I’m always fascinated by individuals that take passion, talent and untapped business acumen to create a blueprint for success. Gone are the days, when you have to wait for large organizations to recognize a special talent or idea for it to see the light of day. Now thanks to a myriad of communication tools, a fast moving social media landscape, and virtual training opportunities to master just about anything you would need to launch a venture – people are taking the plunge. This entrepreneurial path is extremely prevalent in social media, where individuals and even organizations are leveraging their online presence to generate revenue. It’s great to build a solid legion of followers, be able to track ‘likes’ and follows, but how do you channel the momentum to capitalize on your virtual popularity for actual revenue? There are numerous benefits to social media marketing and and many examples of successful entrepreneurs who were able successful businesses around their interests and monetize their brand presence.
I follow a number of blogs, YouTube channels, as well as Twitter, Vevo and Facebook pages. Personally, I enjoy getting insights from everyday people who started under modest circumstances and grew their ideas and passions into large scale, profitable entities. Among the some of the social media entrepreneur success stories that stand out, none is quite like the story of Tori Kelly. Tori Kelly is a Grammy-nominated artist who started a channel on YouTube in 2006. From this humble beginning, Tori Kelly secured partnerships, tours, a loyal underground following, independent music release and a major label record deal with Capitol records in 2013. She currently has over one million followers on YouTube alone and has parlayed an underground musician presence on ONE media channel into a full-fledged career as a major label recording artist.
Similarly, lifestyle, makeup and fashion expert Missy Lynn has turned a passion for makeup into lucrative career. She started with a blog in the late 2000’s and moved to YouTube in 2010. She has launched a career as a makeup and fashion influencer that spans partnerships with major retailers such as JCPenney, Maybelline, signature event series ‘Mimosas and Mascara’, and a major product collaboration with beauty company, BH Cosmetics. Both of these examples in two different industries, demonstrate how effective marketing, mastery of initiatives that convert followers to supporters and consumers of a product you create can help you turn social media into profit.
mediaevolution619 
I love this post, Wendy! thanks for the inspiration. As of late, I have been intrigued by people feeling free to call themselves “serial entreprenuers” – what I love about that, is that I have a million ideas and I convinced myself that I have to focus on one..but to your point, that’s just not true—social media and the wold of emerging media allows us to grow multiple ideas and enjoy our creativity to the fullest! GREAT, GREAT post
LikeLike
Using social media to launch a business is certainly a great idea. And I applaud the efforts of the many You Tubers that create and share a variety of tutorial videos. There has certainly been quite a bit of successful jump starts, the first that comes to mind is Issa Rae. I’ve watched a many of her you tube series and found them to be highly entertaining.
So yeah, social media is certainly making a stamp in being useful for jump starting a variety of business ventures.
Great article and I love the perspective and examples explored.
LikeLike