If you’re at all familiar with my approach, you know that I am a big proponent of blogs as a vital promotion tool for your business—especially for authors.
Perhaps you’ve established your blog, as well as a following on it, and are looking for a new way to increase traffic or value to your readers. One option I highly recommend is participating in or starting up a blog carnival.
A blog carnival is a blog post that features a round-up of interesting blog posts from other websites. For example, a weight loss blog might feature a round-up of recent blog posts from various weight loss experts, personal trainers, and other industry blogs. The round-up (carnival) usually includes between 10 to 50 blog posts, including article title and link for each, and sometimes a bit of commentary about what readers will learn from reading each post in the carnival. See a sample blog carnival from Joel Friedlander’s blog here.
When one of your blog posts is featured in a carnival on a popular website, it can attract some great exposure and traffic. You can use Google to search for industry blogs that run “blog carnivals,” or you can utilize the top blog carnival website and search for opportunities to contribute.
Conversely, you can also host blog carnivals on your own blog. To do this, create a regular feature on your blog, once a week or once per month, where you list compelling industry blog posts. You can find content from the industry blogs that you follow, use Google search to find resources, and you can also allow others to submit their posts for consideration (create a submission form on your site).
Once the carnival post is published live, notify contributors and ask them to promote the link to your carnival. If you are successful at locating the best of the best in your industry on a regular basis, you can attract lots of traffic from repeat visitors who want to discover interesting industry blog posts.
Did you know we host an annual Nonfiction Writers Conference? Check it out!
