How to create a blog carnival: Step by Step September 29, 2007

I know well how hard it is to run through all of your favourite blogs every day if you have a lot in mind. That’s why bloggers create blog carnivals for your pleasure, dear reader! If you are a blogger and you plan to create a blog carnival dedicated to your field of interest, here is a HOWTO guide:

• Find out a proper name: For example, our carnival of genes and gene-related diseases is called Gene Genie; the genetic carnival is Mendel’s Garden; our medical web geekery carnival’s name is Medicine 2.0 and the best medical carnival is Grand Rounds. It’s important to make it easier to find out the main goal of the carnival just by it’s name.

• Register it at BlogCarnival.com: The best place for carnivals. You can easily organize your editions, set up new ones and get the submitted articles automatically. And they also feature carnivals on the main page.

A screenshot from Medicine 2.0′s blogcarnival.com page

• Create a blog for your carnival: It’s good to have an archive of your edition. I mean you shouldn’t post there the entire editions (due to search-engine optimization reasons), just short abstracts and links. It’s easy to follow the editions, to know who will host the next one and where we can submit our articles. Take a look at our Gene Genie archive!

Our Gene Genie archive page

• Write a mission statement and a guideline: It’s important to know who can host your editions, what kind of articles should be included and what the carnival’s main goal is. If you make it clear the first time, you won’t get submissions which have nothing to do with your field of interest. It’s also worth launching a carnival on an uncovered topic.

• Create a logo: A logo can be crucial when you would like to indicate the field you’re writing about just by the name of the carnival or a logo. For example, we were lucky to have Ricardo Vidal at My Biotech Life who is a great logo-creator. And our Gene Genie logo tells you everything you have to know about our carnival.

Many thanks to Ricardo Vidal for the logo!

• Recruit: That’s not enough! You need bloggers, participants to host your editions , to submit their articles. When you launch a new blog carnival, you won’t get any submissions, so you’ll have to find a lot of interesting posts, articles and send it to your next host in time. It takes time and energy.

• Be patient and work hard: It’s still not ready. A blog carnival is considered a reliable carnival after about 10 editions. So be patient, work hard each week to find enough submissions; help your hosts as much as you can to make sure they’ll enjoy hosting your carnival.

And you will be the founder of a useful, high-quality blog carnival which helps your readers to find the best articles on a specific subject; and helps your blogger fellows how to promote their own articles.

If you have any kind of question, drop me a line (berci.mesko [at] gmail.com)!