Blog Carnival Tips

As blog carnivals get big and well-established, the traffic gets pretty substantial.  This attracts more posts, both good and bad.  The good posts, because it’s a good, long-standing carnival that bloggers want to submit to.  The bad posts, because it’s an easy, high-traffic link for not that much work.

Initially, when the Carnival of Personal Finance started up, the philosophy was to try to include everyone who submitted a post.  The idea was to encourage participation, create something that was greater than the sum of its parts, and create a collaborative, cooperative environment for personal finance bloggers.  Not that Flexo has lost his sense of community now that over 100 editions have been posted and his carnival has become the target of more and more spammy posts, but he’s begun to ask more of the posters and also of the hosters.

A similar set of guidelines were put out by the manager of the Carnival of the Capitalists when I guest-hosted.  This is also a large carnival.  The management here comes in the form of a detailed page on the CotC blog.

Having some rules when the carnivals get large adds some structure and keeps the hosts from getting too overwhelmed.  (The recent host of the Carnival of Personal Finance asked for more posts over at the MBN Forums so apparently some folks aren’t overwhelmed easily!) However, the rules are an additional burden on the hosts and can deter them from signing on.

Where’s the “sweet spot” for how much to manage a carnival?

The Carnival of Debt Reduction hasn’t quite gotten to the mega-carnival stage but I still get questions from the hosts about which posts to include.  Basically my instructions to the hosts are to use their judgment and that I’ll support them.  I’d probably hold off instituting a lot of rules as long as possible (basically until I can’t) because I’m not really big on rules in general.  But if it gets to the point that the hosts start feeling overwhelmed then I might not have much choice.  As far as having a “best of” section, how to order the posts in the carnival, what posts to reject, how to present the carnival, how to handle people who don’t link back, etc., leaving many of these decisions up to the host allows the individual nature of the host to come out more.

So here are some tests to see if you need more regulation in your carnival:

• Are there lots of off-topic posts submitted?  Then define the topic better or give authority to the hosts to nix off-topic posts.
• Are submitters being lazy linking back?  Then start keeping a list of the worst offenders.
• Are the hosts starting to cave in under the load?  Then it might be time to start restricting the size, or otherwise make things a little easier for the hosts.  Or at the very least define what hosts are to do a little more.  (Without hosts, carnivals can be a lot of work!)

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Filed under: For Popular Carnivals

There are many good ways to get your carnival to stand out if you’re the host.  Typically the inventiveness is evident in the presentation of the posts.  But what about adding a well-thought-out introduction to the carnival?

Most of the carnivals I’ve hosted just say something to the extent of:

“Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Crustaceans!  It was a pleasure to read everyone’s shrimp-tastic entries!  We’re going to get started now, so do the rock lobster and don’t get crabby …”

And that’s it.  It’s a perfectly functional introduction — short and to the point — but not much else.

This week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction over at Money, Matter, and More Musings had an exceptionally good introduction to the Carnival.  The kind of introduction where you actually learn something!  I’m hard-pressed to tell whether this is the icing on the cake, or whether it should be part of the cake.  One might say that it takes some of the focus off of the posts, but the richer content will certainly draw better search engine traffic and will likely generate a little more buzz than a plain-vanilla introduction.

The other thing that’s nice about this kind of carnival embellishment is that the presentation of the posts are still as clear as they would be in an InstaCarnival:  “So-and-so from such-and-such blog presents A Really Great Post, saying Something Clever.”  Nothing in this carnival has obfuscated the posts.

One more trick to add to your bag for hosting carnivals!

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Filed under: Hosting

Putting together a carnival can take anywhere from about five minutes to many, many hours.

The five minute version takes advantage of the “InstaCarnival” feature on BlogCarnival.com. The InstaCarnival is a post that has a number of lines with the format:

Blogger presents blog post, posted at blog, saying “comment”

for each post submitted through the BlogCarnival.com interface.  This is a perfectly valid way to put a carnival together.  It’s straightforward.  It’s clear.  It’s also pretty cookie-cutter.  (This isn’t a slam on BlogCarnival — if computers start writing as well as, or better than, humans, we’re in trouble as bloggers!)

I’ve started with the InstaCarnival template with a few carnivals I’ve hosted.  I massage the text a little bit, but it sure is helpful if you’re away from your high-speed internet connection and you have a carnival to put together.

The many, many hours version involves not only reading the submitted posts (!) but also putting together a kind of show.  These are labors of love for the hosts.  Sometimes you get the carnival in verse, with an old video game flair, with a podcast, with celebrities, or even with a Renaissance faire!

(These are just a few examples!  If you have a great one to add to the list, post a comment!)

Now the big question:  Which kind is better?

The InstaCarnival type (a list of posts and not much else) is clear but unimaginative on the part of the host.  It saves the host time.  For a big carnival, the return on investment for the host is pretty good: lots of traffic and lots of trackbacks without much work.

The SuperCarnival type (like the ones linked to above) are really cool to look at and will probably get more link love (links in posts) and more buzz than the InstaCarnival.

If it were just backlinks and buzz, the well-put-together carnival would be a hands-down winner.  But I don’t think it’s that simple.  For all of the flash of these carnivals, how much time did you spend clicking through to the posts?  Was dressing up the carnival a service or a disservice to the people who submitted to the carnival?  Sure, the good-looking carnival gets more traffic, but does it get more click-throughs?  And if hosts did this week after week, calling more attention to the carnival than to the posts, would the submitters keep submitting?

I don’t really know.  But I do think that the “dull” carnivals put the spotlight on the posts more than the “exciting” ones.  It’s easier to find what posts you want to read in the simple carnival than in the ornate one.

So I wouldn’t feel slighted with a drab carnival if the little chunk with my post was easy to understand and encouraged readers to click through to my article.  On the other hand, I also wouldn’t feel slighted if a really crazy cool carnival drew a bunch of traffic and gained a wider audience, a few of which clicked through to my blog for the first time.

What’s your opinion?

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Filed under: Hosting, Commentary

Since it’s very easy to submit posts to blog carnivals, the “barrier to entry” for the submitter is pretty low.  This can be a pain for the person hosting a carnival, since the host has to wade through a bunch of irrelevant submissions as the blog carnival is being assembled.

As a host there are a few ways of handling off-topic posts:

• Silently exclude the post.  Just don’t include a particular post.  Maybe state in the carnival that there were a few off-topic posts submitted to your edition that weren’t included.  See if you hear from the submitter.
• Exclude the post but let the submitter know.  If it’s reasonably close to topic but not quite, let the submitter know and suggest another carnival that might be a better fit.  Sometimes the submitter will accept this and other times they will debate it.  Forewarned is forearmed.
• Spin the post to fit the topic.  This is another approach that can be taken for close-to-topic posts.  Word the description of the post to make a closer fit.  Doing this gives extra posts to your carnival.
• Include it but separate it as off-topic.  For all but the most off-the-wall topics this might be a way to handle it.  It avoids most debates with the posters (their posts were included, after all) and indicates to the carnival readers that you did actually read enough of the post to recognize it as off-topic.  If you’re in an ornery mood, you could mock the post, I suppose, but that has its own set of consequences.

In managing my carnival I usually leave the discretion to the host because it’s their blog and their carnival, ultimately.  They have to be comfortable with what they post.  For other carnival managers, they may want more say in the editorial aspects of the carnival.  I won’t speak for all hosts but I’ll venture that most are reasonable folks that will listen to what you have to say as a host, so talk with them about issues as they come up.

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Filed under: Hosting

Thanks for checking out Blog Carnival Tips! This will contain a lot of resources for bloggers interested in:

• Learning about what a blog carnival is
• Starting a blog carnival
• Managing a blog carnival
• Submitting a post to a blog carnival
• Hosting a blog carnival

Much more to come, so please come back!

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Filed under: Announcements