Tactical Execution

There’s a fantastic resource out there that few people are aware of.  It’s called blogcarnival.com and it can help you dramatically widen your audience in just 1 hour each month.  So, what’s a “carnival”?  Well, it’s like a magazine except online.  It’s a collection of articles (blog posts generally) that someone puts together and distributes to an audience who has expressed interest in that topic.

BlogCarnival.com lists all the carnivals that are being published in the coming weeks and months.  It lists the organization putting it together, the topic of the carnival, the date of the last issue and the date of the next issue (if known).  As a blogger, you can then submit your blog posts (via permalinks) to the carnivals that cover similar topics.  If selected, your post will be featured in the carnival and distributed to an audience of people who may have never heard of you before.

This strategy exemplifies the difference between Social Media Optimization and Social Media Marketing.  Social Media Optimization involves the things you can do to make your blog easier to share and distribute through social media platforms.  For example, adding the social bookmarking buttons for delicious, DIGG and StumbleUpon is a Social Media Optimization strategy.  Those buttons make it easier for your visitors to share your content with others.

Social Media Marketing involves more proactive strategies like going to blogcarnival.com yourself and submitting your blog posts to upcoming carnivals.  Another example is bookmarking your own content on the social bookmarking platforms, or even sharing your bookmarks with others to get more “votes” within those communitites.  Social Media Marketing involves all the blatant self-promotion activities you can do to get your content in front of the masses.

You may or may not feel comfortable with shameless self-promotion, but the benefits are clear.  Bottom line; if people don’t know you exist, they can’t endorse your content.  The idea is simply to help the world find you.  Once they have been exposed to your content, their endorsement is beyond your control.  And with that in mind, blogcarnival.com is a great place to share your truth with a broader audience.