Events, Social Media and Chocolate

Today I spent the morning attending an amazing event in San Francisco: The Chocolate Salon at Fort Mason and it got me thinking about how dramatically the promotion of local events has changed in the past few years with the prevalence of social media and Web 2.0 technologies. Its a topic that appeals to both the chocoholic and web strategist in me.

The event itself was fantastic - a chocolatey, gooey and somewhat indulgent day for people who love everything chocolate. I checked out the Chocolate Salon site and hit cacao nirvana when I discovered TasteTV's "Chocolate TV" video segments!!! On it you can see every imaginable story around chocolate and the event: some examples of chocolate couture, chocolate hairstyles, stories about some of the fantastic chocolate manufacturers and retailers that we have right here in San Francisco.

How does social media play into it? For starters, like a lot of things I go to these days I learned about the event from both upcoming.org and meetup.com from my friends listing it as something that they were going to.

Here is a list of basic social tools that likely will (or should be used) to promote and report on the event before, during and after:

- Blogging - I'm blogging about it and so are others

- Comments on the event sites, blogs, etc.

- Twitter - attendees were twittering about the event

- Flickr - I uploaded photos to Flickr from the event and many others did too

- Groups , reviews, ratings and forums were formed in sites such as Yelp

- Video's and podcasts were created around the event

- E-Commerce - of course a lot of the local manufacturers and vendors have websites with e-commerce

and then there is the use of so many "sharing" tools that are inherent in many of the above that create a viral effect: "send to a friend", tagging, send a message, get link, get code.

What else could have been done? Social bookmarking on sites like Delicio.us or Ma.gnolia, recipe sharing, links to food or chocolate blogs, a wiki on chocolate related topics, mobile alerts, FaceBook groups ...the list goes on and on. What social tools do you use for events?

Comments

[Somebodyunfamous]

I just caught a story about the Salon Du Chocolat held in Paris, but I can't tell if these two events are related because I don't see anything outside of American Cities listed in the "appearances" on the left column of the Chocolate Salon page.

I posted some pictures of the amazing chocolate dresses and other creations, which showed there, on my blog here: http://somebodyunfamous.blogspot.com/2008/12/chocolate-creations-in-paris-show.html

It appears you attended for reasons other than just visual (chocoholic), but everyone needs a little eyeball stimulation now and again...and besides, you wouldn't want your mouth having all the fun anyway, would you!?