---
title: "Blog Carnivals and my ‘Makes-Me-Smile Monday’ Post"
date: 2007-05-14
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canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2007/05/14/blog-carnivals-and-my-makes-me-smile-monday-post/
---
# Blog Carnivals and my ‘Makes-Me-Smile Monday’ Post
Everyone in the Rocks in My Dryer site adds their post (via a tool called Mister Linkey) to the bottom of the original Rocks-in-My-Dryer-Works-for-Me-Wednesday post. The links from the participants look like this:

[![Carnival](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/carnival21.gif)](https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/idbwmedia.com/images/2007/05/carnival2.GIF)

Carnivals provide community and structure to the blogging experience. You aren't just reading a random posts on topics you subscribed to. You have entered into a community of people organized around a common theme. I think it's quite cool. Here's the [Wikipedia definition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_Carnival):

> A **Blog Carnival** is a type of [blog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog) event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains [permalinks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permalinks) links to other blog articles on the particular topic.
> There are many variations, but typically, someone who wants to organize a carnival posts details of the theme or topic to their blog, and asks readers to submit relevant articles for inclusion in an upcoming edition. The host then collects links to these submissions, edits and annotates them (often in very creative ways), and publishes the resulting round-up to his or her blog.

(Actually, in reading the Wikipedia entry, the carnival seems more like "synchronized blogging," which it says is a variant, but the concepts are nearly the same.)

Anyway, blog carnivals are not only a neat idea, they have tremendous potential to influence Google search rankings. The blog carnival organizer benefits most (the Rocks in my Dryer author is ranked around 240 in Technorati -- this is near "blogebrity" status). But so does each individual participating in the carnival, because the blog organizer is linking to each of them (through the Mister Linkey feature, shown in the image above).  

I would like to start up a regular "Tech Writing Tips for Tuesdays" carnival, and I think I just may do it.