In the prior article in this series, I discussed what blog carnivals are and why all up and coming bloggers should be participating in them. In the event that you missed that article, let me review quickly the benefits to participating in blog carnivals:
* They increase your authority
* You quickly get profitable, regular readers of your partner blogs
* You get a quick boost of traffic to blog articles
* You get a long term improvement in search engine rankings
What I’m going to review in this article is how you can get the most out of your carnival participation. Let’s be real, carnivals take effort and time, so you should get as much benefit and good will from them as you can. Here’s how you can do just that:
1) Add your articles early. There will be a call for entries deadline, but it’s likely that the host already has some idea on how the article will be structured before the deadline, so you want your article available during this planning stage.
2) Make the host’s job simple: Learn how to create blog article titles that are catchy, and brainstorm two or three powerful, compelling titles that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good headlines are hard to craft, so create them yourself. You’ll save the host the effort and get more visitors from a stronger heading.
3) Follow the entry guidelines.
4) Get organized: Organize the information you submit. Include your e-mail address, name, blog name, article title, article summary, several sample headings, trackback URL, and permalink. Place this information in an e-mail above the full article itself, unless told to do otherwise.
5) Promote: Once submitted, be sure to advertise the carnival. What goes around comes around, and your aggregate efforts to drive traffic will payoff for everyone in the long run. That’s the point of these carnivals: all participants are sharing subscribers, giving each the opportunity to attract the others’ regular readers.
6) Make sure your blog can handle your visitors: Prepare 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 visible subscribe link, and follow-up with at least one week’s worth of powerful articles to capitalize on any repeat traffic you might have.
Blog carnivals are a terrific way to attract relevant, qualified, 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.