Medicine in Social Media

Medical Web 2.0 Guidance Packages

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How to create and manage a medical blog?

Step-by-step tutorials and online materials through which you can easily learn to use the tools and methods you need to create a quality medical blog.

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Step 4: How to launch a blog carnival?
(From an idea to the first edition)



Definition


The blogosphere (even the medical one) is huge so it is hard to track all the blogs you are interested in. That’s why bloggers create blog carnivals, special types of blog events. Each edition is a collection of the best blogposts focusing on a particular topic and is published on a regular schedule.

A blog carnival is like a magazine containing editions which are blog posts consisting of links to all the contributions that have been submitted, often with the editors comments and remarks.

Organizers schedule editions and find hosts; hosts collect the best posts and submissions; bloggers submit their own content.

Some carnivals have an own blog where the organizer can list all the hosts of the editions.

There is an extended list of science and medicine-related blog carnivals.


How to launch a carnival?


If you feel you can aggregate the best posts in a specific field of interest, here are some tips how to launch your blog carnival:

  • Find out a proper name: For example, the carnival of genes and gene-related diseases is called Gene Genie; the genetic carnival is Mendel’s Garden; the medical web geekery carnival’s name is Medicine 2.0 and the best medical carnival is Grand Rounds. It’s important to make it easier to find out the main goal of the carnival just by it’s name.

  • Register it at BlogCarnival.com: You can easily organize your editions, set up new ones and get the submitted articles automatically. And they also feature carnivals on the main page.







  • Create an archive for your carnival: It’s good to have an archive of your edition. Publishing short introductions and links to the editions makes it easier for readers to follow the carnival. A blog can be a great tool for this purpose, and you can also list there who will host the next edition and where bloggers can submit their articles. Click here to see the archive of Gene Genie!



  • Write a mission statement and a guideline: It’s important to know who can host your editions, what kind of articles should be included and what the carnival’s main goal is. If you make it clear the first time, you won’t get submissions which have nothing to do with your field of interest. Click here to see an example for hosting guidelines.

  • Create a logo: A logo can be crucial when you would like to indicate the field you’re writing about just by the name of the carnival or a logo.



How to promote your carnival?


  • Recruit: You need bloggers, participants to host your editions , to submit their articles. When you launch a new blog carnival, you won’t get any submissions, so you’ll have to find a lot of interesting posts, articles and send it to your next host in time. Of course, it takes time and energy.

  • Be patient and work hard: It’s still not ready. A blog carnival is considered a reliable carnival after about 10 editions. So be patient, work hard each week to find enough submissions; help your hosts as much as you can to make sure they’ll enjoy hosting your carnival.

If you are the founder of a useful, high-quality blog carnival which helps your readers to find the best articles on a specific subject; and helps your blogger fellows how to promote their own articles, you can cover and control a whole topic.


How to write a good edition?


Either if you host your own carnival or other organizers asked you to host theirs, you have to come up with a quality edition.

  • Selection: Browse the submissions and exclude those that have nothing to do with the main topic of your carnival. Find only the most relevant and quality posts.

  • Content and form: Assign your comments and remarks to the links and use proper attribution. A typical submission looks like this:

    • John Howard from the Medicine Blog wrote about new cancer treatments that can play a major role in the future of oncology.

  • Introduction: In the first paragraphs, hosts should define the carnival's role, which edition is being published and who will be the next host.

  • Groups: When you have too many submissions, try to create subgroups to facilitate browsing the submissions.


Microcarnivals


Organizing carnivals and hosting editions take time and effort. Sharing links and comments can be much easier through microcarnivals. There is only one microcarnival at the moment, the Medicine 2.0 Microcarnival managed in Friendfeed.



Those who would like to contribute to the microcarnival, join the Friendfeed room and share links, videos, images or slideshows there.

Pros:

  • The whole process becomes much faster and more efficient.
  • It doesn’t need hosts; there are no deadlines.

Cons:

  • Only those who use that specific microblogging service will be able to see the shared items.


How to create and manage a medical blog?

Step-by-step tutorials and online materials through which you can easily learn to use the tools and methods you need to create a quality medical blog.

Share |