Media Sense 2011: Making social media marketing work for us

Anyone entrenched in the innovation start-up community in NZ is (or should be) familiar with Hal Josephson.He's the CEO and President of Mediasense, a San Francisco firm specializing in strategic market planning, international business development and special project management services for high-tech industries. Alongside the impressive list of clients MediaSense has worked with (Apple, IDG, Motorola to name a few), Hal is incredibly passionate about helping NZ start-ups develop, innovate and create in-roads into the global marketplace and has started up a NZ division of the MediaSense company based, wisely, in sunny Hawkes Bay.It was under this division's umbrella that Hal hosted and created today's conference, with the goal of dispelling some of the myths, misunderstandings, pre-conceived notions, and potentially, even the hype out there about social media marketing. And I reckon the team did a pretty good job.In the last two years I can't count the number of these conferences I've attended that essentially run through the 101 of what the tools are and how to use them. The thing that was so refreshing about this meeting was that a combination of keynote speakers and expert panels really got into the nitty-gritty of internal culture, business structure and business strategy - conversation about social media was fundamentally linked to the things that really drive success for businesses when adopting social technologies and platforms.Keep an eye on this site as we roll out more in-depth discussion and analysis around some of the messages we heard today but for now, highlights of the day were Jon Leland's opening discussion in which he talked about our shift from bought media to EARNED media, the panel discussion with Duncan Shand and Hayden Raw when we explored the processes and key elements agencies and consultancies on the front line consider when developing digital strategy, and hearing about the exciting, progressive approach the team at Tourism NZ are taking when targeting potential visitors in overseas markets.Like I say, the team at Social Media NZ will be going into these and other insights in more detail but in the interum, I'd love to hear what you thought of the conference (or the tweet stream!)?