So, you’ve launched a blog and you’ve found the time to write some great posts. You’re seeing a trickle of visitor traffic coming through but you want to really step it up. What can you do?

Well, one great way of taking your blog traffic to the next level is to submit your blog posts to Blog Carnival. Successful inclusion of your posts in a blog carnival can drive increased and targeted traffic to your blog, along with securing good quality external referring links back to your blog. Sound good? Great. Ok, so first things first.

What is a Blog Carnival?

A Blog Carnival is a ‘best-of’ list of the current blog posts on a particular topic. These posts are published on the blog of the carnival host who selects those posts which include the most exceptional content on the chosen carnival topic.

The amount of traffic that Blog Carnival actually drives to your blog can sometimes be fairly modest, however if your post is selected as an Editor’s Pick (the top five posts listed in a blog carnival) then this can really increase your blog traffic. Successful inclusion of one of your blog posts in a carnival also increases the number of external referring links back to your blog. This is great for a number of reasons, not least of which is on-going Search Engine Optimisation.

So with this in mind, how can you get the most out of Blog Carnival? Here is my top five list of what to do to secure inclusion of your blog posts in a carnival and hopefully (fingers and toes crossed) secure them as an Editor’s Pick.

1. Ensure that there is a thriving Blog Carnival in your niche

Firstly, check out Blog Carnival to make sure that there are live carnivals that match your blog topic. For example if you write a fashion blog, try searching for varying terms around the phrase fashion, such as ‘style’ and ‘clothes’ as well as ‘fashion.’ This makes it much easier to highlight the carnivals that are most suited to you and your blog and means that you will get the most of Blog Carnival.

2. Only submit posts that are in line with the Blog Carnival topic

When submitting a post to a blog carnival, it is crucial that the post is suitable for and in line with the carnival topic. Spamming blog carnivals with posts that are unrelated to the topic of the carnival simply means that your post will not be chosen for inclusion.

Here at Tinderbox Media we submit blog posts to blog carnivals for a number of our (very different) clients and always ensure the carnivals are suitable to the topic of our client’s posts. There would be no point in submitting articles from client A’s blog to carnivals suitable for client B, primarily because the focus of the two blogs is completely different, as is the intended audience and the posts would not be included.

3. When submitting a post, comment

Another way to improve your chances of success in a blog carnival is to leave a concise and informative comment about your blog post when you are submitting it. A short and interesting description of your post creates intrigue and encourages people to click through to the post. Alternatively, copying and pasting a particularly interesting paragraph from the blog post can work very well too.

4. Make sure your post titles (and content!) are fresh and interesting

Always make sure that your blog post titles and content are appealing to those who will be visiting the blog carnival. For example, if you are submitting a post to a SciFi carnival, try and think about the target audience of that carnival and what would interest those that visit the carnival. Short, snappy and intriguing titles along with fresh, topical content always encourage interest.

Similarly, just as it is important to update your blog regularly, it is also a good idea to submit suitable and interesting new posts to blog carnivals on a regular basis, to encourage loyal readership and raise awareness about your blog. It also means that you can create and maintain strong and positive relationships with carnival hosts in the hope of encouraging them to include your posts in future carnivals.

5. Link back to the Carnival

If your post is successful in a blog carnival, it is considered good n’etiquette to link back to the carnival in order to spread the word about that particular blog carnival. In order to do so, simply add “This post was selected for XXX Carnival (and a link to the carnival), hosted by XXX (and a link to the host)” at the end of your selected post. This again encourages strong relationships with carnival hosts; great for improving your chances of success in future carnivals.

So that’s my top five list of tips to bear in mind when writing posts for and submitting to Blog Carnival.

Always remember the two intended outcomes of submitting your posts to Blog Carnival: good quality referring links and increased traffic from interested parties, and you will soon be basking in your own Blog Carnival success!

I hope that my list of tips work for you too and if you find or know of any others, I would love to hear them!

Image: Paul Scicluna

Facebook rolled out a significant set of changes to pages last week – but one of the really important developments was something of a footnote as majority of people failed to get past the shiny new features on offer.

Pages are the public profile of brands and other organisations on the social network. Changes last week saw a raft of improvements that brought them into line with the new style profiles that were introduced for individuals late last year.

The changes, and what to do if you administer a page, have been looked at in some detail elsewhere, but there was one announcement that particularly caught my eye.

Facebook is deprecating Facebook Mark-up Language (FBML), the HTML based coding language that millions have used to customise their pages by creating their own tabs, and shifting to iFrames. In fact, custom tabs no longer really exist – being replaced by custom apps.

This all sounds tremendously ‘techie’, but for the layman this is a sad indication of what Facebook is becoming. While nearly anyone with a little bit of help and a good deal of patience could use FBML to create their own custom tabs, this will certainly not be the case with iFrames.

Such is the complexity of using iFrames that only organisations with developers on hand will be able to make the most of the change. Creating similar custom apps by this new method is tantamount to creating simple Facebook applications. A process that will never get further than this screen for many.

Facebook is effectively discriminating between the ‘devs’ and ‘dev-nots.’ If you are a small brand that has built up a strong community around your page then a layer of customisation has now been denied to you.

Well, what does all this mean for the future of Facebook? It means a two-tier ecosystem for pages, with only those who have the resources and money able to explore every possibility that pages have to offer.

It also increases suspicions that Facebook is tightening its commercial hold. Favouring Facebook development and marketing companies such as Wildfire (which was formed with the help of Facebook seed funding) over the little guy.

There is one temporary ray of light. While FBML will eventually disappear altogether you can still install the Static FBML application to your page before March 11^th. If you don’t want to move into the Facebook application development business, I strongly recommend you do.

Image credit: lifealgorithms.wordpress.com

“So, what is the next Facebook?” It’s an innocent question that I get asked from time-to-time by friends and family. I have to look back at them and say that “I don’t really know.”

I am being slightly disingenuous though, because you don’t have to be genius to figure out that mobile technology will significantly shape the future of social networks. But I also know that if I tell them that is the case, and mention geolocation games such as Foursquare and Gowalla, I’m usually met with blank stares.

A study in the US this week concluded that only 4 per cent of online adults use ‘geosocial’ services like those two mentioned above. This research was criticised in some quarters for being incomplete, but even if flawed it does give a decent indication of the real level of uptake – despite the hype.

So if Foursquare et al have been overhyped and only work for users with the right kind of smartphone (four million so far in Foursquare’s case), why do I think they represent the next big thing?

A few main reasons spring to mind: one, the world’s biggest social network has entered the foray with Facebook Places; two, the future (and the present) of social networks lies in mobile technology, with smartphone sales soaring; and thirdly, geolocation services are a natural progression of social media marketing –and ultimately, all social networks want to somehow make money.

The third reason requires a little further explanation. Social media has transformed the way brands connect with customers and each other. Only the advent of television has had a more significant cultural impact on the way in which marketing is conducted.

While online marketing has been a wave breaking onto the shore over the past ten years, social media is that wave’s white crest. It has ushered in an unprecedented era of the two-way marketing that has significantly transformed the way companies communicate with their customers. If geolocation is a future iteration of that movement then it makes sense to take notice.

So what does this mean for businesses? Well, Foursquare – and now Facebook Places through its Deals Platform – both give businesses the opportunity to provide offers and promotions to customers, something that has been enthusiastically embraced in some quarters. For B2B marketers things are a little less clear cut, and it may be the case that they never really have an application.

Perhaps of far greater importance to B2B marketing (and again reflecting the importance of location-based marketing) are the changes Google has recently made to its Local Search function. The search engine has integrated previously separate local results into general search engine results to create ‘Place Search.’

The development means that business that have one or more specific geographical locations are no longer likely to rank for local searches (e.g. “Butcher Leeds”) unless they have a Local Business Listing.

Even if Facebook Places and Foursquare don’t currently seem relevant to your business, this is one development everyone should take notice of.

Image credit: Nan Palmero

Do you know your customers really well? Do you know exactly what they want and what they think of your company?

If you answer either of these two questions with 100 per cent certainty then I would suggest you are slightly delusional! Understanding what your customers want and how they feel about your services and products, and your company overall, is a complex subject. Very often businesses agonise over what their clients think of them and how their decisions will affect that perception and the relationships they share.

My experience suggests that many clever and dynamic initiatives (particularly marketing ones) never come about because companies and their employees are paralysed by indecision.

“Should we change that product range? I think it’s confusing, but changing it might upset our customers.”

“Do you think there are opportunities to up-sell to this customer? Do they know about the other things we do?”

“Well, is an email the right thing? People often don’t open them.”

I’m guessing at least one of these sounds familiar.

So what’s the solution, how can you act with certainty and keep your customers on board?

I believe the answer lies in research. We’ve conducted several research projects this year that have proved invaluable to clients. We’ve posed everything from the big business questions to the smaller marketing questions. The answers we’ve received have changed the way our clients do business and the approach we take to building awareness of their brand and communicating with their existing, past and future clients.

From an impartial telephone interview to a quick, incentivised online survey (Survey Monkey is great for this); it has never been easier to gauge exactly what your clients think about you. An often overlooked marketing and business tool, research could well be one of your strongest allies as we emerge from a tough recession.

If you can answer the questions I posed at the start of this post with a level of qualified certainty, you’re much more likely to keep your existing customers happy and grow your business.

Photo credit: Horiavalan

I was recently invited to share my insights on social media at an unusual new event in Leeds.

I say unusual, but in reality Cultural Conversations was just a different format to what I am used to – a format that really reflected the nature of social networks.

This wasn’t an event where I spoke to a captive audience, rather I helped facilitate conversation ‘hubs’ and hopefully shared some useful insights. It was a really refreshing process that I felt not only reflected the structure of social networks, but also provided a really effective way of communicating ideas.

Usually events of this kind are dominated by one or more speakers who either fascinate or bore you silly. The structure of Cultural Conversations, and the great turn out (around 70 people) meant that attendees could gravitate towards conversation groups where issues or topics were discussed for around 30 minutes.

These then fed into a final session with all delegates where topics of interest were developed further. This organic approach, which closely follows the way conversations spread on Twitter (check out this project, called revisit, for a brilliant visual representation of Twitter conversations), was intuitive and engaging.

So why don’t more events adopt this intimate format? It’s often said that the most interesting elements of conferences take place away from the main halls, when delegates get together and talk. In my opinion there’s a lot to be said for flipping the standard event format on its head and enhancing what people feel is most useful. What if break-out sessions were the main focus and not an afterthought?

I’m not an event organiser. I don’t have the skills or energy to put on a major event. But if I were organising any sort of business event I’d think about going back-to-basics and consider how people communicate, both online and offline, and shape the event around that.

Social networks have afforded us considerable insight into human communication (this is a great presentation by a Google usability expert on the topic),  so why are we not always harnessing those insights offline?

As a former journalist little gets me more upset than the plight of regional journalism in the UK. Barely a day seems to go by without news of job cuts, strikes and falling circulation numbers.

While these trends do get me vexed, I can’t help feeling that media groups missed a trick. They had the opportunity and resources to change the way we consumed news.

Unfortunately that window of opportunity has now closed and we are daily faced with the spectacle of media companies scrambling to develop online income streams. And that scramble has led to some quite desperate stories of defeat, as was evidenced by Johnston Press’ experiment earlier this year.

But, all may not be as bleak as it seems. Necessity is indeed the mother of all invention, and people do want, or need, to know about what is happening within their local communities. With that in mind ‘hyperlocal’ has been a buzz word amongst journalism circles for the last ten years or so. But what does it mean and how is it changing the game?

Hyperlocal sites are thriving

Hyperlocal news sources tend to be synonymous with local blogs that only carry news relevant to a very small geographical area. As this article in Time magazine indicates, they gained greater traction in the US as the mainstream media severely contracted during the recession.

In the UK, there are numerous examples of local news sites or blogs emerging as popular resources in their local communities.  In Leicester Citizenseye.org now even supplies occasional content to the city’s Leicester Mercury newspaper and in my neck of the woods the Leeds-based The Culture Vulture magazine blog continues to thrive.

While large media organisations continue to worry about content and pay walls, the whole debate has moved on. Whether we like it or not journalism is changing, it’s becoming less of a profession and more of a role that people assume.

‘Nurturing them’

Don’t get me wrong, the emergence of citizen journalism does concern me in many ways. But if I were in control of Johnston Press or Trinity Mirror i’d be taking these bloggers under my wing and nurturing them. In return you’d receive access to pockets of engaged local readers – the one thing that regional newspapers have lost over the years.

And with that connection re-established they will be able to serve up targeted advertising that suits both advertisers and readers.

As a PR practitioner we rely on a healthy media industry to disseminate information and news about our clients. While the numbers of opportunities to self-publish have never been greater, the third party endorsement and greater cross section of publicity generated by the mainstream media still means that it is vitally important to our industry.

In that sense we have a vested interest in the future of regional media. And if the hyperlocal model works then great, but if it doesn’t i’m not sure what comes next. Specialised sites – such as this brilliant regional business site thebusinessdesk.com and The Culture Vulture as mentioned above – continue to do well, but can general news sites do so well in this environment?

At the moment it is hard to tell, but one thing is certainly sure: if media groups stop thinking about their own future and start thinking about the industry’s future I believe they will find salvation.

Image credit: Stylianosm

A story popped up this week that made me think hard about why it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to online marketing.

An American-based Facebook fan page owner saw his page and its 47,000 fans disappear overnight. The page, called The Official Real Estate Referral Group, was started over two years ago and was unilaterally removed due to copyright issue surrounding its URL.

While this is an extreme example of how powerless individuals can be when dealing with faceless (excuse the pun) social networks, it is symptomatic of the problems Facebook page owners and developers for the platform come across all the time. Features disappear, functionality is lost and those who make a living out of Facebook are left looking stupid and powerless.

I myself struggled with a bug last week which originated over a month ago and has yet to be fixed. In this instance i’ve found a work around, but the fact that no one at the social network has even deemed it important enough to respond to is part of a worrying trend. A trend that was typified by the temporary disappearance of custom landing tabs for Facebook pages that didn’t spend big on advertising or have hundreds of thousands of fans.

Social marketers are increasingly working in a proprietary environment in which we relinquish some control. As users increasingly experience the internet through social networks, we are increasingly dependent on the platforms we use being stable and reliable. Unfortunately while Twitter continues to break (fail whale anyone?) and Facebook moves the goal posts, that is simply not the case.

So do social networks have a vindictive streak, do they enjoy making those who use them for business struggle? The obvious answer is no, but I would argue that while they benevolently believe they know what is best for users, they can (perhaps unwittingly) have a strongly negative impact.

I think the lesson in all of this is that you shouldn’t rely on one platform or channel too much. However successful your Facebook page or Twitter profile is, be prepared to accept indiscriminate changes to the platform and spasmodic outages. And more importantly, don’t expect an immediate answer to your complaints or messages, in fact, expect to be largely on your own.

But despite my gloomy outlook increased integration of different social networking platforms, and their spread into the wider online ecosystem (e.g. Facebook’s open graph protocol) has improved matters by allowing you to communicate through more than one channel simultaneously.

While things are becoming more linked up, i’d say the old adage involving eggs and baskets still holds true online.

Photo credit: Jronaldlee

One of Tinderbox Media’s partners, Northern Lights PR, has launched a paid internship scheme to give five black and minority ethnic graduates hands-on experience of working in corporate communications and public relations. I think this is a great idea: historically, minority communities have been under-represented in our industry. I was also delighted to spend an afternoon with the interns, leading a workshop on business blogging and social media marketing, and found them to be an impressive, sharp-thinking bunch. We invited one of the interns, Shaeeb Tanwir, to contribute a post about his experiences. (You can also read about the internship scheme on the Northern Lights blog.)

Over to Shaeeb:

This internship was a new experience to say the least. Nothing I’ve done at university can compare to the efficiency and tenacity needed in working life, and this internship showed me that better than I could have ever imagined.

It was a bit of a culture shock for a student to be honest, walking in with task after task prepared for us to do, a multitude of new perspectives on situations and actions we had never previously encountered. But this also gave us the opportunity to learn new skills; that is after all what we came to do; to grow as people and learn to adapt to new situations.

The first day involved an exercise where we had to brainstorm based on a business scenario, a sort of ice-breaker if you will and a chance to gauge the intellect of the people you will be relying on as members of YOUR team for the next three weeks. Needless to say, I was impressed!

We then proceeded after lunch to learn about what makes a good PR release; something which even for Marketing students was an intriguing experience. We learnt about the relationship journalists share with PR agencies and how the communication and timing between the client, PR agency, and journalists are the key factors in ensuring a successful campaign.

Tuesday was a new experience in the sense that we had to meet with the marketing team from Northern Rail at a rather posh hotel in Leeds (something that was adding to the nerves!) however, once we began talking to the people concerned the fear of the unknown was being alleviated, they were people just like us and at times with ideas not as good as some of ours; it showed us our worth in our own eyes and hopefully will be the catalyst in us gaining in self confidence and subsequently showing through the project that we were deserving of the opportunity given to us by Northern Lights PR.

Finally, I’m glad you decided to read my post – so thanks! This is also an opportune time to thank Northern Lights PR for giving aspiring students from BME communities a chance to learn the ropes of PR.

Now it is left to be seen if six recent graduates from minority backgrounds are worthy of a career in PR, or if the whole program was just wishful thinking. What do you think?

One of search engine giant Google’s priorities is to improve user satisfaction by quickly delivering the desired result for every search term entered – for every user, every time.

As part of that it is constantly looking at ways to index the entire internet. At the moment though there is one barrier to Google achieving that goal: Facebook.

Facebook presents a real challenge to Google as the majority of activity by Facebook’s 500 million users stays on the social network’s servers and cannot be indexed. This has the search giant seriously worried, as status updates alone are estimated to amount to more than ten times the number of words written on blogs worldwide (thanks to AllFacebook for this and other excellent reporting on this topic).

The ‘Like’ is released

Google’s concern over this issue runs in parallel to Facebook’s recent launch of the Open Graph Protocol, which extends the ‘Like’ function outside of the network. It allows webmasters to install Like buttons on their sites and lets users share their ‘Like’ (or vote of approval) for content outside of Facebook on the popular network.

Despite Google’s concern about Facebook’s ‘hidden’ data this all seems reasonably inconspicuous. That would be unless external content wasn’t showing up in Facebook search…which it is.

Thanks again to AllFacebook, who reported this was happening earlier in the week for certain TripAdvisor listings:

These results pop-up as ‘Pages’ in Facebook search but are not pages on the network. Instead clicking on the link takes you through to the TripAdvisor listing.

This is fascinating stuff and makes Facebook’s future plans a really compelling mystery. In one move it has effectively produced a brilliant way of indexing content. And if they can keep spamming under control this could well become the people’s search engine.

Facebook is clunky and so is its search function

While the potential for this is enormous there is a real danger that Facebook is trying to run before it can walk in the search game.

Its current internal search function is truly appalling, with pages regularly disappearing out of search altogether.

More fundamentally, Facebook has to figure out how to describe the search results generated through the Open Graph if it is ever going to meet Google’s ability to satisfy users. What are these results? Are they a product of the people’s search engine I described above? Or simply a popularity contest that is therefore both unreliable and biased?

Links are just one measurement that Google uses to rank content in search results, Facebook needs to identify other ranking factors that will balance out the ‘Like’ and make this form of search credible.

Battle lines are drawn

These questions do need to be answered. But in the meantime we can be in no doubt that Facebook is squaring up to Google and wants ‘Like’ to become the new link.

Another big question is how Facebook will move out into the wider internet over time. It is still largely a closed system. To compete in the search world data from the Open Graph will have to be available and searchable outside of the network.

Alternatively, Facebook may become the homepage of choice (some would argue this is already happening) and form a portal or conduit to the rest of the internet, with the ‘Like’ search engine an integral element of that.

So what should you do?

There is really only one thing to do right now, and it plays perfectly into Facebook’s hands. Any webmaster with a busy site would be stupid not to implement the company’s Open Graph Protocol and to see how things play out.

If you haven’t already, then also definitely create a Facebook page for your organisation or company, as it is likely they will also form part of the ‘Like’ search engine in the future.

Other than that, just pull up a chair and watch as two of the internet’s titans go head-to-head in a battle that will shape the way we use the internet.

Photo credit: richkidsunite