving up the perception, branding value of having my videos have 50,000 versus 35,000 because I'm getting 50,000 to 100,000 native on Facebook and net net, though that's not a public number and though I can't say, look at me, it's still achieving the bigger goal at hand. And so yes, Peg, to answer your question, to me, the arbitrages that are most valuable right now are native video and Facebook feed. Medium posts in Facebook feed. I think Instagram is incredibly important. It's hard to track the conversions, but the attention of the customer is clearly there. I think Twitter is going down unfortunately a little bit. The attention is waning and I think we're all feeling that. I've never been in a place where I'm posting the same thing so many times to still reach the same level of awareness. And I have my concerns of is that turning off the audience that is hardcore that sees it four times. So those are some concerns of mine. I'm curious where they'll go. I think Pinterest is ad product. There's a lot of fun, exciting things. LinkedIn's influencer thing as they added everybody else got deteriorated. So I'm moving, it's just a constant move to where the art is.

They have a lot of new stuff coming out though, with their integration with SlideShare. LinkedIn and SlideShare together are doing some more behind the scenes things with influencers. So it's going to be interesting. 2015 with Haiku Deck and SlideShare with LinkedIn is going to boost it back up where the publishing when everybody Got publishing, it did equal it out a little bit. I know what you mean. When just influencers had it, it was special and then it was a lot of content.

And as one of those influencers, that's all I care about for me. Right. I know and agree with you. I have slideshares that have hundreds of thousands of consumption. I did that through LinkedIn and I know that's a tactic that will work, but from a branding standpoint, when there's that dilution you have, you know, for all of us, and by the way, not only the ones that have been lucky enough to have the skill or the serendipity to pop out and be at a bigger level, but even for anybody watching here who's got an audience of 17, you've got to always audit your resources, whether they're financial or time to where do you need to put out your storytelling, your content, your micro content, your efforts? And that to me is really the most fun game. And I take a lot of pride in spending outrageous amounts of time trying to figure out where to execute that.

Have you tried Canva, Gary?

I have not.

Oh, Gary, you're killing me.

I know. God.

I think your team might use it though. Right, Gary?

Yeah, guy. The team's using it and are big fans. I just would never want to bullshit you and I know people are watching, but I promise you with all my heart, I will. I've got a couple vacation coming up and I will definitely do it.

I'm not going to drink wine until you use canva.

I respect that.

I am going to drink wine. So, Gary, speaking of Medium, I just saw that you published on there and it was an article about your bucket list.

Yes.

Can you share that? That was awesome piece.

You know, I think a lot of people hear the spiel of like, I want to buy the New York jets. And that's true. But I thought it was an opportunity for me to clarify that I love the process, right. And I talked about everybody's got these things they want to achieve and bucket list I thought was a good way to kind of put it because we kind of use that terminology of pop culture. I always ask myself, why am I so happy? And I really, really am happy. And I've been happy my whole life. And whether it didn't start happening when I got more triple Z list or Internet fame or more financial upside, or it's just always been there. Because once I got out of the school system, which was not happiness for me, I didn't want to play within those rules. Once I got into the land that was mine. Entrepreneurship. I'm in love with the process of trying to be successful more than being successful. I kind of went into it, kind of talked about the things that matter to me, which is people. Peg, I appreciate you calling it out. It is my most over indexing. It's my second most over indexing piece on medium. Clearly hit a chord. The other one, and ironically the other one was me talking about how valuable my wife is in the process of me being successful because she creates the air cover for me to draw within and execute within. And you know, Guy once told me at an airport about his travel schedule predicated on his family. And he may not remember this, but it was in Turkey and it was just in line. We were just going through customs. We weren't even really talking about much. We were both trying to get to our next place. And it hit me and it's always been with me ever since. And you know, I mean, you know, at the end of the day, your family is just so everything. And it's important to me for my behavior to map to the things I care about. But I also need to balance the natural ambition that is in my heart and the things that I want for me. And that's part of it as well. And I think all of us play that game and try to figure out what's right for themselves. And it evolves. And my life's different today with a five year old and a two year old than it was five years ago or six years ago with neither in the equation. And I can already taste what it's going to feel like. I'm projecting feelings when they're 10 and 13 and doing more tangible things. And so you adjust. I was in Anaheim giving a talk and I didn't know really where I was. And I realized Disneyland was one second away from where I was. And it was the first time in my life I like stopped. And I said, oh my God, I can't wait to have to speak at this venue again. Because I don't care if my daughter's in school or at camp or whatever she's doing, I'm taking her and it's going to be an amazing two day trip. One that I'll remember and hopefully she'll remember. These are the things that it's funny to watch your life evolve while still being the same person and having the same aspirations and dreams and hustle.

Gary, I'll give you a power tip for when you do that Disneyland trip. Disneyland has invited me as a VIP or whatever. Right. Because of social media, what they do. You can hire this person or they can assign it to you, depending if you find the right social media person at Disney, they assign this person who stays with you all day long. And you literally cut every line.

Yes.

I have done like 14 to 20 rides in a day. That's, you know, that's four or five times.

Oh, yeah. 5X. Yeah. Unbelievable.

That's the power tip, man.

It's guy. It's unbelievable how shameless I will be in that execution. I have no pride or sense of morality to cut lines ever.

I'll tweet Disney so they know you're interested.

Do you guys know that clear pass that they have in a couple? When I use that, it's funny. You use this pass. You go in front of everybody who just wasted, they give you the buckets. They literally cut a person who's. And I have empathy, but I gotta be honest, I'm like, the time is so much more valuable than those two strangers. I feel bad, but I'll do it because. And that's a similar scenario.

I tell people that I'm Jackie Chan when I cut the line.

I love it.

My kids are waiting for that guy. They're like, when will we be at the stage when Disney calls us? I don't know if that's gonna happen. So they're hoping to be Kawasaki.

You're working on it, Peg.

Yeah, well, I'll pay for my trip, I guess the old fashioned way. I mean, with money.

What do you see? You obviously work with a lot of large brands. What do you see as the biggest mistakes they're making with social media?

I think first of all, they're not making the mental commitment, guy. They can say anything they want. They're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media and millions and tens of millions on billboards and radio and direct mail and print, and then tens and hundreds of millions for television and things of that nature. I mean, they're spending guerrilla marketing budgets on social media. So that is absolutely. The truth is that they haven't really bought into the religion or made the true because they have a Facebook and Twitter account. They think they've made the commitment, but they're not making the financial or the mental commitment to try to extract the true ROI out of these platforms. So believe it or not, that's number one, I think. Number two, I think they're, you know, obviously I have vested interest in this statement, so I want to hedge it, but it's the truth and I hope the People that know me take it for what it's worth. I think they're hiring the wrong partners. A lot of them are hiring very youthful. You know, they think because they grew up with it, they can do it. Or PR agencies who have been traditionally in the B2B business. If you think about a PR agency, they've worked with seven to 15 editors to try to get things or producers, whereas social's the market. But I will say this, this was a pretty banner year. There's a lot more recognition to its realness. But again, Guy, to put it into context of your career, because I think it's the right analogy. You've watched so many cycles of the things that people haven't believed in. Right. People haven't believed in technology for so long. They didn't believe in computers. Right. I mean. Right.

They didn't believe in women.

Right. Like, think about that. I mean, like the evolution, like, think.

Of all the whole Mad Men generation. You see women.

Yeah, I know. Mad Men cracks me up.

And they definitely, for a lot of us watching here right now, we all remember when people truly did not believe in the Internet straight up. And I'm talking about like Microsoft as a company. I'm talking about people saying it was going to be a fad. Like, literally a fad, like, like Rainbow Bloom bracelets. So I think that for me, much like email marketing or E commerce or banner retargeting and the exchange or YouTube videos when I kind of popped, Social's coming to real of age right now and I'm excited about it. And then I think the other thing is that's why I didn't write. That's why I wrote the book. Guy, I think most people don't understand that the context of the platform is very, very important. You can't just take the same photo and blast it across nine different platforms and think it's going to do you any good.

Okay.

Guy's like, yeah, lots to think about it. Guy's like, okay, all right, so this.

Is about to explode.

Yeah. Okay, so we are at the 30 minute mark. Do we want to wrap it up here? And Guy, do you have any idea?

We're going to let Gary plug our book and tell everybody to read our book.

Right?

Sure.

So first of all, given the context, you guys, I'm telling you right now, Guy, and this makes me super pumped. I really want that video question for you and I'll pound it really hard in an environment that will get you a lot of new audience and I'll definitely do that. Because the truth is, here's what it comes down to. And if anybody's watching, here's the punchline to that statement by Guy. I think all of us in the world, but definitely one who gets Guy. Guy, let me ask you a question. Let's flip it up. How many times do you get asked to give a quote to somebody's book? A week?

Once a day.

There you go. Same for me. And so when time is my biggest asset and when my name of who I'll spend time with or put that name on, I mean, I went three years not doing it to anybody, and I thought I went a little too far, and I said, okay, let's take a step back. But my fear is always, I don't know what's written in that book. If they say One thing about LinkedIn that I believe is different, am I associated by endorsing that statement. My level of confidence of your execution, guys, allows me to be here. And there's no, like, go buy the book or the Gary Vee charisma to get going. Nothing will trump the fact that I want to be here right now and have this conversation with you guys or ask you to ask a question on the show in the context of the book. And I think that, I think is what I spend the most time thinking about, that your word is and your name is your biggest asset. And I happily sit here in this room with you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you. All right, that's a super place to wrap it up. We told Gary half hour. I'm sticking to it. We don't want to waste his time.

Go ahead. Forget about go ahead guy.

After you. Buy the jets, buy the Rangers.

Okay, you got it, Peg. I see what you're doing, but instead of like throwing it up and that's very sweet of you, you don't need to put the book up. I'll say this, anybody who has any follow up questions and details to this GaryVee on Twitter, hit me up. Say hello. Bring value is the leverage I'm looking for for the moment when I want something in return. So right now, I don't need anything. Let me help.

Got it.

Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye. Bye.