How Gary Vaynerchuk built a multi-million dollar empire around a video blog

Gary Vaynerchuk’s story started as the co-owner of a wine store in New Jersey. He gained fame as the host of Wine Library TV, a video blog on the subject of wine, built his wine store into a multi-million dollar business and established his personal brand with TV appearances and speaking engagements around the world.

Just last week he signed a seven-figure book deal and I wanted to use this blog post to look at things that made him as successful as he is in creating opportunities for himself via his video blog.

• Blogging about your passion

Focus on what you love to do. Find your passion and start blogging about it. By doing what you love, you will be more dedicated, more genuine and you will have more enthusiasm. Your readers, your viewers will notice this.

Publishing great content will be easier. Sharing your knowledge and experience will be easier. Making the content unique, interesting and useful to your target group will be easier, as long as you do what you love.

• Putting your face in front of people

“Answer every single email and every single comment on your blog for the rest of your freaking life”

Don’t be a faceless corporation. Show your face, show your personality. Make it easy for your audience to reach you. Have a Twitter account. Listen to what your readers say. Interact with your audience. Show your appreciation by answering comments / e-mails / tweets you get.

• Spreading the word

“Content is king but marketing is queen and the queen runs the household”

Many bloggers just publish a post and wait for visitors and subscribers to be handed to them on a silver platter. That is too passive. You can’t sit around waiting for people to find your blog, you need to find them, help them out, show them the value you create and win them one by one.

• Being different and eccentric

Do not be afraid to be seen as different, or even eccentric. Being different or eccentric in the crowded world of blogs is the strength. Gary Vaynerchuk is very hyperactive and has a very high energy level in his video blogs. He is very direct and doesn’t censor himself, which makes him very authentic and inspirational to follow.

• Creating a dedicated tribe following

“With you and a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world, whether they like it or not”

By being a part of the conversation and by connecting and listening to your audience, you are a part of the dialog and you are making your customers part of a greater community. You build fans one by one. You show that you care, you give your customers someone they can trust and you lead your tribe towards a better place.

• Going where competitors don’t go

Vaynerchuk leveraged modern technology to reach young wine audience. His video blog caught the attention of a demographic new to wine, at the time when none of competitors cared about Internet, video blogging or social media.

To stand out and to differentiate yourself in a blogging world that is saturated with text, you can expand by using video and audio for content and message delivery.

• Pumping out content consistently

“Pump out content – if you don’t produce something every day you’ll be out hustled”

Gary Vaynerchuk started his video blog and has remained dedicated and very consistent in producing content and recording multiple video blogs every week for several years now. Creating content regularly builds trust and dependability and gives readers a reason to subscribe and check back often.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s talk at SXSW

If you want more Gary Vaynerchuk watch his SXSW keynote below. It shows his passion, his dedication to what he is doing, and he explains, in more details, some of the points above.

Building your own empire

I hope these points can be inspirational and motivational, help you come closer to reaching your goals, increasing blog traffic and building your own empire from your blog.