Establish Expert Authority through Blog Carnivals (Part 1)
October 22, 2008
Let me start by saying I’m a big believer of blog carnivals. They’re not without their drawbacks, of course, but the benefits completely outweigh the amount of time and effort that you give them.
That’s why it confounds me that blog carnivals aren’t more popular. Yes, the first few times that you participate in them, it might take you some extra time to learn the ropes. And new carnival networks can sometimes be more unreliable than one would like. But get connected with a reliable group of bloggers in your niche, and carnivals are effective ways to:
- Improve your authority
- Quickly gain profitable, regular readers of your partner blogs
- Get an immediate surge of traffic to blog entries
- Get a long term improvement in search engine rankings
Carnivals: What are They?
A blog carnival is a web event consisting of a loose partnership of bloggers writing about a predefined topic. The articles produced (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 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.
Each carnival has one host, and the host’s blog is where all the blog articles for that specific carnival are located. In response to the submission call, each blogger participating in the carnival submits their post to the host, where it is reviewed, edited, and published in the host blog as one large linkbait post or a series of posts. Obviously, you’ll need to know how to create blog posts that are compelling and effective to get the most benefit.
Carnivals usually draw a lot of qualified traffic, so bloggers participating in the carnival receive a valuable one-way link from the host and the immediate traffic surge associated with the original readers. The carnival host receives links from each of the participating bloggers who have partnered together to publicize the event, knowing that the better the carnival is, the more powerful 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 get the most out of your carnival participation . . . in our next post!