C’mon Aussie c’mon to the Carnival of Australia
Our own Carnival of Australia is set to celebrate her first birthday this month, right here at Aussie Bloggers. Throw the snags on the barbie and the beer in the esky for this BYO event, cos we’re set to do it in real Aussie style - with posts from all you Aussie bloggers.
Our pink flash of Lightening Online hostessed the last Carnival of Australia and did a beauty of a job. Have you visited her Carnival post yet? **Megan is pointing her finger at you!** If you have no idea what a Carnival is, then having at squiz at Lightening’s Carnival and learning a bit more, here, is a must.
The Carnival of Australia first threw its Akubra in the door on April 25th, 2007: The Carnival of Australia: ANZAC Day Inaugural Edition. I had already been blogging for almost a year, was participating in several blog carnivals and was frustrated that there was little around, Carnival wise, to showcase Aussie blogs and Aussie bloggers. Finding the motivated Aussie community at Bumpzee was a God send and the Aussie carnival centric idea grew from discussions there.
Open to all Australian bloggers or those who have blogged about Australia, the Carnival of Australia has its niche in the variety and diversity of our great southern land. Some things will not be tolerated in our Carnival though. Each host has the right to weed articles offensive to their blog or beliefs. Given I am a child protection advocate, I am fundamentally opposed to any adult content or posts that sexualise children. Racism, hate and over the top swearing are also weeded - sometimes even before they make their way to the fortnightly host.
To start the Carnival, I just did it: I had an idea and I acted on it. While I am definitely a ‘Seeker’ of meaning, there was no “Carnival is over” thoughts for me. Not one to obsessively procrastinate on ideas until everything is crystal clear, I cyber spoke to a few other Australian bloggers to gauge interest, and then claimed the Carnival at BlogCarnival. I advertised on my old child protection blog spot blog, the home schooling blog that I kept at that time and on Bumpzee. Both Leigh from All for Women and Meg from Blogpond also started advertising on their blogs, and the submissions grew each fortnight.
I knew that I wanted the Carnival to have joint ownership so I called for other Aussie bloggers to share the hosting. Colin from Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe was the first external host and he has since hosted another three times. Thanks Colin. Just as in the beginning, the Carnival of Australia runs fortnightly on different Aussie’s blogs.
To host a Carnival of Australia you can either do minimal work (its a cut and paste job from instacarnival) or put your personality, your sense of humour and own commentary into the edition that shows on your blog. When I host, I prefer to always make additional comment, to visit, read and to stumble all submitted posts. Just as I do my children, I spend time on my Carnivals because I am the Carnival of Australia’s mother.
Carnivals do bring additional hits, visitors and trackback checkers. To increase traffic to a new blog, both participating in and hosting Carnivals can be a useful strategy. For me though, celebrating the diversity of Australian though, life and interest remains my motivator. I have such little time in my hectic professional life to spend on forums and social networking sites, that Carnivals now act as my pivotal meeting place for new blogs.
One of the success attributes for the Carnival of Australia has been the regular reminder emails - an email arrives to remind you to submit your post and to provide you the link to make submission super easy. A follow up email then alerts you that the Carnival is live and that you need to go and check your links. Whereas I used to collect email addresses of all people who participated in the Carnivals and send them off an email from me, nowadays, I use an aweber automated system that bloggers need to sign up to in order to get email alerts. If you want to capatalise on this service, then sign up via the Carnival of Australia’s home page.
The open and click through rate to the automated email reminder service is quite acceptable and acts as a measure of Aussie blogger participation: there are 39 Aussie Bloggers subscribed to the list (yep, while this is okay, you had better sign up, hey). For the immediate past Carnival hosted by the beautiful Lightening, 29 people opened their email reminder and there were 22 clicks onto links (15 to blog carnival to submit, one to Aussie Bloggers, three to Imaginif and three to Lightening Online).
C’mon Aussie, c’mon, c’mon - let’s make the first birthday edition a Carnival to remember. Hosted here on Wednesday 23rd April, you need to have your post submitted to BlogCarnival by Monday 21st April, 11pm. Submit now!
**Aging seeker, breaks into song** Say goodbye, my own true lover,
Megan, mother of Carnival of Australia, from Imaginif
Thanks for sharing Megan. It’s great to read some of the history of how the Carnival of Australia came about.
Thanks for the mention as well. 
You are most welcome Lightening. Thank you for being such a great hostess last fortnight. I am seriously thinking of starting a Cairns Carnival too (there’s a good smattering of bloggers up here that I’ve come across ), but, I would have to keep it quiet or Paul might just divorce me!!!! I want to do my PhD but as Paul says….in which hour of your day!?
Without your unstinting enthusiasm, Megan, The Carnival of Australia would be a shadow of what has been achieved. It is great to see it so well established after only a year. The only downside is with the level of participation now, it is a lot of work to pull together and do justice to the posters.