Thin Slicing - Blink from a Blog Coach
My good friend Mike Wagner took a different tack on the Five Things meme with his Thin Slice post.
Thin-slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience."
Interesting...
I've been flying by web sites, blogs and community portals long enough to discern whether there's good community opportunities almost instantly. It's not just a gut reaction, but muscles I've built up over the years.
So here's how I 'thin slice' a blog site:
- Transparency: Is there a face and a name? If there isn't, how authentic is the voice? If you're sharing your heart and your head with us, share your name and your smile too.
- Generosity: Is there a generous supply of links to other blogs. Is there a blogroll? Without outbound links, isn't this a 'dead-end' site? And if it's a dead-end, why should I recommend others to visit here?
- Consistency: Is there a consistent, if not frequent, blog posting rhythm? If not, why not? It doesn't have to be every day, but if you go silent for chunks-at-a-time, I'm going to begin to wonder if you're only wearing a mask on your blog.
- Remark-ability: Is there anything about the blog that is remarkable AND does it allow me to quickly share with others. Does the site give me the ability to make remarks to others
- Add It or Ads Out?: If there are a ton of ads all over the site, I know one thing - this site is in it for the money. A subtle amount of ads I can take - especially since I'll probably add it to my feeds. Tons of ads? The only thing I'll be able to bank on is partial feeds and lots of calls back into the site.
As with most meme posts, the next step is to tag a few folks. Here's my thought on memes (not a rule, just a thought) - for something to really go viral - keep it open so anyone can participate at any time. Disclosure: Mike W. tagged me offline yesterday
A few other Thin Slice perspectives:
Tom Guarriello | Mary Schmidt | Valeria Maltoni
Do you have a thin-slicing perspective on something? Share with us. You're it.
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