I go back and forth with this myself. I am currently using my company logo, as I want to build that brand as much as possible. But as my business grows I wonder if this makes sense? The bigger your business the more separate it is from the owner.
Gravatar Personalizes and Extends Branding To Your Comments
By Mike Maddaloni on Tuesday, October 06, 2009 at 03:41 PM with 4 comments
Have you ever seen a blog post with comments and next to some of them are photos of people, presumably whoever posted the comment? But when you go ahead and post your own comments your picture or logo doesn’t appear? If you’ve wondered how to do this, you need to setup an account with Gravatar.
Gravatar is a portmanteau for “Globally Recognized Avatar” and is tied to an email address or account you use for posting comments or logging into a Web service. Where some blogs and services are closed systems and require you to set up your own profile and avatar, Gravatar allows you to set it up in one central place, and based on your email address or login, it will display the corresponding avatar. This allows you to manage your avatar in one place, which simplifies the process if you ever want to change it.
I setup Gravatar on The Hot Iron some time ago, but never promoted the fact I did so. I would say based on experience close to half of those who leave comments have established a Gravatar account. If someone posts a comment and does not have a Gravatar account, a default avatar is displayed. In the case of The Hot Iron, it is New Hampshire’s legendary Old Man of the Mountain.
When I originally created my Gravatar account, I used the Dunkirk Systems, LLC logo. However the more and more I observed Gravatars, I decided to use my new headshot photo, as shown in this screen grab from a comment on the blog Upgrade: Travel Better:
Gravatar is a free service I have no direct connection with and they did not ask me to write about them. There is no charge for either creating an account or implementing their display on your blog or Web service, though for the latter you will likely need to develop code or use a plugin. I have simply been a happy user of the service, and once you try it you probably will be too.
Did you enjoy reading this? You are welcome to subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS feed or by email.
Comments
Comment by @Emily - You have done a great job building your brand, especially with the mention of it on several design blogs! Food for thought…
mp/m
Comment by Hello Mike
Thanks for the information. We just signed up with a Gravatar and uploaded photos. We’ll see how this works :)
-Kel and Rob
Comment by Kellyon 10/07/09 at 11:45 AM
Post a Comment
Note: Comment moderation is active, and your comment will be viewable once it is reviewed.
Subscribe to The Hot Iron
The Hot Iron strives to present unique content and point-of-view on business, technology and other topics by Mike Maddaloni, a technology strategist based in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Photo credit: Logan Connor/Oomphotography
Follow Mike on Mastodon.
Value for Value
If you like what you are reading on The Hot Iron, buy me a coffee!
About Links
In posts here at The Hot Iron there are often links and banner ads for products and services. For some of these links and banner ads, I receive compensation if you click and/or eventually buy said products or services. Where most links are marked as such, it is safe to assume any link or banner ad is a compensated one.