Blog Carnivals = Blog Traffic + Expert Credibility (Part 2)

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Friday, November 7th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

In the previous article in this series, I reviewed what blog carnivals are and why all new bloggers should be participating in them. In the event that you missed that article, let me recap briefly the benefits of participating in blog carnivals:

They improve your authority
You immediately gain regular, profitable subscribers of your partner blogs
You get a quick boost of traffic to blog articles
You get a long term gain in search engine rankings

What I’d like to review in this article is how you can derive the most benefit out of your carnival efforts. Let’s face it, carnivals require effort and time, so you should get as much good will and benefit from them as possible. Here’s how you can do just that:

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

2) Make the host’s job painless: Learn how to create blog article titles that are compelling, and brainstorm two or three powerful, compelling headings that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good titles are hard to craft, so create them yourself. You’ll save the host the effort and get more traffic from a better headline.

3) Follow the submission guidelines.

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

5) Promote: Once submitted, be sure to advertise the event. 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 traffic: 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 subscription link, and follow-up with at least a week’s worth of powerful articles to capitalize on any repeat traffic you might have.

Blog carnivals are an excellent way to attract profitable, relevant, qualified, 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 questions on how you can optimize your blog for this kind of traffic.

Good luck!

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