Blog Carnival Tips

Maintaining a blog carnival can be either just a little bit of work, or a lot of work. It all depends on how much control you want to retain over the carnival and how big the carnival ends up getting.

Here are some basic suggestions for maintaining a blog carnival:

• Get an account at BlogCarnival.com.  Again, it’s free.  There are lots of features that allow you to keep track of past and future hosts, set deadlines, take submissions, and even publicize your carnival.  You’ll be glad you did!
• Get a Gmail account for the submissions.  It’s free too.  You can hook up the BlogCarnival.com address to this account, and have the Gmail account forward all of the posts to another e-mail address so you don’t even need to log in yourself.  Gmail has a lot of nice features that make it amenable to archiving posts.
• Try to have a few editions’ worth of hosts lined up.  Sometimes this isn’t always possible but it takes some of the stress away.
• After the carnival has been posted, announce it on your blog, e-mail some big names that may throw a lot of traffic your carnival’s way, and e-mail the next host and ask them to confirm.  (So you’re not wondering Sunday night if your carnival is going to appear Monday!)  Send the username and password of the Gmail account to the host.  If the current carnival edition hasn’t appeared in BlogCarnival.com, add it.
• Take the pulse of your carnival.  By this I mean see what others are saying both in, and about, the carnival.  Are the posts on-topic?  Are there lots of posts in your carnival that have been submitted to other carnivals?  Is it getting too big?  Look at policy changes if necessary.
• Help out the host.  They’re putting together an edition of your carnival, so be there for them.  Answer their questions, offer advice when asked.  Good customer service mainly.