Day 18: Join the Carnival!

Some of the challenges have clearly been targeted more towards people whose blogs are more established. Today’s could be used by anyone, but will probably benefit newer bloggers the most. For those of you that remember webrings, they used to be a way for individual sites to congregate into communities and connect to each other. While webrings haven’t completely gone away, the blog world has seen them evolve into a phenomenon known as Blog Carnivals. When I was a budding blogger, I read the Carnival of Education regularly as it exposed me to bloggers outside my typical circle of friends (long before Twitter and other microblogs came onto the scene). As I grew more confident in my own blogging, I began submitting to the carnival and vividly remember how exciting it was to see my blog referenced in there. Not only that, but it exposed my blog to an entirely new audience and always saw a bump in traffic the weeks my posts were included. It was a safe way to ‘put myself out there’ and promote my blog, without feeling like I was pushing it on other people.

If you aren’t familiar with blog carnivals, BlogCarnival.com has a great description in their FAQ:

A Blog Carnival is a particular kind of blog community. There are many kinds of blogs, and they contain articles on many kinds of topics. Blog Carnivals typically collect together links pointing to blog articles on a particular topic. A Blog Carnival is like a magazine. It has a title, a topic, editors, contributors, and an audience. Editions of the carnival typically come out on a regular basis (e.g. every monday, or on the first of the month). Each edition is a special blog article that consists of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors opinions or remarks.

There is so much stuff in the blog-o-sphere, just finding interesting stuff is hard. If there is a carnival for a topic you are interested in, following that carnival is a great way to learn what bloggers are saying about that topic. If you are blogging on that topic, the carnival is the place to share your work with like-minded bloggers.

As I mentioned, Carnival’s are a great way for you to increase awareness of your blog, but also to learn about other blogs that may be outside your current circle. Anybody can create a carnival, which is both a blessing and a curse. Many don’t make it past the first few ‘issues’. However, others are very well established and publish on a regular basis. Here’s a few active Education carnivals that might be of interest to you along with their most recent edition:

I’m going to throw in two honorable mentions. These two aren’t very active just yet… In fact, their on their first edition. However, if they’re topics that interest you, then maybe you’ll help provide them the incentive to put out a second edition, third, fourth, fifth and so on!

And if none of those suit your needs, then check out Blog Carnival’s Education category and see if something strikes your fancy.

So your challenge for today is to submit yourself to be in a blog carnival! Or maybe you want to consider creating a blog carnival of your own. Carnival of the Twitterverse? Education in Second Life Roundup? It’s entirely up to you!

Thinking about starting one? Share a comment letting us know! Also, I’d love to hear stories from more experienced bloggers about different ways they got eyeballs to visit their blog. As I mentioned, the Carnival of Ed certainly helped me early on. Do you have any tips for new bloggers regarding how to promote your blog without being over the top or heavy handed?

30d2bbb image by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

7 Comments

mwright103
11/18/2008

Day 18: Join the Carnival! /Teach42/ – Some of the challenges have clearly been targeted more towards people … http://tinyurl.com/5ajuoj

Larry Ferlazzo
11/18/2008

Steve,

First, thanks for including the ELL/ESL/EFL Carnival on your list. I’d certainly encourage people to consider submitting a post — anything related to teaching English Language Learners, including examples of student work, is welcome.

In addition to submitting blog posts to Carnivals, I found that highlighting specific posts on email listservs I was a member of and writing short articles for online journals like TechLearning were helpful in getting people to hear about my blog.

Larry

Larry Ferlazzo´s most recent blog post.. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Mathew
11/18/2008

I love blog carnivals. I host the video in the classroom on my blog.

Mathew´s most recent blog post.. Nominations for the Edublog Awards

Dan Callahan
11/18/2008

It’s been a while since I submitted to the Carnival of Education. Thanks for the reminder!

Dan Callahan´s most recent blog post.. One way I use Diigo

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