Attract Traffic by Taking Part in Blog Carnivals (Part 1)
learn how to blog December 7th, 2008I’ll start by saying that I’m a big fan of blog carnivals. They’re not without their drawbacks, of course, but the benefits entirely outweigh the investment of effort and time that you give them.
That’s why it confounds me that blog carnivals aren’t more widely used. Granted, the first couple times that you participate in them, it might take you a little extra time to learn how things work. And new carnival networks can sometimes be more unreliable than one might like. But get connected with a good group of bloggers in your field, and carnivals are superb ways to:
- Improve your authority
- Quickly get profitable, regular readers of your partner blogs
- Get a quick surge of traffic to blog entries
- Get a longer term gain in search engine rankings
Carnivals: What are They?
A blog carnival is an online event consisting of a loose partnership of bloggers writing about a predefined topic. The posts created (or linked to) during a carnival frequently resulting in a magazine-like format. The carnival has a theme, title, writers, editors, and consumers. Most carnivals are held on a regular basis with rotating hosts.
A carnival usually has an owner, who is the organizer of the overall carnival, deciding or collaborating on things like frequency, rules, how to blog in the carnival, editorial guidelines, and such. The owner also acts as the coordinator, determining the hosting schedule for the carnival.
Every carnival has a specific host, and the host’s blog is where all the blog posts for that particular carnival are held. In reply to the submission call, every blogger involved in the carnival sends their post to the host, where it is reviewed, edited, and published in the wild as one giant linkbait post or a series of smaller posts. Obviously, you’ll need to know how to create blog posts that are compelling and effective to get the greatest benefit.
Carnivals usually draw loads of relevant traffic, so bloggers participating in the carnival receive a powerful backlink from the host and the immediate traffic boost associated with the original readers. The carnival host gets links from each of the participating bloggers who have partnered together to advertise the carnival, knowing that the better the carnival is, the better the links will be when it comes time for their turn to host.
Now that you know what a carnival is, we’ll talk about how you can maximize your carnival participation . . . in our next post!
