Last night I attended the Gary Vaynerchuck Social Media event at Independence Park Theatre, in Baton Rouge LA. Gary is the author of the book Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion and runs the website Wine Library TV. I honestly didn’t know a lot about him other than these two things but was interested in what he had to say about personal branding and social media. Here are some great points he touched on during his talk. Also, he’s a great story teller. If you every get a chance to hear him speak go. It will be well worth it.

• If you don’t get into social media you will lose.
• Word of mouth closes 72-20 percent of the time.
• Facebook and Twitter are word of mouth tools.
• Own what your about.
• it’s always the message.
• In Three years we will all be in the customer service business.
• Like a small town, through social media we are all connected and know everyone’s business. That’s where business is going.
• Everyone, every relationship, every customer is now the press.

These are just some of the great points he made last night. If you interested in more of this check out his book and blog!