Get Free Traffic Using Blog Carnivals

Ever heard of a blog carnival?  If you haven’t, and if you want more exposure for your websites, you need to know more about them.

What IS a Blog Carnival?

A blog carnival is probably best described as the online equivalent of a magazine, but one that is dedicated to a particular theme.  For example, a fashion magazine is dedicated to fashion, has contributors/writers, editors and, of course, a readership.

They are even published regularly (weekly, bi-monthly or monthly) and each edition consists of comments made by the carnival’s editor/s, just like a regular physically published magazine.

Why These Are Important To YOU

Because there’s so much “stuff” out there, articles and other text on just about any and everything that exists (and many websites on things that DON’T exist too!), it’s very difficult finding quality (by which I mean ACCURATE and FACTUAL) information.  This is where blog carnivals might help you.

If there is a carnival for a subject that you are interested in, following the carnival (in other words ‘reading the magazine’) is one good way to keep up on latest trends, fashions and gossip. After all, the people who write for these (and this could be YOU) are “in the industry” so to speak.

How They Can Help You Get More Traffic

Similar to submitting articles to article directories, or leaving your comments on other people’s blogs, blog carnivals are a great way to increase your exposure to the community (or business) that you are interested in.  By doing this, you are gaining credibility with other people in that industry, and you are also getting those important links back to your own websites.

Run Your Own Or Contribute?

A blog-carnival usually consists of the following:

The Host: This can be you.  You can host a carnival on your own blog, with people leaving lots of comments and contributing to that weeks (or month’s) edition.

The Organizer: This is the person who starts the carnival.  This person will decide what the criteria is for submission of articles/blog-posts, how often it will appear and so on.  Much like the producer of a movie, this is the person who gets the ball rolling.

Bloggers: These people produce most of the content for each edition.  These are like the contributing authors in a magazine who don’t work directly for the magazine, but might be freelancers or a professor or expert from somewhere else in the world.  These will be the most difficult people to find, BUT you CAN use existing articles that have already been published, so long as they are very current.

Readership: this, of course, is anybody who finds your carnival by whatever means.  Search-engines, articles with links, other blogs etc.

Find A Blog Carnival

The search-engines make this easy.  Just type in the subject you’re interested in followed by the words “blog carnival”.  (don’t forget the quotes) or simply go to Blog Carnival.com.

So, for the marketer, this is simply another of quickly finding RELATED content to get links back to your sites.  Use them!

Luke.