Establish Expert Authority through Blog Carnivals (Part 2)

In the prior 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 review briefly the advantages to participating in blog carnivals:

• They improve your authority
• You quickly gain regular, profitable subscribers of your partner blogs
• You get a quick boost of traffic to blog articles
• You get a longer term increase in search result rankings

What I'm going to review in this article is how you can get the most benefit out of your carnival efforts. Let's be real, carnivals take time and effort, so you might as well get the most benefit and good will from them as you can. Here's how you can accomplish that:

1) Add your posts early. There will be a submission deadline, but in all likelihood the host already has some idea on how the article will be structured before the deadline, so you want your article submitted during this planning stage.

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

3) Follow the submission guidelines.

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

5) Promote: Once submitted, make sure to promote 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 concept behind 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 offers or ads to your audience, provide a very conspicuous subscribe link, and follow-up with at least one week's worth of strong 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 correctly 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!