Moonshine is a restaurant a block away from my apartment in Chicago. Sunday, November 14th they hosted a chili cook-off. However, if it weren’t for social media, I would have had no idea they were holding such a remarkable event, and as I write this, I wouldn’t be chocked full of 15 different types of delicious chili. That would be a crime against humanity.

I am going to take you through the steps that got me to the chili cook-off and my blessed out state of fullness.

Step One: My husband, Ryan, was reading The Chicago Tribune food blog, The Stew, and saw a mention of a chili cook-off. Considering the restaurant is so close and we are both chili connoisseurs, he sprung into action.

Step Two: He sent me the blog post about it. I was immediately excited.

Step Three: We both went the Moonshine Chicago website to see what the site had to say about it. They were smart enough to have a write up on their site.

Step Four: Ryan Yelped the event and sent me some reviews from last year’s chili cook-off.

Step Five: We sent out an email to our neighborhood friends asking if they’d like to join us, and included the following links:

http://www.yelp.com/events/chicago-moonshine-chili-cook-off

http://www.moonshinechicago.com/roadhouse/?p=844

http://www.ticketweb.com/t3/sale/SaleEventDetail?dispatch=loadSelectionData&eventId=3279335

Step Six: We got emails back with much excitement and made plans to attend this chili-cook off.

Step Seven: We attending the event with some friends of our (Hi Steve and Marci!) and ate WAY too much chili and then needed to rest.

Step Eight: I wrote this post.

So you can see how different factors of social media, from blog posts to the Moonshine website to Yelp got me and some friends to this event.

Additionally, when we arrived at the chili cook-off, we were asked to vote for the best chili. What was on the voting ballot? A space for my email address, which I provided so that I will be kept in the loop for next year. Total genius on the part of Moonshine. They took an opportunity to get the email addresses of people who are probably already fans of their restaurant.

It wasn’t 100% social media perfection though. I checked out their Twitter feed, which had nothing about this event, and their Facebook page is not a fan page, but a friend page, which means I can’t just “like” them and see their information. But they did have a shout out on their info page about the cook-off.

All in all, I was really impressed with how I found out about the event and that they had the foresight to ask for my email address.

I hope you can take this example and see how social media really can help promote a business.