Posted on June 30th, 2008 by mbhunter
Blog carnivals are great tools for marketing a blog and getting some free backlinks, but there are few ways more effective at killing the proverbial goose that lays the proverbial golden eggs than ticking off the manager of the carnival by not following his/her directions!
If you repeatedly submit spam or overly commercial posts and the manager says that these types of posts are not appreciated, then you risk getting blacklisted.
If you are required to link back to the week’s carnival if your post is accepted, and you blow it off, then you risk getting blacklisted.
If you badger the hosts enough, they’ll get back to the manager, and you’ll get blacklisted.
If you complain to the manager too often, he/she may get really sick of it and blacklist you for sport.
Pay attention to the manager of the carnival, follow the directions, and nobody will get hurt!
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Filed under: Commentary
Posted on April 29th, 2008 by mbhunter
This is a rule that I don’t follow all the time, and it adds a lot of stress having to find a host from week to week.
The Carnival of Personal Finance has come to ask for hosts quarterly. He asks for hosts about a month in advance, then decides over the next couple of weeks who to have. The schedule is then ready to go for three months, and it’s pretty much smooth sailing from there.
My Carnival of Debt Reduction isn’t quite so big yet but here’s what I did the last time:
- I asked for hosts in a forum that is read by a lot of the bloggers in my niche. I received a number of requiests to host just from one post in the Money Blog Network Forums.
- After I assembled a bunch of interested hosts, I sent an e-mail (bcc to all of them) with a tentative schedule that took all of their requests into account.
- As people respond back to me, the hosting schedule takes form.
If your blog carnival has been around for a while then it makes sense to streamline how you set up your hosting schedule.
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Filed under: Managing
Posted on April 2nd, 2008 by mbhunter
Here are a few tips on promoting your edition of a blog carnival that you’ve slaved away at:
- Ask the bloggers who submitted articles to share the carnival with their readers. This probably is only fair, and some carnival managers are requiring that submitters link back to the carnival or run the risk of being blacklisted.
- Use any trackbacks you’re given and find the ones that you’re not. Trackbacks are similar to permalinks but they are used to automatically post a comment linking from the trackback link’s post to the site that initiated the trackback. This places a few links back to the carnival on the submitting bloggers’ posts.
- Use StumbleUpon to bring some juice to the carnival. If you think that Stumbling your own posts is shady, then try this: Stumble your Editor’s Picks, and then let those bloggers know that you’ve done this and ask them to Stumble the carnival for you. This way it looks more natural.
- Use social networking avenues like Twitter, Del.icio.us, etc. to announce the carnival.
- Ping the BlogCarnival.com sidebar widget. Quite a few bloggers have a running list of posted carnivals on their sidebar. Pinging this service will display the link there and might send you some traffic.
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Filed under: Hosting
Posted on March 4th, 2008 by mbhunter
Managing a blog carnival can be really easy if you have great hosts. Great hosts write inventive posts for the carnivals and help to promote the carnival. It’s their edition of the carnival, so a good reflection on them is a good reflection on you.
My Carnival of Debt Reduction is no exception. I have great hosts. I’m not the most organized person in the world, and they keep me in line and make sure the carnival’s covered if I fall behind a little bit. It’s a great position to be in to have that kind of support from your hosts.
I hope that part of this support stems from me basically letting them do what they want. I try very hard not to micromanage and to empower them to put together their carnivals however they see fit. Some of the hosts are pretty liberal with the topics of posts accepted into the carnivals, and others really want the posts to be closely tied to the carnival’s theme, which is on debt reduction resources and stories. Most things are fine with me. Why?
- It’s my carnival, but it’s their blogs. Bloggers absolutely have to have control on what goes up on their blogs. If I demand which posts should be included, then I take that freedom away from them.
- It removes any barriers that I might impose. If hosts have to seek approval from me, it slows them down, and things don’t go as smoothly.
- They have different opinions than I do on the topic. It’s this diversity of viewpoints that keeps the carnival fresh.
- I don’t like remembering a lot of rules. This is a personality trait of mine, but a lot of rules give me hives.
Empowering your hosts means trusting them to put together a good carnival and to ask when there’s a question. The carnivals are wins for everyone, and most hosts already know this, so it’s easy for me to just let them do what they want, and let everyone reap the benefits.
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Filed under: Managing
Posted on February 3rd, 2008 by mbhunter
As a blog carnival gets more popular, the number of submissions goes up, and the traffic the carnival gets goes up as well. This is good. Unfortunately, this popularity also attracts posts that are of marginal quality or are highly commercial. Or, people will submit several posts to a single edition of the carnival. Spammy is a good word to describe these posts and these submitters.
It gets annoying after a while. BlogCarnival.com has enough safeguards that the “spam” is limited, but as of now there’s nothing to prevent someone from going down the line of carnivals and submitting the same post to every single one, or from submitting multiple posts to a single carnival edition. Here are a few ways to handle these kinds of unwanted submissions:
- Leave it up to the host to use editorial discretion. This has worked so far with the Carnival of Debt Reduction, but some of the hosts are beginning to complain. And rightfully so, I suppose.
- E-mail the offending poster and ash him/her to post more normally.
- Ban the offender if the submissions get bad enough or if s/he doesn’t take the hint.
- Move the submission form off site. The Carnival of Personal Finance did this, and the submissions still seem to be up. The last time I hosted the spam was pretty moderate if not non-existent. This might cause a hit in the number of submissions initially, but after a while the posting should get better.
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Filed under: Managing, Hosting
Posted on December 30th, 2007 by mbhunter
Getting hosts for your carnival can be tough. It takes organization to keep things moving, and sometimes the hosting schedule gets tight.
It’s tempting to jump at the first person who offers. That’s fine but be sure to do some due diligence.
Meaning check out their blog. Is it a place that you’d want to have the carnival posted at? Is the blog ready for the carnival (assuming it’s a popular carnival)?
I didn’t check out someone’s blog for the carnival that I manage. There were some questionable advertisements (almost not safe for work) in the sidebar, but I had already asked the person to host. I had to apologize to the person I asked to host and eat a lot of crow. If I hadn’t, I might get someone fired who checked the carnival at work on break, which wouldn’t be good at all.
Word to the wise: Don’t do what I did, and check your hosts’ blogs out before extending the invitation to host.
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Filed under: Managing
Posted on November 27th, 2007 by mbhunter
If you’re managing a carnival then you know how important your hosts are. They can make managing the carnival a piece of cake. And if they volunteer to host, they likely know what it entails and will put together a good carnival for you, the carnival readers, and for the submitters.
Once in a while, though, life gets in the way, someone forgets, someone gets kicked down by a really bad cold, someone dies, etc. The carnival may (rightfully) take a back seat for the moment while things get sorted out. A week ago the host for the Carnival of Debt Reduction got really ill and didn’t post. I finally saw her online and asked where the carnival was. She told me that she was sick, and I stepped in and did the carnival for her.
Now, I was pretty sure something was wrong because this particular host was on top of things in previous editions of the carnival. Even though I had to approach her as to why the carnival wasn’t posted, the day of the carnival was the first time that I actually tried to remind her. This was a mistake. I should have checked before then. Here are a few tips to keep on top of your carnival hosts (in an unobtrusive way):
- A few days before the carnival, check the e-mail account where the submissions go. If it’s a Gmail account, then if the host has read them, they’ll be marked read unless the host (a) hasn’t read them yet or (b) deliberately marked them unread again. It’s a positive indicator if they’re marked read, but inconclusive if they’re not marked read.
- Email the host to remind them of the carnival and ask for a response. It’s important to ask them for a response to make sure it’s still in the cards for them to host. I’ve found most hosts will respond if you ask them to.
- If the carnival isn’t posted on time, politely look for an answer. It’s common sense to me not to dump on your hosts, but it’s always better to assume something’s wrong than to accuse.
- Pinch hit if necessary. It may be that you end up dressing up an InstaCarnival just to get the carnival edition out the door. If this is the case, then definitely be sure to e-mail all of the participants so that they know where the carnival is, because they’ll be expecting it somewhere else. I found it was helpful to explain why the carnival moved at the last minute, and folks had sympathy for the sick host.
It’s definitely better to communicate more with your hosts.
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Filed under: Managing
Posted on October 20th, 2007 by mbhunter
I was catching up with the blogs in my reader and ran across this Carnival of Future Millionaires in my reader. It was posted this week, and honestly I had forgotten that I had. (I did not receive an e-mail from the host asking me to link back to the carnival.)
Some things to note about this particular carnival:
- There are 275 posts in the carnival (it’s posted once every four weeks) and nineteen of them were by one author. Sometimes the Carnival of Debt Reduction doesn’t have 19 posts in the entire thing!
- I didn’t receive any notification that the carnival was up. As a host, it’s a good thing to ask your submitters to share the carnival with their readers.
- This is clearly a direct cut-and-paste of the InstaCarnival that BlogCarnival.com provides to hosts near the end of the submission period. Little, if any, editing was done. The InstaCarnival is a good start but it really looks like an InstaCarnival if that’s all that’s done.
- There’s a lot of white space in between the posts. This is an artifact of the way the InstaCarnival comes out of the box.
- There are no comments posted on the carnival as of right now, and it’s been up for over three days. Ouch.
This seems to be an example of “you get out what you put into it.” Getting the carnival ready to go probably took all of ten minutes, if that: Log into BlogCarnival (or open up the e-mail with the link to the InstaCarnival), find it, CTRL-A, log into Blogger, New Post, CTRL-C, Publish, done. But, it looks like the blogger spent all of ten minutes on it, too.
This edition of the carnival is really of minimal use to anyone involved. It’s not really useful to the host, because no one has even commented on it. It’s not useful to the people who submitted because their links are buried amongst nearly 300 others, many of which look like some authors submitted everything they ever wrote to that carnival. And it’s non really useful to the readers because it’s not at all engaging.
I have said before that InstaCarnivals do serve a purpose and that they can bring lots of traffic for little work. I might amend that a little by saying that InstaCarnivals can bring a lot of traffic if they’re already popular. The carnival in question here is a new carnival, so it doesn’t have its audience built up. Unfortunately, InstaCarnivals are not the way to build up a lot of traffic.
I hope How to Make a Million Dollars (the only host of this carnival so far) dresses up the next one a little bit.
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Filed under: Hosting, For New Carnivals, Commentary
Posted on September 28th, 2007 by mbhunter
Blunt Money’s take on the Carnival of Personal Finance this week featured a crossword puzzle with words that related to the posts in the carnival. Very inventive!
With a carnival as popular as the Carnival of Personal Finance it helps to have an extra something to get readers involved in reading the post. Looking at a list of several dozen or even a hundred posts is overwhelming. What the crossword accomplished is that it got readers looking at each category in turn. Looking at a category with maybe ten posts is a whole lot more manageable. I would imagine that individual articles got more eyeball time than they otherwise might have.
I’m sure there are other ways to structure a carnival so that each category gets a little more “love” from readers. Your participants will thank you.
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Filed under: Hosting, For Popular Carnivals
Posted on August 2nd, 2007 by mbhunter
The 83rd Carnival of Homeschooling, featured on the homepage of BlogCarnival.com, wrapped the posts up in a check-up theme. This was very effective and made the carnival a pleasure to read.
Bulletized lists are all right, and they serve their purpose, which is to provide links to the on-topic submitted articles and encourage readers to click through. Putting more effort into the carnivals draws more traffic because of the buzz factor.
Grouping the posts into different “sections” like listening to your heartbeat, getting rest, getting exercise, diet, and so forth, probably means reading a majority of the posts, or at least pondering the titles of the posts, before writing much of anything in the carnival post. I know from my own experience hosting carnivals that a good chunk of the submissions come in on the 11th hour — heck, that’s when I submit a lot of mine! So likely a lot of this writing was done under a little bit of time pressure.
Congratulations on a great carnival!
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Filed under: Hosting
