You may have seen him chatting with Ellen DeGeneres on her daytime talk show, or exchanging late-night wisecracks with Conan O’Brien.  Maybe you caught one of his high-energy keynote presentations at a corporate conference.  Gary Vaynerchuk seems to be everywhere these days, and when it comes to using video to market your brand, he’s the guru to listen to.

To boost his family’s $4 million New Jersey wine business into a $50 million national powerhouse, Gary employed social media tools to promote Wine Library TV (www.winelibraryTV.com), a video blog about wine that has exceeded 80,000 devoted daily viewers—the loyal throng he calls “Vayniacs.”

“How did I end up on those TV shows?,” he muses.  “In the past, you had to be discovered—someone had to decide that you’re a talent and they need you.  But nowadays, with online video, we are the content and we can go directly to our customers by using things like YouTube, Viddler and YouStream to build our brand equity.  People who have businesses need to realize that they have this opportunity.”

The results of his efforts have been astounding.  Gary has hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter (see http://Twitter.com/GaryVee) and recently landed a million-dollar book deal .

Keep It Simple
Vaynerchuk emphasizes a simple approach to creating video.  In his videos for Wine Library TV, the camera stays focused on his face while he talks in an animated, engaging way about wine, business, social media and other favorite topics.  As he engages the viewer, Gary is providing valuable content and marketing his brand at the same time.

“It’s nothing earth-shattering,” he says.  “When you’ve made your video, send posts to social media sites and include the URL for your video in the posts.  The person reading your post will click on the URL and end up watching your video.  Put some valuable content in the video and you’re educating the viewer and promoting your business very effectively.”

Vaynerchuk also keeps Twitter, Facebook, Seesmic and Tumblr in his social media arsenal.  He raves about TubeMogul, a distribution site that allows you to upload your video and send it to many different social video sites.

It’s All About Content
“Someone who wants to use these websites to promote their business should realize that I’m not successful because I use Twitter and Facebook,” Vaynerchuk explains.  “I’m successful because of the content that I provide.  I’m good at what I do and I can communicate that expertise in an engaging way.  Anyone who can do that is going to win using these methods of distribution.”

According to Vaynerchuk, the main business advantages of video are that it’s person-to-person communication and many people prefer to watch video more than they like to read.  Also, it’s in our nature to send videos that we like to other people, and that can make videos go viral, which is the ultimate goal of social media marketing.

Vaynerchuk warns that when you make your video, don’t overdo it.  He says the biggest mistake that marketers make is overproduction—trying to make their videos look like polished TV shows—which drains authenticity from the presentation.  Vaynerchuk advises to stick with the simple approach—just a video camera focused on you as you talk—to connect with viewers.

“It’s simply creating an interesting video of yourself talking about your area of expertise and then distributing it,” he says.  “Make something good that has value for people, put it in as many places as possible and good things will happen.  People respond very well to video.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million.”

Follow Gary’s advice.  Take a simple, person-to-person approach and don’t overproduce your video.  Provide valuable content in an engaging way.  Use social media posts to distribute your video.  And who knows, you might just find yourself exchanging witty remarks with Conan O’Brien as he asks you about your incredible success.

To view examples of how Gary Vaynerchuk uses video to promote his brand, check out www.garyvaynerchuk.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 5:57 am and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.