Five Steps to Mastering Online Marketing
Posted by admin on December 6th, 2007Wine online darling Gary Vaynerchuk from WinelibraryTV continues to grab the wine world by its shirt lapels and give a good, healthy shake.
You may recall that Vaynerchuk spoke at the Wine Industry and Technology Symposium (WITS) in July where he was quoted as saying (in reference to the wine industry’s use of technology in marketing):
“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the wine business are really blowing it,” said Gary Vaynerchuk, director of operations for the WineLibrary, a Springfield, N.J. wine store with a popular interactive Web site. (Quote excerpted from the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat)
I wrote a blog post on this site shortly thereafter that can be found here.
Gary continues to not only lead the charge in creating a brand online for himself and his business by proxy, but he also continues to give advice, good advice, to folks interested in growing their business, any business.
Vaynerchuk did an audio interview with an Internet-based business coach and he provided some additional insights that are not just applicable to technology marketing, but marketing in general. You can find the audio portion of the interview here and a transcript of the interview here.
A couple of the nuggets that I gleaned are:
* Vaynerchuk on putting content out on the web: “If you put out great content, you will be found.”
* Vaynerchuk on leveraging your expertise: “So, if you are the best guy in your law firm in contracts, instead of waiting eight to ten years to become a partner, start (using technology) about what you know. Give away that content for free. It will come back to you in spades 800 times over.”
* Vaynerchuk on tapping your passion: “So you may be good at three or four things, but please site down and analyze where you feel you’re most passionate about, even if that is the most competitive genre, do it because that is where you’re going to win when you really believe it, when it goes through your blood, you’re going to wine every time because even if you’re not seeing the mythical success, your heart and soul is going to be happy. That is going to push through to the point when you will start seeing success.
* The Interviewer on setting lofty goals: “you have to have high ideals. You have to have something that you’re shooting for that’s absolutely spectacular. What you have to realize is that’s the ideal, that’s not the goal. When you achieve a certain level of success, the people that are super successful don’t compare where they get to–to their ideal. The ideal is just where they’re focused towards. To be happy and to be excited about what you’re accomplishing, you have to look backwards to where you were. As long as you make that leap and you look backwards to feel good about yourself then you can keep that excitement going. If you’re always comparing where you are to the perfect (ideal) then it’s very hard to stay excited …
The frenetic interview wraps up with Vaynerchuk’ “Five Steps to Mastering Social Media.” If you replace the “social media” with “online marketing” or just “marketing” the same values hold true. They are:
1) Make sure you want to engage/learn it.
2) Now that you know you want it, spend every living second that you possible can on it.
3) Put your toe in the pool. Get involved.
4) Humble yourself. If you’re the best basketball player in the world, you’re playing hockey now. Put on your skates.
5) Know what you want to accomplish.
As we head into the biggest selling month of the year for wine thoughts naturally turn to 2008 and the unconquered horizon that a fresh start presents. Read the Vaynerchuk interview or simply just ponder the excerpts here and consider what you can do in the new year to accelerate your marketing success!
