About 150 folks gathered at the Social Media Club Richmond’s March event at the Renaissance Convention centre in Richmond. I was excited to present my story working for Network Solutions as the Social Media Swami along with tips for businesses to use Social Media. The Network Solutions‘ case study on social media and how we evolved our strategy was also part of the presentation. The organizers had seen me speak at Blog Potomac and invited me to present at this event.  In order to avoid traffic I arrived at Richmond early and spent some time talking to some of the attendees at lunch in the Mekong Restaurant  ( good food) and this restaurant is on Twitter too as @mekongrva.  Since I had the chance to get some early feedback I asked the question to my lunch companions Nathan Hughes @rvabusiness Chris Munton @Commonmanfilms pedro Martinez @ptmartinez Anna Creech @annacreech about what they would like to hear and they gave me their view. That was good so I went back to the offices of Hodge Partnership @jonnew and paractised a entirely new presentation in front of him. Poor guy had to hear the talk 2 to 3 times that day but he was a good sport . Caroline Platt @clp1917 was wiser . She said she would wait for the actual presentation.

I think customizing the presentation for the audience is great and I enjoyed doing it with lot of examples of local bloggers and business. I hope you all liked it. Doug Meacham Broadcast the #SMCRVAc live now! http://www.ustream.tv/channel/smcrva and some photos here http://www.flickr.com/photos/drbeachvacation/sets/72157623529815621/

Thank you Social Media Club Richmond. Some of the fantastic folk I met  at yesterday’s event
Casey Quinlan http://www.mightycasey.com @MightyCasey
Sara Dunnigan http://grpva.com
Kami Peifer http://www.Richmond.com
Ted Randler http://theworkfactory.com @tedrandler
Jill Johnson http://www.enviableskin.com @enviableskin
Deric Vineyard http://www.Lithium.com
Michael Ivey http://www.grpva.com
Corey Humphrey http://grcc.com @coreyhumphrey
Caroline Platt http://www.hodgespart.com/ @clp1917
Kira Sidall @ksidall

Please comment here and let me know your takeaways from the evening and I will be back soon to follow-up on the “home work” from the evening’s conversation

This week is a great week for small business and Social media news. The Small Business Success Index study by by Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business was quoted in an article by the Wall Street Journal article by Sarah Needleman.

Today WTOP had a segment “Social Media as a Marketing Tool”  with an interview with Sarah Needleman . Listen here

You can  read the entire Small Business Success Index at GrowSmartBusiness.com