Chocolate makes me happy. It says so on my Moo cards and so I thought after seeing how much fun Chris Hooley seemed to have with drinkbait that I would shamelessly rip off errr� borrow that template and try and meet people by giving away chocolate.
Drinkbait was a fantastic idea specifically drawn up by Chris to achieve a particular end. He bought �nips� (which I only know another connotation for so am clueless about what this has to do with drink) and went off getting pictured with various SEOs. I wasn�t drunk when I looked at the images and I thought were great but now (also sober) I can�t find them. “Drinkbait” was followed up by someone with �hatbait� and now me with �chocbait�. I�m looking to meet people and get to know them � the love I want isn�t just from links� It�s in the hearts and minds of chocolate fans everywhere. Link building has never been more fun (or yummy).
Now, chocolate to a chocoholic like myself is a sacred thing. No cheap chocolate for me, I was going for French style chocolates which come in cute boxes and are about the price of a bottle of booze. As this is international travel we are talking about here, and chocolate had to travel with me, I needed to test the idea out and so the Ad:tech chocbait test was launched. Armed with high quality truffles, I went to the SEO chicks drinks thing after Ad:tech and sprung my trap. On an unsuspecting table of SEO people, I offered high quality cocoa dusted truffles.
No one liked my chocolate but other SEO chicks. Yep � you read it right� Chocobait was a miserable failure. How, in my wildest nightmares could I have possibly envisioned an era when chocolate would be REFUSED?!?! Yes � chocbait was not accepted when offered.
I was devastated. Returning home from Ad:tech with an untouched box of truffles in my cookie bag (hey � chocolate in all it�s many forms makes me happy � including chocolate chip cookies), I slumped on the couch and told husband I was going to rank well for chocbait and miserable failure because that�s what it was. He tried to console me with hot chocolate made from flakes of real chocolate in milk but I was inconsolable. The hot chocolate was good though 
I�m a firm advocate of marketing techniques to test things out. For chocbait, this means an A:B test. Chocbait will happen again in a different way at a different venue in order to test alternates. Current chocbait, as it is in the testing phase, does not include �branded� link requests nor does it attempt to inspire linking (though friendship is encouraged). Final version chocbait, if it does indeed make it past the testing phase to PubCon, will involve photos, branded notes attached to the chocolate and lots of fun (I hope).
I�d love to hear some ideas about how to improve chocbait or ideas you might have about how chocbait can successfully leave beta and emerge at PubCon in final release version.
