Did you do anything for Halloween on your blog? I know that Halloween isn’t celebrated in every country – but it is an opportunity for bloggers who want to make the most of seasonal trends in web usage.
So lets showcase what everyone did on their blogs this Halloween. I’m sure there are some creative examples worth highlighting.
I’ll start us off – at DPS I updated my previously posted Halloween Photography Tips post (with new pictures and information) and put it back on the front page of the blog (I did this last week to give it some lead time). The result was pretty good with quite a few new links from different sites and a marked increase in traffic as a result.
This is actually the third year in a row that I’ve updated this post and given it some front page attention. The great thing about reusing it is that it’s grown in it’s search engine rankings each year.
Now it’s your turn – if you did something special (whether it be design wise, adding new specially written content etc) tell us about what you did and what results it had in comments below.
I didn’t do anything, but I will during Christmas.
All month we had a list of Halloween events posted. It was by far the most viewed page of the month (nearly 10 times more views than any other non-home page).
http://www.livingorlando.com/halloween-in-orlando/
We waited until today, though, to post our Thankful for the Holidays contest … hopefully the readers will return …
http://www.livingorlando.com/2007/11/01/thankful-for-the-holidays/
I added fallish leaves – http://www.PersonalBudgetTraining.com
Not really just about Halloween, but the fall season in general. I don’t think that it has drawn more users, but it has kept the whole site changing… giving it a fresh look – something one can do easily several times a year w/ very little effort.
I wrote a whole post on power tools for pumpkin carving. Though, admittedly, I should have run this about a week before Halloween!
http://www.der5er.com/2007/10/31/for-the-love-of-tools-2/
I had a whole series through the month of October (“October Scares”) of Catshopped movie posters. On Halloween I had a new post and a best of from the whole month. I also had a few Halloween E-cards (The nice thing about a image blog).
http://www.movie-cat.com
I also have a few Thanksgiving and Christmas plans.
Make Up a Gross and Spooky Halloween Band Name:
http://atomicguitarist.com/?q=gross-halloween-band-names
=)
Halloween? I thought it was still months away. Oh, wait. I’m months behind. lol
I suppose I should start working on that for next year now. Need to do something for Christmas though. Chinese New Year is right around the corner too. Can’t forget that holiday. In 2008, Chinese New Year falls on February 7th. It is year 4706, the year of the Rat according to the Chinese lunar calendar.
I posted a audio/slideshow thing:
http://cmsnell.blogspot.com/2007/10/happy-halloween.html
Happy Halloween!
In Appalachia the tradition is tell ‘haint tales’ at Halloween, so I posted a classic one about a preacher who sees a mysterious woman floating above a swamp.
I forgot that it was Halloween until it was almost too late! Luckily a reader reminded me, and I was able to whip up a couple of spooky Blogger templates for readers to download!
http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2007/10/another-spooky-template-for-halloween.html
Next year, I’ll plan ahead though!
I wrote an article about people who dress up as Star Wars Jedi and play with lightsabers.
http://www.martialdevelopment.com/blog/lightsaber-techniques-of-the-new-york-jedi/
Guess I’m a little slow on the comment draw here but my blog and show was heavily weighted towards Halloween, seeing as All Hallow’s Eve is about the only time people give the audio art form a try. Prepared to get scared?
Check out:
http://www.radiodramarevival.com/radio-drama-revival-halloween-horror-extravaganza/
We did a doggie Halloween costume contest throughout the month of October and announced the winner on Halloween:
http://www.luvmutt.com/blog/halloween_costume_contest/index.html
Cute, huh? :)
Living in Salem MA one of the major tourist destinations for Halloween I posted some advise about what to avoid and how to get into the down town area.
http://www.thesaleminsider.com/2007/10/31/halloween-and-carnies/
One of my guest bloggers posted a Halloween nightmare-cum-book review.
We did a roundup of the top 10 ecommerce Halloween costume parodies and an artist’s rendition of Larry and Sergey dressed as “Ghoul-gle”
http://www.getelastic.com/ecommerce-halloween-costumes/
http://www.getelastic.com/google-guys-halloween-costume/
I posted an archive photo from when my kids dressed up for Halloween. I had to scan it because it was from the film era.
Then I explained how we did Halloween costumes to encourage creative and artistic thinking. Several commented that they liked the approach and might try it in the future.
http://gscottage.blogspot.com/2007/10/trick-or-treat-1983-version.html
I didn’t do anything because in my country Halloween is only ‘celebrated’ the last few years and secondly, and to me that’s the most important reason, is that most people over here don’t know it’s origin and meaning. In my opinion Halloween is just seen as a commercial opportunity to squeeze some more money from uninformed customers…
I received a boost in the Google ranks (hey, someone had to) and found myself on the Top 50 Australian Women Blogs list so i celebrated with a Halloween flavoured post about it.
Hubble Bubble I’m Page Rank 4
After all, who doesn’t believe that Google Page Ranking is a Dark Art?
I wrote a post entitled Happy Halloween – Blogging Trick or Treat. http://www.successforyourblog.com/happy-halloween-blogging-trick-or-treat
Talks about the use of holiday titles to attract attention and an SEO boost.
Since my blog is about cats, a post about Cats & Halloween was a natural:
http://wayofcats.blogspot.com/2007/10/halloween-and-cats.html
And I added a bonus “Mad Scientist” post:
http://wayofcats.blogspot.com/2006/10/know-types-alpha.html
And I’m preparing a early Christmas post encouraging cat related charitable ways of giving.
I had a 3-part series on different pumpkin-themed polymer clay crafts, with a wrap-up post giving additional ideas.
http://blog.craftygoat.com/2007/10/the_great_pumpkin_wrapup.html
I had some increased traffic & a nice link, but I think the series would’ve done better if I’d started earlier. Thinking & posting ahead is always my big struggle!
My Halloween offering is a personal reflection:
http://tinakubala.com/2007/10/31/linus-and-me.aspx
We are conducting a special giveaway to celebrate Halloween. To be specific we are giving away Jason Zweig’s book “Your Money & Your Brain.”Your Money & Your Brain! The contest is open till Sunday, Nov 4th.
We provided some nice examples from the book which shows the relation of our brain and money through the concepts of neuroscience.
Here is our presentation:
http://firefinance.blogspot.com/2007/10/halloween-giveaway-your-money-your.html
I transformed my usual blog layout to a Halloween-themed one. Usually it’s purple and features the famous Neuschwanstein castle in Germany. For Halloween I turned it all black and added effects to make the castle look spooky and haunted!
Check it out:
http://sparklette.net/archives/sparklettenet-halloween-edition/
I have a budding, but initially successful Tori Amos fan blog. For my Halloween post, I reviewed a concert she did in PIttsburgh on 10-30 in which everyone in the audience was encouraged to dress up. Tori Amos, her band, her opening act, and even her daughter came on stage in costume and it sounded like a great show.
Thanks for the tip, ProBlogger. I’ll remember to do seasonal posts more often…
Brooke :)
http://www.youforawhile.com/tour/happy-halloween-from-tori-amos
I posted a devotion that you can do with kids while carving a pumpkin. This ended up being the most popular post of all time on my blog! It got picked up by Digg, and StumbleUpon, and it got many Google searches per day.
How Is Carving a Pumpkin Like Being a Christian?
I wrote a post called Top 10 Halloween Etailer Goodies, featuring spooky Halloween themed items on October 1.
I figured that would give people enough time to receive their items if they ordered, and I got lots of traffic to that post all month.
I also posted a Happy Halloween message and a picture, in addition to my regular daily post.
As a writer on a movie site, Halloween is always a big thing for us – reviews of new horror movies need to go up (Saw IV and 30 Days of Night, specifically), plus there was a huge Halloween promotion on the official site for the new Batman movie that we were following really closely.
On my baseball analysis blog I posted a list of the top thirteen scariest things in baseball. The title was Nightmare on Lansdowne Street.
At She Plays Music I ‘live blogged” Halloween. All day I featured great videos from great women singing Halloween appropriate songs. It worked out very well.
On my DVD blog I did a series on the top horror movies released during the scare season.
In the DVD world, Halloween is No. 1 in terms of seasonal titles. In other words, all the catalog horror films come out in September and October.
Here’s the scary part: I did atop 7 Halloween DVD releases and ran out of time and energy. So it’s a top 8! The Shining would have been No. 1 and I’ll add it … soon.