Making a Brand for Yourself
Here’s a guy that totally gets it. Gary Vaynerchuk, of winelibrary.tv didn’t just throw up a little web site with a few videos on it and then sit back and wait for it to go viral. He didn’t think – “gosh, nobody else is talking about wine on the Web”, because he KNEW that lots of people are out there talking about wine on the Web. Instead, he developed a brand – HIMSELF.
10,000 of the people who watch his show don’t know or care anything about wine. But they are interested in Gary. Why? I think it’s because he is not at all the kind of personality that is normally associated with a wine expert. He’s loud, bold, and cusses a lot. His abundant enthusiasm for the subject of wine is enough to draw you in, and his personality gets you hooked. The implementation of his site is fantastic. First, he’s using Viddler, my favourite new video app. Second, his site is all about how you can link up and connect with him. I follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and Viddler , I subscribe to the RSS feed for his show so it’s in my Google Reader, and if I wanted to I could follow him on LinkedIN, Pownce and Cork’d too. What does this mean? He’s EVERYWHERE! I can’t go a day without seeing some sort of update from the guy. And that doesn’t even count all of the other blog posts he’s appearing in these days.
Here’s what I find really interesting about the success he’s had with the Gary Vaynerchuk brand (besides the fact that now just about everyone can spell “Vaynerchuk”). He’s had to get an agent. Mainstream media is noticing him and putting him on their shows (Ellen, Nightline, Conan, to name a few). Hollywood is calling about doing reality TV shows. As he says, mainstream media is beginning to source its new talent from the web.
It’s like an open casting call out here on the Internet right now. You can be sure that the talent scouts are spending more time surfing YouTube and vlog posts than ever before. But I don’t think they are necessarily looking for the next big talent. They are looking for people who are making a brand for themselves and building their audience based on that brand.
What does it mean to content producers? The time to start building your brand is NOW. Quick, before someone else does it.
Watch what Gary has to say about this here:
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