Earlier this year I attended a blogging and social media confernece; not a small niche focused conference like the Wine Bloggers Conference, but a mega-conference on a mega-scale attended by mega-corporations (and costing mega-bucks). It was big.
As I was navigating my way across the floor of the expo center hosting the trade show, feeling lost, discombobulated and disoriented, I saw a familiar and friendly sign. It was the WordPress logo adorning the entrance to a trade show booth called the WordPress Happiness Bar! As I entered, and once I realized just what was going on, I immediately felt like Dorothy getting to meet Oz. The brains behind WordPress as tenders to all my WordPress needs and questions right there in the flesh and ready to help me with our blog! Wow.
As I patiently (well, as patiently as I was capable at that moment) waited my turn, I indexed all questions I would love to ask WordPress about how best to use the platform. I don’t recall that I had any specific issue I needed addressed, but a WordPress Happiness Engineer graciously spent about 10 minutes with me going over various plugins that were recommended, shared some SEO tips, and gave me a thumbs up on our site. Whoo hoo!
After the conference, WordPress.com and the Wine Bloggers Conference kept in touch, and while a little late to bring the Happiness Bar to WBC13, we are pleased to announce that WordPress.com did participate as a sponsor at this years conference and will hopefully be bringing their Happiness Bar to Santa Barbara next year!
When discussing coming on board as a WBC sponsor, Oz (err, I mean WordPress.com) had these thoughts:
Indeed, judging by the State of Wine Blogging Report, 2013 has been a very good year for wine bloggers of all vintages.
In the report, presented on June 7th at the sixth annual Wine Bloggers Conference in Penticton, B.C., over 82% of bloggers write about wine for the pure love of it — to share their passion for wine with the world.
This passion — and especially the drive to share it — makes wine blogging and WordPress.com an especially good pairing. WordPress.com is a free blogging platform that makes blogging easy, getting you writing and sharing your wine experiences and wine wishlist right away. With over 200 beautiful, free themes to choose from, the only barrier between you and your new readers is signing up. In fact, some awesome wine blogs, including D’ Vine Wine Time, My Fabulous World in Wine, and L’esprit de Vin already make WordPress.com their wine blogging home.
On a different blogging platform and thinking of moving to WordPress.com? Importing your site to WordPress.com can be as quick as the click of a button. If you have questions or would like some help, our Happiness Engineers are standing by.
WordPress.com is delighted to sponsor the 2013 Wine Bloggers Conference. We raise a glass in toast to your blogging success!
Yup, they’re definitely happy to help w/ both!
Yes. Let’s!
I’m hoping to go again–it will be my 4th WordCampSF! we should try to get together!
Well, that would be great then.
Mari, the Happiness Bar would be set up to offer tips to anyone using WordPress. That would include both .org and .com sites. The service would be free at the conference.
While I love your enthusiam for WP, I must point out a flaw in this logic. Happiness Engineers are available for Paid Upgrades only through WordPress.com, the commercial arm of WordPress, which offers overpriced services. Serious bloggers use WordPress.org, delivered through web hosts, which offers the unlimited potential of WP at the low-cost rate of a hosting account. So if these Happiness Engineers came to WBC, which service would they be offering support for?
I’ll be in Boston for our Beer Bloggers Con, or I’d totally be at SF WordCamp!!
I’m actually going to the SF WordCamp this year. Yay!
I love WordPress! And I love their WordCamps, esp SF!