Drive Traffic by Taking Part in Blog Carnivals (Part 2)

In the earlier post in this series, I discussed what blog carnivals are and why all aspiring bloggers should be participating in them. In the event that you missed that article, let me recap quickly the advantages of participating in blog carnivals:

• They improve your credibility
• You immediately gain profitable, regular readers of your partner blogs
• You get an immediate boost of traffic to blog entries
• You get a long term increase in search result rankings

What I'm going to cover in this post is how you can get the most benefit out of your carnival participation. Let's be real, carnivals take effort and time, so you should get as much good will and benefit from them as possible. Here's how you can accomplish that:

1) Contribute your posts early. There will be a call for entries 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 early stage.

2) Make the host's job simple: Learn how to create blog article titles that are clever, and come up with two or three powerful, compelling headings that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good headlines are difficult to create, so create them on your own. You'll save the host the trouble and get more traffic from a better headline.

3) Follow the entry guidelines.

4) Get organized: Organize the information you enter. Include your name, e-mail address, blog name, post title, post summary, several sample headings, permalink, and trackback URL. 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 generate traffic will payoff for everybody 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 you can handle your visitors: Ready your blog for any traffic spikes that might occur, and optimize the page that the carnival readers will be viewing. You'll want to aim the ads or offers to your audience, provide a very visible subscription link, and follow-up with at least a week's worth of powerful posts to capitalize on any lingering traffic you might have.

Blog carnivals are a terrific way to bring relevant, qualified, profitable, long-term readers. Use them intelligently 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 prepare your blog for this kind of traffic.

Good luck!