Social Media is providing some great resources for small businesses to draw from during the current economic downturn. Coming up on October 29, Network Solutions is hosting the Solutions Stars Video Conference. The conference will be free, and will allow participants to stream video from industry leaders while chatting live with the self proclaimed Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda and Geoff Livingston, author of Now is Gone.

The conference, which will be held between 12:00 pm and 2:30 pm CST, will feature insight from industry leaders on how small businesses can use the internet to their advantage. There will be a large range of topics to choose from, including You Need Social Networks and To Blog or Not to Blog. For a full rundown of speakers and topics for the event see the conference’s website and Facebook event.

Memphis, of course, is doing its part as well! The monthly Social Media Breakfast is getting bigger and better with each passing meeting. Attendees of the Social Media Breakfast meet on the first Wednesday of every month to discuss the latest trends and tools in Social Media for businesses. The breakfast has been a huge success with each month showing greater interest from the public, and consistently eye-opening presentations.

The next Social Media Breakfast will be on November 5 at the Crescent Club in East Memphis, and is open to the public. You can see details, as well as RSVP for the event at the group’s Meetup page.

Be sure to take advantage of these upcoming opportunities to see what Social Media has to offer!

It’s hard to believe, but the Social Media Breakfasts seem to keep getting better! This month we had our largest group yet meet at the Crescent Club in Midtown Memphis for what promised to be a great way to start the morning. There were plenty of familiar faces mixed in with a great group of Social Media newcomers.

LunaWeb President, Dave Barger, hosted the event and kept everything running smoothly, as well as answering questions on all thing Social from a crowd that eagerly supplied both answers and inquiries. After some initial discussion, long time Social Media Breakfast attendee, Bob Hazlett, gave a hilariously informative presentation on Social Media campaigns gone wrong entitled, “You Suck at Social Media.” He effectively walked us through the best of the best on down to the abysmally low in Social success (from Zappos shoes to Microsoft’s twitter presence).

As always though, the best of Social Media Breakfast happened before and after the official presentations. Staying true to the idea of being “social” there were plenty of opportunities for networking, catching up, meeting new connections, and sharing new Social Media information.

You can already RSVP for the next Social Media Breakfast on the MeetUp page. And be sure to check out photos from SMB #7 here! If you haven’t already been to one of the Social Media Breakfasts, talk to one of the people who have. We’ll see you at the next one!