The Top 3 Key Things To Do In Building A Brand In 2025 (And The Worst) | GaryVee — Are We On Air?

The podcast discusses the top three key things to do in building a brand in 2025, including prioritizing audience needs over self-promotion, diversifying content platforms, and utilizing analytics, while also highlighting the rise of AI influencers as the next wave of content creators. GaryVee emphasizes the importance of understanding the evolving content landscape and adapting strategies for success, suggesting that brands and individuals who fail to embrace these changes may struggle to remain relevant.

Content for Audience

• 00:09:46 GaryVee identifies the primary mistake brands make in 2025 as creating content for selfish reasons, such as fame and fortune, rather than for their audience. He emphasizes a shift towards creating content that educates, enhances, and empowers the audience, noting this as a significant challenge due to human nature's inherent selfishness. He stresses that the focus should be on making the audience's lives better.

Diversify Platforms

• 00:11:07 GaryVee highlights the over-reliance on Instagram and TikTok as a critical mistake brands make. He advocates for spreading a content portfolio across multiple platforms, including Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube Shorts, and LinkedIn, asserting that opportunities exist beyond the dominant platforms. He compares this approach to a boxer training before facing a heavyweight champion, emphasizing the need for a gradual and strategic approach.

Utilize Analytics

• 00:12:30 GaryVee critiques the tendency for brands to prioritize aesthetics over analytics, stating many rely on subjective opinions and 'art' without data-driven decision-making. He emphasizes the importance of analyzing data points like posting times, caption word counts, and content performance, urging brands to focus on practical metrics rather than ego-driven creative decisions. This approach is vital to understanding audience engagement and improving content effectiveness.

Quality vs. Quantity

• 00:14:00 GaryVee discusses the balance of content quality versus quantity. While acknowledging the success of high-volume creators who maintain quality, he suggests most brands should prioritize quality over quantity. However, he also stresses that if a brand is capable of producing high-quality content at a high volume, they should do so as it benefits both the brand and the audience.

AI Influencers

• 00:15:09 GaryVee predicts that AI influencers will become a significant force in the content creation landscape. He suggests that individuals and brands should consider leveraging AI to create digital personas, including AI boyfriends, girlfriends, or other fictional characters. The emergence of AI influencers, he argues, will revolutionize the influencer industry and present significant opportunities for brands and individuals to reach new audiences.