Gary’s success is completely deserved.  An immigrant from the former U.S.S.R. republic now known as Belarus, he uses social media, centered around a daily video show, to transform his family’s wine store in New Jersey from a $1 million dollar business to roughly $50 million in annual sales.

However, this post is not centered around his financial success.  Many successful businesses have made more than him, with or without the use of social media.  The most astounding success of Gary Vaynerchuk is how rich and powerful the results for him are on Google and other popular search engines.  This is why I have declared Gary Vaynerchuk the King of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

I consult businesses on how to utilize social media and other internet marketing to their advantage.  I happened to be in a fairly large wine store in New York City, talking about Vaynerchuk’s unprecedented success.  They were very aware of him, and clearly not fans.  These people shared with me the belief that Wine Library hurts their sales, because they are located in New Jersey, and have lower taxes on win than they do in New York.  The belief, if you believe these people, is that any and all tactics used by Gary Vaynerchuk to sell wine are frowned upon by the rest of the wine community, and wouldn’t be caught dead using anything that made him a household name.  Videoblogs?  Facebook?  Having personal relationships with customers?  Sorry.

This was an education I did not expect.  Gary Vee has enemies.  He has controversy.  I immediately went home and did some Google searching to dig up this alleged dirt.  However, to my shock, I would not find anything remotely negative about him at all.  There was nothing about undercutting wine prices using interstate loopholes.  Nothing was written about people having bad experiences with him personally or with his products.  I was looking for content that was quite specific, expecting a certain result, yet all I found was his official websites, videos and positive things about him.  Wow.

I then did use a search term that was bound to bring up something bad.  That term:

“Fuck Gary Vaynerchuk”

Back when I originally did this search in January, I found a blog post criticizing Vaynerchuk’s own post criticizing Howard Stern. Here in September, I can no longer find it.  All that is listed is some Howard Stern message board discussing the topic, and how it was out of context on Stern’s part.  Five results from the same thread.  That’s it!

The post in question criticized Vaynerchuk.  However, he left a comment on the post.  That led to a follow-up post respecting him.  Gary Vaynerchuk listens to all feedback, positive and negative, and responds to it.  That creates a level of authenticity, something that Google and the other search engines value when determining who should be on the top of the results page.

How do you respond to feedback?  How active are YOU, the owner of your business, in sharing with the community?  Please respond in the comments.

How many of you have ever heard of FriendFeed before?  Raise your hand.

Personally, I’ve had a FriendFeed for over a year, yet rarely use it.  Yet I’m happy I have an account there.  It is a social media aggregator, which expands the number of entry and exit points for my internet activity.  If I post something on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or other social networks, it will show up on FriendFeed.  If I recommend a blog post on Google Reader or if I add a move to my Netflix queue, it will show up there too.  It is a very handy service.

Now to go back to Facebook.  FriendFeed has an application on Facebook to allow your friends to see all your internet activity without having to go to FriendFeed, or even knowing what it is.  Brilliant!