Redirect Traffic by Participating in Blog Carnivals (Part 2)

In the previous post in this series, I mentioned what blog carnivals are and why all up and coming bloggers should be participating in them. In the event that you missed that article, let me recap quickly the benefits to participating in blog carnivals:

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

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

1) Contribute your articles early. There will be a submission deadline, but it's likely that the host already has a good idea on how the post will be structured before the deadline, so you want your article available during this formative stage.

2) Make the host's job easy: Learn how to create blog article titles that are catchy, and come up with two or three powerful, compelling headlines that can be used for the anchor text in links. Good headlines are hard to craft, so create them yourself. You'll save the host the trouble and get more traffic from a more powerful headline.

3) Follow the entry guidelines.

4) Get organized: Organize the information you submit. Include your name, e-mail address, blog name, post title, post 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, be sure to promote the event. What goes around comes around, and your aggregate efforts to generate traffic will payoff for all of you 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 traffic: 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 offers or ads to your audience, provide a very visible subscription link, and follow-up with at least one week's worth of solid posts to capitalize on any lingering traffic you might have.

Blog carnivals are a excellent way to bring profitable, relevant, qualified, long-term readers. Use them intelligently and you'll reap the rewards. But you must be ready 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!