How to Profit From Your Passion Write a blog Cultivate Facebook friends Tweet You know you have to do all this. Why?

Must read article for anyone trying to create a brand, build a business, find a job or create an audience by Rick Newman

How individuals can build a personal "brand" and build a following while doing what they love. The new tools of social media are mystifying to many--and enriching to a few. One of the new social-media impresarios is Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of WineLibraryTV. Vaynerchuk used the Web to turn a sleepy New Jersey liquor store into a $60 million business, and his consulting firm, Vayner Media, advises companies on how to harness the power of social media without the hard selling that turns off customers. Vaynerchuk's new book, Crush It: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

What's the revolutionary difference with videos? It's not that I put up the videos themselves. It's what I did in the next 15 hours after the videos went up, which is get my hands dirty, get in the trenches of the new social Web. That was prior to Twitter, and Facebook was a college thing, so I wasn't going to be pushing wine on college kids. I used blogs, wine forums; I became active because selling a store in those communities felt too pitchy. Becoming a content producer as part of those forums felt much more natural. I'd start talking about zinfandel instead of trying to sell zinfandel.

Talk about that. There's this impression that if you simply create a blog or open a Twitter account, people will suddenly discover you. I agree. "Oh, I got a Twitter account!" Well, what do you want, a cookie? The biggest fundamental belief I have is that you have to work ridiculously hard. To be an entrepreneur, to build your own business, you're not working for the man.

Some people think Twitter and other sites like that are overrated. Twitter, Tumblr, etc. get credit for what they don't deserve because it's really the Internet as a whole. It's the continuation of these sites that matters. On the Web, everything is going to get quicker and easier. There will be massive segmentation. I don't think people understand how this will happen. There could be 10 different people in wine, like the Pinot Grigio Hour. I'm hoping that Crush It will garner enough excitement to help people understand this.

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