Wine Library's Gary Vaynerchuk Shares Secrets of Social Media Success

(Patch) - The tech-savvy entrepreneur, video blogger and best-selling author grew his family business exponentially by embracing e-commerce.

The New York Times bestselling author and social media powerhouse behind Wine Library, Gary Vaynerchuk, attributes much of his success to being both intuitive and authentic. 

Speaking before a standing-room-only crowd Thursday morning at UBS Financial Services Inc. headquarters in Manhattan, the man who helped take his family business from $3 million in 1997 to $45 million eight years later, said while he didn't own a computer before launching Winelibrary.com, he instinctively knew e-commerce was going to be a game-changer. 

He was right and before long his video blog captivated as many as 80,000 viewers daily. The New Jersey native's offbeat style of wine commentary also led to him yucking it up with the likes of Conan O'Brien and Ellen DeGeneres. Being true to himself is still one of the main ingredients in his recipe for success.

"I continue to bet on the future of what I think is going to happen, learn it, use it," said Vaynerchuk, whose Twitter feed has garnered the interest of close to 1 million followers. "Plenty of people told me that my style of wine communication would never work but it did because it was authentic, it was real, it came from a place of knowledge. I understood the context. I understood the new places to tell stories, this place called youtube."