3 key content strategy lessons I learned from watching too much GaryVee
Gary Vaynerchuk’s got a strong personality, but that’s not even what I find most compelling about him.
No, what I really envy is his content, and I know I’m not the only one.
What’s the secret to output like that?
Just… #hustle?
Well, hustle helps, but it’s nothing without the strategy to match. Believe me, I’ve been there.
The true key is a collection of finely honed systems, unique tactics, and the strong support of a talented team.
Not that that’s overwhelming or anything.
But you’re probably closer to creating content like Gary does than you realize. I was skeptical at first, but then I spent a few weeks binging on his videos, and the lessons I’ve learned from him have changed the way I approach my writing for good.
I’ve combed through his best strategy tips and studied the man himself. Here are the bases you need to cover.
1. Master the process before you scale
Sure, GaryVee has a whole team behind him now, and that’s a must if you want to churn out a high volume of content every day like he does. All the more so if you want to keep the quality high.
But he didn’t start there.
By the time he seriously invested in his content operation and and brought in a team, he had already perfected a publishing process for them to follow.
It had been honed through the seven or eight years that Gary spent creating content on his own.
That’s how he was able to put together the right team that could take over the system and turn it up to 11. Or so he explains:
I understand if I make an investment into the core pillars — The #AskGaryVee Show and #DailyVee — I then can empower my team to consume that, see “What is the content of the moment,” and then create content around it…. This is how an article’s made. All those words are things that I’ve said. [They’re] synthesized by the team… with grammar and commas and some leeway. Then you see I listen, I tweak it, I alter it, and we come up with the copy. We come up with the picture I put on Instagram that links to it, we come up with the titles, and the Facebook copy.
Content marketers have talked about acting like media companies for years, but process is where we’ve had trouble walking the walk. As Scott Albro writes, “acting like a publisher is a lot harder than saying you’re a publisher.”
2. Show yourself inside your brand
Another key to content creation as prolific and outstanding as Gary’s is documenting in addition to creating. And to create lots of awesome content consistently, you need to lower those privacy barriers and pour your true self into your content.
Document your own experience, instead of talking at your audience all the time. Show people your personal brand at work. It’s a simple way to reframe your content that makes creation easier and gets your audience interested:
I think it’s the best piece of advice I can give right now to a bunch of 20 to 30 year olds that feel they should be talking to the world and bringing value…. Talk about your journey of trying to find that voice and synthesize it properly…. You can be a whiz kid about the world… but I do think that there’s a smarter way to context it. It’s like starting the sentence with, “You should,” versus… “My intuition says.” And that changes everything.
It makes creation more practical plus builds a more authentic brand with a simple context shift.
Amy Landino, another content hero of mine, publishes videos year-round. But she scales it up to a daily schedule for her #SSSVEDA challenge. Picking up her camera and showing her audience any part of her day makes that a lot more doable for her entire team.
3. Master the art of storytelling
Finally, Gary always has a good story. There’s no way to succeed in content without one:
The notion of storytelling hasn’t changed, but the mediums through which we tell the stories have. With the advent of social and ever-evolving consumer attention, you now have to tell a story in new and interesting ways, be it 6 seconds or 60. I’m obsessed with the idea of finding ways to tell a story that grab your attention the moment you take out your phone and scroll through various social platforms. That’s the game we’re playing. That’s what you have to focus your energy on.
No one wants to read a spec sheet about a product. People want to enjoy journeys of discovery, where the product empowers them to become better versions of themselves.
That’s the story that great content marketing tells.
A great example of this in action is AirBnB’s travel stories:
Rather than talking about properties and listings, they tell stories about the destinations customers travel to and share the experiences they have there.
Create like a MiniVee
No matter how hard I might want to try, there’s only one Gary Vaynerchuk. But that doesn’t mean you and I both can’t create content like him.
As with most high-quality products, his content is made to look effortless, but there’s a lot that goes into it that we don’t necessarily notice at first.
It’s easy to get swept away by his personality and questionably admirable work ethic, but you can’t truly try to replicate his content success until you dissect his strategy.
And now that I have, I’m going heads down to create — and document — content.
Welcome to Content Grind.
