Nhat Pham, Successwerks;  writer Bradley Robb; and Chris Busse, managing partner of MemberPath, LLC took to the stage of the Byrd Theater (2908 West Cary Street ) on October 22nd for Social Media Club Richmond’s inaugural presentation designed through the “Idea” application. The mezzanine and lobby of the theater created a fabulous backdrop for networking before and after the event.



The three presentations were culled, pitched and voted for by members of the local SMCRVA community using the web application. The event was a cornucopia of concepts, code and cupcakes as the ideas from Pham, Robb and Busse were punctuated by event prizes of Carytown Cupcakes by the night’s host Social Media Club Richmond’s Program Director Nathan Hughes.

While all three presentations approach very different topics—Pham’s ROI of social media in business; Robb’s developing your online niche audience and  Busse’s integration of Application programming interface (API) the implementation of Google maps or using Facebook, Twitter technology in your custom web applications—they all shared the common theme of harnessing social media for specific personal or business goals.

Determining value in social media--whether it be in the success of a dry-cleaning coupon campaign or in the number of followers, friends or fans a site or individual has-- was another consistent concept among the speakers.

The power of social media for business and non-profits is its ability to bring like-minded consumers together in “verticals” of niche interests.  Robb pointed out that not only are these verticals of common focus highlighted but that the members of the various online communities are usually very passionate about the topic. According to the three, this age of ultra-tailored messaging has supplanted principles of mass marketing.

Robb even suggested the rules of proprietary mass media have been forsaken for type of curatorship. Instead of ignoring articles written by competitors (as is done in the print world), he maintained that the digital world has a different set of standards. Content-sharing and citing through aggregation of articles from competing brands if done correctly will present your site as an arbiter of taste for your niche audience. “Soon your readership will read only the snippets you provide as they come to trust your editorial judgment,” Robb said.

Busse also touched on brand-blending of proprietary code wherein the integrated use of Google, Twitter and Facebook data by custom web applications is encouraged by the companies. Though he cited that copyright issues were still a gray area, Busse thought it important that businesses begin to tap into the resources that APIs now afford.