Posts tagged ‘blogs’
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:
- The Carnival of Education – Last Edition
- A Blog Carnival of English Learning – Last Edition
- The Carnival of Homeschooling – Last Edition
- ELL/ESL/EFL Blog Carnival – Last Edition
- Active Learning Blog Carnival – Last 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!
- Learning Through Music Blog Carnival – First Edition
- Everything Education Blog Carnival – First Edition
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
Number 8 in the Top Language Blogs? Seriously?
When I was first notified that Teach42 was one of the Top 100 Education Blogs, I have to admit I got kind of excited. That was until I followed the link back and discovered that the site giving me the ‘award’ basically had no content at all. It seemed little more than a cheap ploy to get some press. If it was, it worked. Many people linked into it at the time and still proudly display the badge. More power to them. It isn’t necessarily a bad list, I just questioned it’s credibility at the time. Since then, the site has definitely filled out quite a bit more, but I’d still be curious to know what their standards were and how they came up with the list. It’s why being in Scott Mcleod’s top 50 list is more meaningful to me. He clearly states how he came up with the list and shares his data with the world.
So this morning, when I checked my email, I got a message that I assumed had to be spam. The subject was “You ranked #8 in out top 100 language blogs list!” Yes, I too found it ironic that the subject line announcing that I was a top language blog had a typo in it. But that’s besides the point. Or is it?
Like I said, I assumed that it had to be spam. It wasn’t. I followed the link over to Lexiophiles.com, and checked out their Top 100 Language blogs page. Lo and behold, there I was:
At first I assumed that this was just a publicity stunt per se, and that they must have just done some keywords searches and put them in some random order. However, they do have a page explaining how they picked the sites, what their criteria was and how they judged them. Not only that, but they claim that they sifted it down from a larger list, and even have a link containing all the blogs that didn’t quite make the list. And beyond even THAT, they’ve created a poll where you can vote for your own favorites, so if they got it wrong, the community can help correct the problem (of course I threw in a vote for Teach42 while I was there).
So what does all this mean? Well, it certainly wasn’t all automated. This took some serious time by at least a few people. Looking through the site does reflect that time and effort was spent creating it. It’s NOT spam. And while they are sponsored by Bab.La, there’s just one small add on the page. Pretty subtle if they’re really behind it. Although, their image WAS attached to the email I received. Despite all this, there’s still just one thing that doesn’t quite add up…
How the heck did somebody review Teach42 and decide that it was the 8th best LANGUAGE blog on the internet??? I don’t even talk about language much, besides mentioning a few tools that could be used by ESL teachers! I’m completely boggled by this one. There are some great sites on there that I recognize that actually focus on language, and ESL learning and so on. Mine doesn’t. So to put Teach42 ahead of blogs like EFL Geek is just crazy! They deserve to be on the list. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m there.
I guess the lesson in this is once again that we always need to be looking at our sources and questioning them. Who’s the expert? What are their credentials? What are the ulterior motives if any? And after evaluating it all, does it feel right to you? The internet is a slippery place to hang out.
The funny thing is that I’ll probably get taken off the list for spouting off like this. And that would make me feel sad, melancholy, sorrowful, doleful, woebegone, and desolate. Think that amazing use of language will keep me on there?
Oh, and if you’re from Lexophiles and reading this right now, welcome! Love your site! And I’d love to hear what the real story is.