Let me start by saying I’m a big fan of blog carnivals. They’re not without their disadvantages, of course, but the benefits completely outweigh the amount of effort and time that you put into them.

That’s why it confounds me that blog carnivals aren’t more widely used. Yes, the first couple 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 more unreliable than you would like. But get hooked up with a reliable group of bloggers in your market, and carnivals are excellent ways to:

• Increase your authority
• Quickly gain regular, profitable subscribers of your partner blogs
• Get a quick boost of traffic to blog entries
• Get a longer term gain in search result rankings

Carnivals: What are They?

A blog carnival is an online event consisting of a group of bloggers writing about a predefined topic. The articles created (or linked to) during a carnival frequently end up looking like a magazine. The carnival has a title, theme, 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, collaborating or deciding on converns like rules, frequency, 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 located. In response to the call for submissions, each blogger involved in the carnival submits their post to the host, where it is reviewed, edited, and published in the wild as one giant post (link bait) or a series of smaller posts. Obviously, you had better know how to create blog posts that are effective and compelling to get the maximum benefit.

Carnivals usually draw loads of qualified traffic, so bloggers participating in the carnival get a powerful one-way link from the host and the immediate traffic boost associated with the initial readers. The carnival host gets links from each of the contributing bloggers who have partnered together to publicize the carnival, 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 discuss how you can get the most out of your carnival participation . . . in our next post!

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