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 Frielander’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: http://blogcarnival.com/bc/alist.html.
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). You can also register your carnival for free and solicit contributions via http://blogcarnival.com/bc/.
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.
Related posts:
- How Photos in Your Blog Posts Can Boost Site Traffic and Blog Readership It’s no secret that I am a big proponent of blogging for authors, business owners,...
- Blog Promotion Secrets for Authors A blog is essentially an online diary that allows you to post information, tips, thoughts and...
- Blogging for Authors: Why You Need a Blog and How to Get Started I talk a lot about marketing strategies for authors, and one the most important is...
- Author Marketing Report: How Your Blog Can Help You Sell More Books I speak a lot about marketing online and the one recommendation I always make to...
- 8 Ways Nonfiction Authors Can Use Google Alerts One of my favorite free services is Google Alerts, an internet monitoring service that sends...
Great post Stephanie!
Just this week one of my retweets was included in a tweet carnival by http://wefollow.com/JohannaBD. Being new to the blogging sphere and Twitter I am learning all there is to know about content. I can’t wait to start doing a blog carnival post each week!!
Feel free to check my blog out: http://www.earthseaconsulting.wordpress.com
Cheers
Merryn Padgett
Stephanie,
How is it different or similar to the paper.li newsletters that a lot of people are using these days? I have seen a lot of those buzzing these days. Just curious about the differences between these two and if at all they are different, which one is better…
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar, The paper.li “newspapers” are primarily used for sharing in social media (Twitter). I can’t say that I’ve tested the results of those, buy my guess is that because the round-up in one of these “newspapers” isn’t hosted on your own site, it won’t have nearly as many traffic benefits as a blog carnival. Though if any of our readers have a different experience, please speak up!