Chapter Five

Content is where rubber hits the road. Much of this book is built on the premise that each of us has mastery in a particular subject, and has ability to leverage that knowledge through social media.

Simply, we can use social media channels to jump across traditional barriers. We can build a personal brand, and then embrace certain networks to reach our targeted prospects. Better yet, properly executed, prospects will be using Google and Bing to seek us out. What could be better than that?

There’s just one small catch. We have to create or compile stuff that people will find valuable and interesting. We have to develop a body of content that attracts interest and adds value in some fashion.

Gary suggests fifty blog posts as a starting point. If you can’t conjure up fifty different points you’d like to share with readers (or viewers, if you prefer video), then you aren’t a strong candidate for success. At least in that particular field. On the other hand, maybe a different topic or hobby incites the “fifty post” passion. Whatever it is, content has to drive the model.

People don’t read encyclopedias for pleasure! One tough point for many of us is Vaynerchuk’s assertion that knowledge, alone, isn’t quite good enough. You need some mastery of the subject matter, of course, but there is nothing more boring than a bland recitation of data and statistics. That stuff is available everywhere, and most of us avoid it like a bad mariachi band!

Take any subject, and most of us can find data from multiple sources. Raw data, alone, though is fairly meaningless. It takes perspective to interpret data and make it usable. Visit a local bookstore and spend some time at the shelf devoted to food and wine. There’s a ton of data. Will spending a few minutes there increase your knowledge or boost your confidence? Despite this abundance of material, I’d guess you’d rather spend fifteen minutes with the author of this book! More pleasurable and more informative.

That’s the difference. Use stories and examples to bring the subject alive for your friends. Use your unique viewpoint to create interest and value. Become the expert you’d like to meet.

Questions for blog discussion:

1. In your field of passion, whom would you most like to meet? What would you ask them if you spent an hour together?

2. If you have a spare hour, and have to spend it in front of your computer, where would you go? What sites would you visit and what are you looking for?

3. What do you think customers most want to know about your business? What are the top three questions they’d ask? How might your answers differ from your chief competitor?

Chapter Four

Good people will thrive outside the constraints of big business and high overhead The future will be a field day for “everyone with talent” because they’ll be freed from bureaucratic bonds.

Chapter Four starts with an example we recognize – newspapers and magazines. Traditional platforms (the publisher) are struggling as readers move on-line. In market after market, and across media lines, hard-copy circulation drops as readers gather more news and information from the web. You might guess that’s a bad thing for writers.

Not according to the Vaynerchuk. He says that’s “the best thing that can happen to journalists … the good ones, anyway.”

That’s key to his point. Independence is an option that just wasn’t there before. Now, with a personal brand and a bit of technology savvy, anyone can become an expert, and profit directly from that knowledge. Who needs a magazine to become a foremost travel writer? Who needs a bookstore to sell books? Who needs an impressive and expensive building to offer banking services?

In a sense, the middleman – an employer who puts up needed capital and then pays us out of profits – is losing power in this new information democracy. In fact, the need for capital is shrinking daily. Without expensive printing presses or monster television towers, (or factories, or distribution centers), it’s really quite simple to build a profitable following. Instead of buying advertising to attract readers, an enterprising expert can be selling advertising to outsiders interested in reaching his (or her) readers! That’s the whole Google advertising model in a nutshell, actually.

Remember that Gary Vaynerchuk by-passed normal distribution channels to market wine from his father’s liquor store. He built an empire with direct sales from his Wine Library, the store that grew from his personal video blogs. And – he points out – the videos were not originally about selling wine. They were about selling Gary. It’s all about a personal brand.

Questions for blog discussion:

1. How is new information and/or technology changing your current industry?

2. Who are some “personal brands” in your industry? How did they get to be personal brands? Local, regional, national?

3. Anyone you know who has jumped an existing distribution system?

4. Where is the intersection between your personal expertise and your personal passion? Everybody has at least one.