In the earlier article in this series, I discussed what blog carnivals are and why all aspiring bloggers should be participating in them. In case you missed that article, let me recap quickly the benefits to participating in blog carnivals:

  • They improve your credibility
  • You quickly get regular, profitable subscribers of your partner blogs
  • You get a quick surge of traffic to blog articles
  • You get a long term improvement in search result rankings

What I want to cover in this post is how you can get the most benefit out of your carnival participation. Let’s be real, carnivals require time and effort, so you might as well get as much good will and benefit from them as you can. Here’s how you can do just that:

1) Submit your articles early. There will be a call for entries deadline, but it’s likely that the host already has a good idea about how the article will be structured before the deadline, so you want your post available during this formative stage.

2) Make the host’s job painless: Learn how to create blog post titles that are compelling, and think of two or three strong, compelling headlines that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good titles are difficult to create, so create them on your own. You’ll save the host the effort and get more visitors from a stronger headline.

3) Follow the submission guidelines.

4) Get organized: Organize the information you submit. Include your e-mail address, name, blog name, post title, post summary, several sample headings, permalink, and trackback URL. Place this information in an e-mail above the full article itself, unless told to do otherwise.

5) Advertise: Once submitted, be sure to advertise the carnival. What goes around comes around, and your collaborative efforts to attract traffic will payoff for everyone in the long run. That’s the point of these carnivals: all participants are sharing readers, giving each the opportunity to attract the others’ regular subscribers.

6) Make sure you can handle your visitors: Ready your blog for any traffic spikes that might occur, and optimize the page that the carnival readers will be viewing. You’ll want to target the ads or offers to your audience, provide a very conspicuous subscription link, and follow-up with at least a week’s worth of strong articles to capitalize on any repeat traffic you might have.

Blog carnivals are a terrific way to bring qualified, relevant, profitable, long-term readers. Use them intelligently and you’ll reap the rewards. But you must be prepared to put your best foot forward. Pick up a good blogs how to if you have any doubts on how you can prepare your blog for this kind of traffic.

Good luck!

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