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Get Blog Traffic by Participating in Blog Carnivals (Part 1)
Let me just say that I'm a big believer of blog carnivals. Of course, they're not without their disadvantages, but the advantages completely outweigh the investment of effort and time that you give them.
That's why it amazes me that blog carnivals aren't more widely used. Yes, the first several times that you participate in them, it will take you some extra time to learn how things work. And new carnival networks can sometimes be less reliable than you would like. But get hooked up with a reliable group of bloggers in your niche, and carnivals are superb ways to:
- Improve your authority
- Quickly gain profitable, regular subscribers of your partner blogs
- Get a quick surge of traffic to blog entries
- Get a longer term increase in search result rankings
Carnivals: What are They?
A blog carnival is a virtual event consisting of a loose partnership of bloggers writing about a predefined subject. The posts produced (or linked to) during a carnival usually end up looking like a magazine. The carnival has a theme, title, writers, editors, and consumers. Most carnivals are held regularly with rotating hosts.
A carnival usually has an owner, who is the organizer of the overall carnival, deciding or collaborating on converns like frequency, rules, editorial guidelines, how to blog in the carnival, and such. The owner also acts as the coordinator, determining the hosting schedule for the carnival.
Every carnival has one host, and the host's blog is where all the blog articles for that particular carnival are held. In response to the call for submissions, each blogger participating 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 had better know how to create blog posts that are effective and compelling to get the greatest benefit.
Carnivals usually draw a lot of qualified traffic, so bloggers participating in the carnival receive a valuable backlink from the host and the immediate traffic surge associated with the original readers. The carnival host gets links from each of the participating bloggers who have partnered together to publicize the event, 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 review how you can maximize your carnival participation . . . in our next post!
Jared is co-author of Blogging in Action, a popular package that helps people learn how to blog the right way. He is also the programmer of the Six-Figure Plugin Suite, used by hundreds of people to drive traffic to blog posts and sites.
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