A big part of Personal Marketing is promotion.
As you may have read in “Personal Marketing (Promotion)” I suggest that part of promoting yourself involves posting to a blog or participation in forums and commenting on blogs. As you start participating in discussions on the web you will start to get noticed.
How are you noticed?
- Your Avatar will be displayed
- Your words will be read
Avatar: a graphical image that represents a person, as on the Internet.
“avatar.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 08 Oct. 2009.
<Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/avatar>.
Is your Avatar a big sideways “G”? That’s an indicator that you haven’t setup an Avatar yet. So you are associating your name and comment with a Generic Brand. If you don’t want that to happen, then you might want to read on.
How do I setup an Avatar, so I won’t appear as a big “G’ or a Generic brand Avatar?
You need a Globally Recognized Avatar. There is a service called Gravatar.com, see the video that follows to see more details about what a Gravatar is.
To setup a Gravatar is a very simple process:
- Read “Resizing your image for social network profile” before you setup your Gravatar. You need the right scale image to make your Gravatar look good.
- Make sure you have an image ready that’s Gravatar sized.
- Visit Gravatar.com
- Click the Get a Gravatar Today button or visit Gravatar signup page.
- Enter your email address you want associated with your Avatar
- Click Sign up button
- Expect a confirmation email, check your junk email folder if you don’t receive a confirmation email.
- Confirm your email
- Login
- upload your Avatar
- Logout
- Verify your Gravatar is working, by posting a comment on this post.
Note: You might have to flush your browser cache in order to see your Gravatar show up.
Gravatar Overview Video
Comments
13 responses to “Your Web Presence – Is it unique or generic?”
Checked in to test drive gravatar
Excellent. Great picture by the way.
Interesting
What is interesting Ray?
One extra note, you can have the same gravatar for multiple emails.
My observation “Interesting,” put into “Ray Context” relates to years of business experience where discussions about strategy and execution were common place. I see things in two ways. The first is the idea, or the strategy. Second is the execution, how is strategy translated into executable tactics in order to achieve the goal.
The Gravatar post was “Interesting,” because you clearly stated the strategy, defined the terms and the executable steps to successfully configure a personal Gravatar.
One of my favorite mrwes posts.
Wes, thanks for the great tip.
I actually always wondered how people did that.
[…] To make sure your Avatar shows up as you instead of a silly character, make sure you setup a Gravatar account. It’s free, it associates an avatar with your email address. MrWes has written about setting up a Gravatar in his blog post “Your Web Presence – Is it unique or generic?” […]
Checking to see if my Gravatar worked.
yes, your individual Gravatar worked.
Did our Gravatar work?
yes, your Gravatar is working.