Crush It!
Page 11
appendix a:
did you forget anything?
I thought it would be helpful to provide a checklist of all the steps you want to take as you build your personal brand:
1. Identify your passion.
2. Make sure you can think of at least fifty awesome blog topics to ensure stickiness.
3. Answer the following questions:
• Am I sure my passion is what I think it is?
• Can I talk about it better than anyone else?
4. Name your personal brand. You don’t have to refer to it anywhere in your content, but you should have a clear idea of what it is. For example, “The no-bs real-estate agent,” “The connoisseur of cookware,” “The cool guide to young-adult books boys will love to read.”
5. Buy your user name—.com and .tv, if possible—at GoDaddy.com.
6. Choose your medium: video, audio, written word.
7. Start a Wordpress or Tumblr account.
8. Hire a designer.
9. Include a Facebook Connect link, Call-to-Action buttons, Share Functions, and a button that invites people to do business with you in a prominent place on your blog.
10. Create a Facebook fan page.
11. Sign up for Ping.fm or TubeMogul and select all of the platforms to which you want to distribute your content. Choosing Twitter and Facebook is imperative; the others you can select according to your needs and preference.
12. Post your content.
13. Start creating community by leaving comments on other people’s blogs and forums and replying to comments to your own comment.
14. Use Twitter Search (or Search.Twitter) to find as many people as possible talking about your topic, and communicate with them.
15. Use Blogsearch.Google.com to find more blogs that are relevant to your subject.
16. Join as many active Facebook fan pages and groups relating to your blog topic as possible.
17. Repeat steps 12 through 16 over and over and over and over and over.
18. Do it again.
19. And again.
20. When you feel your personal brand has gained sufficient attention and stickiness, start reaching out to advertisers and begin monetizing.
21. Enjoy the ride.
appendix b:
five business ideas i won’t get to—they’re yours
I believe that livestreaming is the future, so most of the new businesses I envision build on that platform. Here are a few that I will unfortunately not be able to get around to, even though I think they have tremendous potential. See what you can do with them.
the QVC of the internet
It blows my mind that this hasn’t been done on a serious level yet. Ustream.tv and Justin.tv are free platforms that replicate live television—they provide the perfect opportunity for a great salesperson to start an efficient online QVC. Find a terrific host (or host the show yourself), mix things up by inviting guests—inventors, entrepreneurs, authors—and talk about whatever you find interesting or useful or exciting. You don’t even need vendor relationships to start this up—just affiliate link all of the products you think are worth selling. Eventually vendors will be begging to get airtime on your show. In addition, you wouldn’t need a call center to handle customers and sales. While you or your host talked about a product, a box would appear at the bottom of the screen with a button allowing people to start clicking through to make their purchase. Needless to say you’d have an archive and break products into categories so that shoppers could easily find past episodes and shop to their hearts’ content.
a tea blog
I think the tea market in the United States is about to blow up, and for the person who wants to educate and entertain the masses there will be enormous opportunity to build a site much like Wine Library TV. Offer a tea-of-the-month club and you’ll be in serious business.
the sports center of the web
Where is the twenty-four-hour online sports-talk show? I totally see this as a college play—five to ten college seniors debating sports while livestreaming on Ustream.tv from a dorm room. Obviously you couldn’t compete with the likes of ESPN, who can purchase the right to use sports highlight reels, but you could certainly give radio stations a major run for their money. Build up a few major personalities to draw regular viewers. I would love to see two brothers (I wish AJ and I could find the time to do this!) do an online call-in twenty-four-hour sports-talk show, much like ESPN’s Mike and Mike, or even the longtime hit in New York, Mike and the Mad Dog. Or become the online world’s Don Imus. Advertisers would eat up the chance to get their name mentioned on a show with a hundred thousand listeners and viewers. Imagine: “This hour brought to you by Sports Authority.” Has a nice ring to it, right?
online book reviews
This one has my panties in a bunch big-time. All you independent bookstores screaming that book lovers should bring you their business because you can offer more personal attention and knowledge, even if you can’t compete on price? Here’s your chance to swat the big boys down: a daily book review video blog. Get two or three of your most entertaining, most passionate associates to talk about the books they love, what’s coming up, what’s hot, what’s not. At the same time, lower the price on your one hundred top-selling books. Spread your neighborhood charm to the world. By using your blog to expand your reach beyond your local market, you will explode your brand and your business.
pepsilandhousplace.com
What the heck is this? Just an example of the kind of destination url a big corporation might launch to get a fire under their brand. If I were a brand manager (I’d love to say a CEO would get on this, but brand managers are usually the ones in the trenches), I’d create a one-off website to leverage interest in my brand, where consumers can go for information and even samples. It is completely separate from the homepage and allows you to track your campaign and how much effect it’s having. You’re thinking you’ve seen special sites for brands before. Not like this you haven’t, because this one would bring the power of Facebook into play, too. Build a fan page for your brand announcing a game or contest that gets people to start interacting with your brand. By participating, they get free samples and other perks. Combing the reach of Facebook with product sampling is something that very few, if any, companies are doing, and it’s about time they start.
About the Author
Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multifaceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family’s local retail wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine. Gary has always had an early-to-market approach, launching Wine Library’s retail website in 1997 and Wine Library TV in February of 2006. His lessons on social media, passion, transparency, and reactionary business are not to be missed!
WWW.GARYVAYNERCHUK.COM
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also by gary vaynerchuk
Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines:
Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight,
and Bring Thunder to Your World
Credits
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Copyright
CRUSH IT! Copyright © 2009 by Gary Vaynerchuk. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195933-2
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* You want me to explain this global, over-the-top statement in more detail than I have room for in this book? E-mail me at gary@vaynermedia.com.
* Remember what I said in chapter 1 about partnering with someone whose DNA complements yours? To do this book, I teamed up with someone who does know how to write, and I dictated the whole thing.