I was commenting on a blog today and it inspired me for today’s quick tip. Its Gravatar, your globally recognized avatar. It is more than just a thumbnail Image that is next to your name everywhere you leave a comment online.
I’m here to tell you that if you’re serious about branding yourself online, you absolutely must have gravatar. But it is not enough to have gravatar, you have to use it to its fullest so I am going to show you five things that you need to do.
- The Number one reason why you absolutely have to have Gravatar and use it to its fullest is because Gravatar is your globally recognized avatar.
It follows you everywhere, every blog you go to and comment with the same email address it will import not only your image but your information and everything you have filled out on your gravatar. Think of it as an online business card.
- Gravatar is automatically installed on WordPress.com, and WordPress.org. In the video, I am looking at Paul Steinbrueck’s blog for Empire Avenue as an example. So how important is it? How many people are using WordPress? I just want you to look at this real quickly.
There are currently over 55 million blogs running on WordPress.com. That is over 340million people, 2.5billion pages and 500 thousand new posts, 400 thousand new comments each day. I mean with all of this traffic you have to set up your free Gravatar account.
Once it is set up, you can easily go to blog, leave comments and its like dropping your business card everywhere you go.
- It is the most powerful branding / business card tool online.
I know there are many others like About.me, Xeeme.com, and TwentyTen, but none are as popular as Gravatar.
Look at TED Blog for example. I went over there and I looked at the first post that had comments. I found one person with an image, and one person without. Of course the one with the image was significantly more engaging. It entices you to click on thumbnail, or wave your mouse over to see the flyout business card. You can add your URL, short Bio and photo, and more.
This is one of the most golden opportunities to get your URL out there. Don’t expect link juice in terms of SEO, but again, it is a free place to go and start dropping your business cards. Imagine just commenting all over the web and you have just left your business card there and somebody happens to wave over it, they like your comment and they are going to go and check you out.
- It is very simple and easy.
- In the end it just looks really cool
At the time this article was written, I compared my Gravatar to Paul’s. Now I am not picking on Paul, I just want to use this to illustrate and encourage people, look at your email, contact info, phone number, Twitter, and Facebook. There is a lot of information you can add.
So get started to day, Edit your profile and there is tons of stuff out of the box. You can connect all kind of services, blogger, flickr. I only choice my top 5, I think it speaks for itself.
Host of "Get on Track, Stay on Track" weekly interview series, helping your small business one expert at a time. And CEO of Wiser Sites, a general contractor and marketing agency - connecting your customers with your products.
Thanks for the tips! When you are a photographer like me, you can really take advantage of that lovely 60×60 image!
Ohhhhhh, NOW I get it! Thx, Jason!
Yup! Looks like you got it. Good job!