Carnival
Blog Carnivals is a great way for bloggers to recognize each other’s efforts and improve the overall level of conversation in the Blogosphere. You will thus help making it easier to find the information people are looking for while receiving recognition for your work. In addition will you get more visitors, get to know new blogs and bloggers and get more comments. A Blog Carnival is not a competition so you won’t win a prize. Participating is the only purpose. How much you get out of it is entirely up to you. Generally do you get as much out of it as you put into it.
The Carnival of Circular Communication is a particular Blog Carnival celebrating Communication, Circularity and not least the combination of the two. Given the philosophy of this site and the mindset behind Blog Carnivals this is a perfect fit. Reading the About page will give you a better understanding of what this site is about while reading How Blog Carnivals Boost Communities and Make Dreams Come True offers additional insights and information about Blog Carnivals in general. The Carnival is ongoing and aim at publishing an edition at least twice a month.
Writing (or having written) a great article following the guidelines below is the first step of participating, but it should be followed up by engaging with those coming to your site as well as reading, commenting and linking to the other participants to bring you the greatest rewards. That way this isn’t simply about one site linking out to many sites linking back, but ideally many sites linking to many sites. In essence is this about building communities through circular communication around topics related to circular communication. Communication really doesn’t get much more circular than that does it?
These are the subjects (in no particular order) that you can write about: Blogging, Social Media, Culture, Expectations, Organization, Society, Management, Power, Risk, Storytelling, Narrative, Negotiation, Meaning, Collaboration, Critique, Conflict, Metaphors, Analogies, Interaction, Participation, Community, Connecting, Communication, Circularity, Relationships, Conversation, Promotion, Branding, Marketing, Writing, Reading, Commenting, Readability, Usability, Interviews, Carnivals, Quotations, Authority and Music. Feel free to interpret and combine them however you like. Just bear the overall theme in mind so you don’t get astray.
To give you a few examples could your article be about how you connected with new people through your blog, how you interact with blogs and bloggers and why or how to be a relational and conversational blogger. You can also get more specific if you like and give concrete advice on how you use social media, define branding, give writing tips or how to use storytelling and narratives to draw your readers in. Asking your readers for questions to answer, using analogies or metaphors to explain said subjects or creating your own carnival on one of the topics is also ways to participate. Applying the theme to one or more topics is in other words what you should be going for.
In essence the guidelines below decides who makes the cut and how they are highlighted. Each edition will include links to all accepted articles. Please read the following carefully to avoid misunderstandings, confusion and disappointment:
To be considered for the Carnival your article must meet these qualifications:
- The article has to be in English as most readers here are English speakers.
- It has to be clearly relevant to at least one of the subjects as well as the overall theme.
- Only one submission per blog and/or author will be accepted per edition.
- The article has to have been published no more than a month before being submitted.
To be featured (and highlighted) I recommend that you follow this advice:
- Put in the time and commitment to write something well worth reading.
- Try being bold, inquisitive and creative while keeping your readers in mind.
- Aim at writing a lengthier article rather than merely a short post.
- Take great care when writing your headline as that is the first thing people see.
- Try applying what you write about to how you write (circular communication).
- Make it obvious that you have something at heart and/or something on your mind.
- Don’t publish and submit your article right away, but let it rest before you publish it.
- Make sure your blog makes a good first impression when people visit.
- Spread the word by talking, commenting and posting about the Carnival.
- Tagging your article with “Carnival of Circular Communication” also helps.
To participate you publish your article as you normally would and then submit it here. The Carnival is published Sunday evening. Your submission has to be in before midnight (regardless of your time zone) on Friday to be considered for the following Sunday edition. Submitting it before a given deadline does not guarantee that your article will be published on a specific date or in the next edition as a cut off point have to made to ensure the quality and variety of each edition. That means that when there are too few accepted posts the edition will be carried forward and when the number of accepted submissions go beyond the cut off point they will be carried over and appear in the following edition.
When the Carnival edition with your article is published is it your responsibility to link to it as soon as possible. Whether you do this by merely highlighting your own inclusion or by presenting your personal favorites is up to you. Just remember that the more you give the more you get. My personal experience is that listing your personal favorites - especially if you do it properly - not only gets the attention of those you highlight, but that of several others as well.
If you have questions or suggestions please Contact me and we will sort it out.
