Blog Carnivals are posts, articles, and columns on particular topics which are passed on from different blogs, with each blogger adding their own thoughts and opinions on a subject. Usually started by one main blog, which acts as a form of table of contents, such carnivals can be created by one popular blogger, or a group of bloggers, to line up the initial blogs which will participate and can then also invite other blogs to submit their articles or posts to the Carnival.
Here’s a definition from BlogCarnival.com
A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.
Today Stephen Spencer made a post about using such Blog Carnivals as link building tools:
By participating as a host (dare I say, carny?), all the other host members of the blog carnival will link to you.
Each issue/edition will link to a handful of blogs and sites as well, so if you have something useful and intelligent to say on the topic, you should submit your link for consideration by the host(s). And even if you don’t actively participate, it’s good to get on the radar of those contributing to it. You never know, they may see one of your articles or blog posts and discuss it within the carnival. Just by reaching out you may see your site mentioned as a useful resource. Now that’s potential.
One master of the Blog Carnival, or Group Writing Project, is Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net.
Darren has launched many group projects such as writing about Blog Goals and Lists.
Darren sometimes find sponsors to give prizes out to blogs which participate in the project but also motivates bloggers quite well with his fun and link driven guidelines.
Here are some examples:
* Be as creative as you’d like – take it in any direction you want
* Give your post a good title. Once all our lists are listed it’ll only be your title that sets it apart.
* Feel free to write your post in your own first language – I’ve previously included a number of non-english posts and am excited by the prospect of making this a multi-lingual project.
* Consider putting a link back to this post on your post so that your readers know you’re participating. You don’t have to do this – but it’d be appreciated to help grow the project.
* You can write it in any form you like (last time we had poems, rants, humorous posts etc).
* Ideally it’d be great if you could write it on your actual blog but if it’s completely inappropriate to do so I’ll post them again on ProBlogger on a ‘page’ (not a post) with a link back to your blog.
Do you belong to a niche targeted group of bloggers? Is your business blog-friendly?
Perhaps hosting your own Blog Carnival would be an easy and efficient link building tool for your market.
