Announcing some immediate and some upcoming changes to the Carnival of Beauty!!
First . . . let me invite you once again to participate in this week's CoB! We have a really cool topic this week that I am really excited about! It is the Beauty of Strong Men! Susanna at Through a Glass is hosting this week, and I assume she would be delighted to have a whole slew of posts submitted. So, please think about it, pray about it, and write about it!! Please see below for some great news about a change that will start with this week's CoB!!!!!
We have a new day of the week for our carnival! From now on, the CoB will be on Fridays. Submissions to the CoB will be due on the Thursday before--time still to be set by the hostess. This will give us a few more days to compose our posts each week--something I know I need!
We have a new way to keep in touch. I have decided to use google groups as a way to help contact ladies interested in the CoB. Please join if you would like to get info and reminders about the CoB right in your own inbox. I expect no more than 2 messages sent per week.
Subscribe to Carnival of Beauty |
Visit this group |
We have a new way to submit posts to the CoB. Instead of each week changing the submission address to match the different hostess, you can submit to the same email address each week starting with me in three weeks with the Beauty of Babies. What I can do is each Monday forward the address to that week's hostess. Then all submissions will go straight to her inbox without her having to post her email address to world if she doesn't want to. I thought I'd be the one to test drive the new email address in case there were any problems. So, starting the week of June 20, posts can be submitted to [email protected].
(NB) We have a new "testing period." I believe the CoB doesn't have to be big to fulfill its purpose. And, I don't wanna play the numbers game; however, part of the purpose of the CoB is to meet new women online that we wouldn't have met otherwise--and if we only have 1 or 2 posts each week, are we really meeting this objective?
So, later this week I am going to make the new line up for topics for July, August and September and ask for hostesses for these weeks. If by the end of September, we are still having an average of less than 5 posts each week, I am going to put the CoB to rest. She's had a good run and has blessed many women--myself included. I would love to see her continue to bless others and be used as a way to encourage us to reflect Christ in our writings and on our blogs. Yet, I can't see expending my time and energy into something that is barely meeting its purpose.
So, if you are one of the ones that emailed me and told me how meaningful the CoB has been to you and would hate to see it close. . . I strongly encourage you to either consider submitting or at least commenting to thank the hostess and those whose posts were encouraging to you. I also would like to ask you to please encourage your readers to check out the CoB and invite them to join us.
I will be updating the google groups page as well as the main carnival page on my blog later this week to reflect these new changes.
Also, there are about two days left to submit any ideas for future topics . . . so, if you have any tucked away in the back corners of your noggin, now is the time to dust them off and send them in!
I am very open to suggestions and welcome feedback--either in the comments or by email.
Great ideas....especially the e-mail address one! Will think about some topics if I can.....feel free to have me hostess as much as needed.
Posted by: Susanna | Monday, June 04, 2007 at 09:48 PM
Great ideas....especially the e-mail address one! Will think about some topics if I can.....feel free to have me hostess as much as needed.
Posted by: Susanna | Monday, June 04, 2007 at 09:48 PM
Amanda, thank you for all the hard work you have put into keeping the CoB going. Changing the day of the week and having email reminders are a great idea. (I just joined the group.) One other suggestion, if submissions don't pick up, is to only have the carnival one week a month...maybe the first week of the month so it doesn't run into holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Just a suggestion. Thanks again, Amanda.
Posted by: Patricia | Monday, June 04, 2007 at 10:25 PM
Hi, Amanda, I think the changes are going to be great, particularly having more time to post. That has been the biggest cause of my lack of regular participation - I often simply ran out of time. I do pray this carnival continues, and I will do what I can to help.
I agree with Patricia that another option might be to hold the carnival less frequently. Another carnival in which I occasionally participate went from weekly roundups to monthly, and the result was more participation and higher quality content. I reckon we'll see what happens. :)
Thanks for handling this.
Posted by: Revka | Monday, June 04, 2007 at 11:53 PM
Thanks for handling this! I like the idea of a Google group and one email common email address. I hope to make more of an effort to post. One suggestion I would have is for the submissions to not be due so early in the day. Since I work during the day, I often get caught with a half-finished post by the time 3pm rolls around.
Posted by: Ashley | Tuesday, June 05, 2007 at 08:53 PM