Gary Vee: 'Don't be worried about content fatigue, nobody's going to see it all'

Quality or quantity? While the answer should never be either or, master content creator and renowned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk doesn't believe the volume game should ever be compromised, despite the common belief that less is more.

Referencing his blogpost in which Vaynerchuk said marketers should be creating at least 64 pieces of content on a daily basis, the CEO of VaynerMedia told audiences at Marketing's virtual Content 360 that they should never worry about creating too much content as most of it will slip under the consumer's radar.

"Creating too much content will not cause fatigue because no consumer will be seeing all of your content. You're contextualising that content and they're still not going to see all of it,” he explained. He added that there is a "wild disconnect" between marketers perception and consumers' action, and many brand marketers will be "devastated" to realise how few consumers are really consuming their one-off commercials. He said:

Brands are making the assumption that all their consumers are seeing all of the content that is put out there.

“When I’m putting out 64 pieces of content a day for a brand, my hope is that the customer I’m targeting may see that piece of content one day a week. And the 64 pieces are actually going to 30 different groups. So it's only two pieces of content a day and that too viewed on a [mobile] screen,” he elaborated. 

When asked what his strategy is at maintaining and growing a consumer base, consistent to his belief of volume, Vaynerchuk said "Content at scale. Volume. Nobody watching here could comprehend the level of volume output that my ambition is for brands. FedEx for example, should globally be putting out thousand pieces of content a day. And, there is no brand right now that is doing that. With the way the internet works, you have unlimited content."

Speaking on the topic of "Marketing in the Now", Vaynerchuk said despite the difficulties of the COVID-19 pandemic, marketers now have become better practitioners as many are digging deeper to increase their knowledge of the numerous platforms out there - particularly senior level marketers who are not in "the trenches" and may not quite understand the scale and impact of all the numerous social media platforms.

While content creation is second nature to him, Vaynerchuk is quick to add that for marketing teams with limited resources, sticking to one’s strengths is probably the best bet. “You have to recognise how you communicate best. When the camera goes on, i come alive and it works for me. But in the same token, I am not a very good writer, and all my written posts are all transcriptions from my video. Meanwhile, somebody out there might not be a great natural video producer or designer, but they are incredibly articulate when they write. And so, they should be posting blog posts or long form written copy on these visual platforms,” he said.

More from his fireside chat here:

Marketing: If a company wants to kickstart content marketing with zero budget and manpower, how should they start?

Vaynerchuk: Good news is, I did that for seven years. Zero money, zero manpower, and I did it myself. I chose Twitter because Twitter is a place you can reply to people asking questions and Twitter is still a very prominent platform where you can search any word about your industry and your interests, and you can jump into the conversations - it's like a cocktail party.

As a content creator, have a note pad, make notes, take a screenshot and post it on your Instagram. My team does make content, but my most performing single Instagram post got around 319,000 likes and I made this in one second on Instagram, with no team and it wasn't complicated.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBDcX5ygtDN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Step one is no excuses. I did it for seven years and that is how I eventually managed to afford a team. Step two is in figuring out what are you good at: Can you take photos? Can you hire somebody to make designs? Southeast Asia is loaded with creative talents and extremely attractive costs. One of the reasons we opened our Singapore operations was not only because we thought we could bring a ton of value into the SEA market, but it was also because I wanted to build a hub for incredible talent for prices that were attractive.

Marketing: Given that you're building up such a strong team with capabilities in advertising and eCommerce, do you have any plans to sell the business?

Vaynerchuk:  I don't. I have had some pretty remarkable offers through the last five years. 1. I can never work for anybody, so the thought of selling to an Omnicom or a Publicis, or Accenture, it is just not in the cards for me.

2. I am building this for myself. I have really big long term dreams. I want to buy businesses and run them better than they ran before, similar to private equity except unlike private equity that very much focuses on cost cutting and operational efficiencies, I want to create hyper growth in the business through advertising which is my true talent I believe, and that is the reason I build VaynerMedia and the reason it exits. And selling it will defeat the purpose of the next 45 years of my ambition.

Marketing: B2B marketing can be considered rather dry and technical compared to B2C. Moreover, B2B customers are also sensitive to sharing their successful case studies. How can a B2B brand then create engaging content with the limitations in place? How would you convince your customers to share their successful case studies?

Vaynerchuk: I wouldn't. I have empathy for those brands and I understand why they don't want share what is working for them. I don't think it is in their best interests [to share], but rather it might be in your best interests as an agency or a partner. I think it is you asking for permission but they shouldn’t and they don’t want to, and why would they?

What I recommend is, we do a lot of B2B marketing and LinkedIn is incredible [in this area]. I think there is so much opportunity in acting like a publisher instead of acting like an advertiser. I tell all my clients to think about being the BBC, or Bloomberg or CNN, and think like a publisher, not like an advertiser. Talk about the industry, not yourself. Talk about your genre, not yourself. We've seen a lot of success with that. And to publish macro whitepaper instead of case studies of what has worked for them.

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