(This continues our coverage of the Marketing Now Conference. Also check out my posts on day 1 and 2 , and the three iJumpTV episodes devoted to the conference)

"Social media reminds me of the story of the five blind men and the elephant. Asked to describe the elephant, one said ‘it’s long and thin’, because he could feel the tail. Another said, ‘no, it’s flat and thin’, because he was feeling the ear. Yet another said ‘you’re crazy! It’s like a tree trunk, thick and round’, because he was feeling the leg.

"They all could see different aspects of social media, yet none of them could see it in its entirety. That’s the same kind of situation we’re in now – there’s a revolution beginning and we haven’t begun to see all the potential effects.

Yet on this panel we have some of the most expert elephant gropers in the world. They’ve been feeling the elephant for years. And they’re here to answer your questions."

That’s how I introduced the panel of speakers – Sharon Crost , Stephen Johnson , Jim Stewart , David Meerman Scott and Chris Brogan – in the final session of Marketing Now. It was an action-packed session, with almost as much commentary from the audience as from the speakers. Here are some of the highlights.

Greig Buckley, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau , had a very interesting question about the future of ad-supported online services. To paraphrase his question, how will paid advertising online survive if marketers are shifting their efforts to free social media marketing ? (In fact, the word he used was "parasitic", but he was at pains to point out he implied no judgement in using that word)

The answers from the panel tended to say the same thing: we don’t see the solution yet, but it was strongly in the interests of media owners (and the owners of services like YouTube) to figure out a solution soon. None of them are in it for love, they are all in it for commercial reasons, but at the moment we are at an experimental stage.

Another question was about how to start an online community . One audience member had budgeted $25,000 to develop a Facebook-like community. Another audience member recommended Ning.com , pointing out that it did most things an online community platform needs to do, for free (or US$25 a month for an ad-free service). But that’s only half the story.

The other half of the story is the need for a community leader or manager. The technology is just the beginning; communities need nurturing and leadership, and that can only be done by a person. So the panel’s advice: invest that money in a person and/or people to lead that community .

The last story, and by far the most common question we hear at iJump, is "where do we start?"

Of course, there is no one answer, so the next best thing was to ask people in the audience to share their plans and next steps. Most next steps included an exploration of Twitter and Google Alerts , as well as developing buyer personas (as per David Meerman Scott’s presentation ).

This session was also the beginning of the NZ Social Media Network – where socialising means business . Established by Siobhan Bulfin and ourselves, this is a place for business people to learn from each other about social media, with a New Zealand focus.

Even if you weren’t able to attend the conference, we’d love to see you at the NZ Social Media Network .

(Thanks to digitalART2 for the fantastic Elephoto)

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The issue of personal vs. business identity online keeps coming up.

It was a recurring question at the Marketing Now conference last week.

Jeremiah Owyang’s grappling with how much to reveal . Courtney is amazed at how personal business has become .

And every time we talk about Twitter , we get two responses. Some people love the real, human interaction; others can’t bear hearing what others have had for breakfast. It’s extremely polarising.

At iJump, we believe (or at least I personally believe!) the real brand is made up of the people who represent it, far more than the brand identity as written down by experts. So businesses with a healthy culture shouldn’t fear their employees’ personal brands busting through the screen. It’s a positive thing.

Of course this solves nothing, it just brings up more questions – which we hope to answer in due time! Questions like:

• How much should you mix personal and business identities online? (eg. is your Facebook profile for business, or friends and family, or all of the above?)
• If businesses really let their staff build their personal brands, don’t they risk losing customers when the staff move on? (A problem faced by sports teams, TV shows and sales departments especially)
• How much personal information is too much information on Twitter? (Your stories are most welcome!)

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I won’t be speaking at the Marketing Now Conference , but I will be Twittering like mad.

Follow the hashtag #mktgnow for up-to-the-minute news from the conference this Wednesday and Thursday. (What’s a hashtag? )

It’s a great way to learn, even if you can’t make the conference. And if you will be there, it can really enrich your experience, giving you extra insight into what’s going on.

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As we’re gearing up to promote this Thursday’s Twestival and the Marketing Now Conference in April, I’ve been thinking about how best to get the word out about an upcoming event.

Here’s what I’m learning:

Add intimacy to reach and frequency.

Traditional media rely on reach (how many people hear your message) and frequency (how often they hear it). This gets a little annoying (like those TV ads you like the first 5 times, and hate thereafter).

Adding intimacy is something you could even do on traditional media, but few people do. It’s a sense of letting your audience in behind the scenes, so they know and are a part of the event, before it happens.

It could be as simple as me twittering: "Going to the printer’s to pick up the nametags for Thursday’s Twestival. I hope we don’t run out; we printed 100!"

This communicates a subtle reminder of the event, while also communicating other information (there will be nice printed nametags, there will be about 100 people – we hope!). It also lets the audience know what’s happening behind the scenes, and the live, real-time nature of Twitter/Social media somehow helps this.

Get your audience involved

If you’re running the event, maybe you can crowdsource suggestions on different aspects of the event.

Why?

• Better ideas
• A greater sense of involvement from those who have contributed ideas – and therefore greater likeliness that they’ll attend and encourage others to come.

Sometimes event organisers do this the old-fashioned way, through a competition. But instead of inviting the feedback of potential attendees, they just bribe their way through with a prize.

Sure there’s value in prizes and incentives, but sometimes as an event organiser you can offer great value, without paying a cent. Being heard is increasingly valuable in a busy world where the biggest dollars usually have the loudest voice.

Variations on a theme

Twitter promotion can be like radio advertising – you need to promote your event at different times of the day to reach different audiences. Yet some people will be on there all the time, and since they’re likely to be quite influential you do not want to annoy them.

What to do? Variations on a theme. In other words, don’t just tweet the same old message. Find all its different flavours, and explore them. Are there different speakers? Promote each one and the message they’ll be delivering.

Share your learnings

As you go, maybe write a blog post about … um, "how to promote an event through social media"!

How do you do it?

If you run and promote events, how do you use social media to promote your event? We’d love to see your comments below.

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