Organizers of some of the more established carnivals are asking their hosts to feature the best posts they receive.  This is in an effort to help separate the cream from the crop and add some impact to the carnival.

Tricia over at Blogging Away Debt had a neat way to feature her favorite posts for this week’s Festival of Frugality:  She orgainzed several “Best” posts according to topic.  As in:

• Best frugal way to keep the kids occupied this summer for this post
• Best pictorial of frugality in action for this post
• Best myth debunker for this post

And of course, there was a

• Best of show for this post

This is a neat way to add a little flair to the posts that stand above the crowd.

There are many good ways to get your carnival to stand out if you’re the host.  Typically the inventiveness is evident in the presentation of the posts.  But what about adding a well-thought-out introduction to the carnival?

Most of the carnivals I’ve hosted just say something to the extent of:

“Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Crustaceans!  It was a pleasure to read everyone’s shrimp-tastic entries!  We’re going to get started now, so do the rock lobster and don’t get crabby …”

And that’s it.  It’s a perfectly functional introduction — short and to the point — but not much else.

This week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction over at Money, Matter, and More Musings had an exceptionally good introduction to the Carnival.  The kind of introduction where you actually learn something!  I’m hard-pressed to tell whether this is the icing on the cake, or whether it should be part of the cake.  One might say that it takes some of the focus off of the posts, but the richer content will certainly draw better search engine traffic and will likely generate a little more buzz than a plain-vanilla introduction.

The other thing that’s nice about this kind of carnival embellishment is that the presentation of the posts are still as clear as they would be in an InstaCarnival:  “So-and-so from such-and-such blog presents A Really Great Post, saying Something Clever.”  Nothing in this carnival has obfuscated the posts.

One more trick to add to your bag for hosting carnivals!

For those who have hosted blog carnivals in a pinch, it’s a big help to have a working template that has all of the posts basically ready to go.  That’s what BlogCarnival.com’s InstaCarnival is.

All of the posts are cast into simple sentences, like

Blogger presents A Really Cool Post over at Some Blog, saying “Some Comment”

The InstaCarnival is a perfectly readable and serviceable carnival, and the focus is on the posts.

It also can be a really boring, and for those that recognize an InstaCarnival when they see one they may determine that the host was (a) really efficient with time management or (b) really lazy.

But it is what it is, and the InstaCarnival is unlikely to go away.  I’ll admit that I’ve used the InstaCarnival as a template for carnivals I’ve hosted.  Here are some tips to use, rather than abuse, an InstaCarnival:

• Read the posts.  If the InstaCarnival is taken as is, every post, regardless of whether it’s on topic or not, is included.  At least get rid of the off-topic or spammy ones.
• Vary the phrasing.  The simple see-Spot-run sentences are a starting point.  Adding a little flavor spices up the carnival quickly.
• Add commentary to the descriptions.  Or just include the poster’s comments as is.
• Organize the posts into categories.  If they’re not already organized, putting like posts together improves readability.
• Organize the best ones up top.  “Editor’s Choice” is becoming a popular tactic for highlighting the posts that stand above the others.
• Add humor.  Or at least call grand attention to the fact that you host this InstaCarnival proudly.
• Insert appropriate art.  This also does wonders.