When you think of wine and wine connoisseurs, you probably think of quiet wine tastings by people in tuxedos (who might also be the kind of people to go to art gallery openings or museums). That’s fine for a slice of the populace but it’s a little reserved for most of us. But there’s one guy who is changing how we think about wine and at the same time he’s changing how we think about online marketing.

Gary Vaynerchuk (read his Wikipedia bio here and visit his website here) has enjoyed multimillion dollar success, national (even international?) fame and a multibook deal, all thanks to his online videos.

As the owner of a wine retail store in New Jersey (sorry NJ but you’re known for your wines), Vaynerchuk needed to promote his store, generate traffic, establish his expertise, and create a following. So he created WineLibrary.com, an online video blog where he tastes wines and talks about them.

I like wines, and I’ve been to wine tastings so the first time I saw a video I was expecting something like this: “This wine has good fingers with a hint of oak early and then a strong vanilla finish. You’ll enjoy it with a good cut of beef… blah blah blah”.

But it wasn’t like that at all. One of the wines he featured he talked about how it reminded him of Golden Grahams, the breakfast cereal. He said other things, too, during his video but that stood out as the memorable thing for me. Since then, I’ve watched his videos – both on wine and on online video marketing – and find him to be engaging to watch.

Here is a recent video of his.

If you have a business that you want to position, brand, drive traffic to, and grow, you might consider online videos as well. If you do, and you want to take some lessons from a page in Gary’s playbook, here’s what to do:

1.  Be consistent. He didn’t get where he is today because he did one video a month for a few months then stopped when he didn’t see any traffic. He has been taping consistently since 2006 (episode count is 685 or so) and is enjoyed by 90,000 people.

2.  Be opinionated and courageous. Your videos will fall flat if you try to explore both sides of the issue and let viewers decide. Have an opinion. Be brash. Tell people what to think. Tell others that they’re stupid. Don’t be afraid of backlash (just make sure that you can stand by your position and, of course, never ever slander someone).

3.  Find new ways to communicate. Gary doesn’t buy into the wine community’s lingo. He talks about breakfast cereal (and many other things – just watch his videos). He combines a New Jersey attitude with his wine tasting.

4.  Take a step up. You don’t have to invest in high end equipment right away. But your videos should probably be made slightly more professionally than if they were filmed on your laptop’s built-in camera. Invest in a camera with a microphone, take the time to script something about your topic, and go for it.

If you’ve read this far and think that this is the only answer you need to be successful, you’ve missed the point. This is Vaynerchuk’s crowning jewel. It’s the thing he points people to when talking about wine. But he has also been active on blogs and forums and Facebook with good comments that are relevant to the topic.

photo credit: (Mick Baker)rooster