What is a gravatar?
It’s an image that follows you from site to site. The image may be a picture of yourself or a logo. It will appear alongside your name when you comment on a blog, post to forums, or if your blog is featured on a tag page.
Why should you have a gravatar?
It’s an important part of your online representation. Certainly having a gravatar is much more attractive than the alternative – a white person on a grey background or some other generic, even weird-looking, logo – I’m sure you’ll agree this is not very inspiring. Contrast this with a picture of yourself or logo.
A gravatar is more fun, exciting, and helps identify you in the online world. But a gravatar will do more than just help identify you online. It gives a consistent image that will help brand yourself. It will make the visitors experience and interaction with you more personable. And in an online world it’s so important to stand out for people to remember you.
How do you set up a gravatar?
You’ll be pleased to hear that it’s very easy and quick to set up a gravatar. You can either install a wordpress plugin like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-gravatar/ or simply follow the 5 steps below.
- Sign up for your Gravatar account – Go to http://www.gravatar.com. Give your email address. Ensure you use the same email that you use for your WordPress site or it won’t work when you come to using it.
- Set up a password – follow link from the confirmation email to set up a password.
- Upload a picture, set up your Gravatar – Now it gets more fun and creative. You have to choose your picture. To add your picture, click on Add a new one. Upload your image (from your computer’s hard drive, the internet, etc.) If you don’t like your existing photos or simply want a more recent one, use your webcam to capture a brand new photo. Remember the picture doesn’t even have to be of you. You might prefer to use a logo. In fact, the image can be of anything you like.
- Crop your picture and set up a rating for the picture you have just uploaded – Choose whether your picture is G, PG, R or X rated. I advise using a G rated picture.
- Associate your Gravatar with your Email address – Click on your uploaded picture to confirm that you want to associate the image with the email address you gave.
Now you are all done, and your gravatar should be ready to go. You never have to pose as that generic-looking white figure again. So long as you enter the email address you set up with – your picture will appear alongside any blog posts or comments that you make.
If you haven’t already set one up, you have very little excuse for not to setting one up now. After all, there are lots of benefits and there are few barriers: it’s free, easy and quick to set one up. It’s a must-have for anyone who is serious about doing business online.
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About Lilach
Hi Lilach – there really is no excuse now
Sarah recently posted..Warning: Using pop ups will grow your email list fast
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Absolutely:)
Your readers might like to know that you can have multiple accounts linked to your Gravatar account. So you can use different images with different email addresses, all managed from the one Gravatar interface.
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Thanks David, that’s a great tip:)
I only recently discovered that you could associate different images with different email accounts from one Gravatar account. That makes it SO much easier to manage your online presence, especially if you sometimes want to be seen as “your business” and sometimes just as a person. No need to link those comments on a dating site to your Internet Marketing business, lol. Thanks for this great how-to article. Makes it easy for everyone to do. So, if you are reading this and haven’t set up your gravatar yet, what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation? Go do it already!
Lesa recently posted..The Magic of the RRR
Thanks Lesa – I agree, there’s no excuse now:)
This is a handy reference to have. I love Gravatar, saves heaps of time, it should be compulsory for guest bloggers to have a Gravatar account IMO!
Dan recently posted..31st to 5th in Google in 1 month (part 2)
Thanks Dan, I must admit I do tend to agree with you:) But I also don’t understand why people who comment on blogs don’t have one? It’s free and simple to set up….
Awesome!!!
Can we create or use different gravatar on different social networking sites?
I like your post as well as your comments on different post!!
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Thanks, yes I think there is a way of entering various different email accounts so if you assign one email account to one social network for example you can have a different gravatar:)
Good instructions. Have one gravatar but wanted another one just like Lesa for different activities. Turned out to be easier said than done, even with a different email address. So I will have to manage without a second one. What do you do when your name and versions of it are already taken by you?
Thanks Catarina, it’s a shame you haven’t got one showing now though:)
I must admit, I haven’t had that problem, my name Lilach isn’t that common…. I’ll find out though as that’s a very good question.
Catarina,
I’m not sure why you’ve had problems setting up multiple gravatars. I have two set up currently, and posted this comment with the other one to demonstrate that it is possible. Maybe since you don’t have a gravatar showing on this page you haven’t actually gone to Gravatar.com and set up an account? The icon that shows here — and on many blogs and other sites online — is pulled from the database at gravatar.com. In contrast, when you are on social networking sites like Facebook, the icon that shows next to your name is actually stored in your own profile. It’s important to understand where the images is stored so that you know how/where to manage them.
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Thanks Lesa for helping Catarina – I hope she manages to get the problem resolved soon. It would drive me mad not having a face:)
Thanks for the tip Lilach, I’ve just created my first Gravatar.
Have a great weekend
Gavan
Thanks Gavan. Pleased it helped – now we can see you:)
Hi Lilach,
Having a gravatar is extremely for anyone who wants to be a serious blogger. The nice thing is that even if you want different ones for different posting topics all you need is a different email address.
Stacy
Stacy recently posted..A Couple Tricks to Show Any Post On CommentLuv
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Thanks Stacy, I completely agree and yet am still surprised people don’t have one. It’s so easy to set up and it’s free:)
Hi Lilach,
I know this act of setting up a gravatar shouldn’t sound new to most people but the problem is getting one; this is all they need. Every serious blogger needs one. Thanks for the post and have a lovely day!
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Thanks Emmanulel my pleasure. I agree every serious blogger needs one and there really are no excuses now:)
Hi Lilach, you have a very detailed instruction on how to create a gravatar. Yes, gravatar is important for blogger to represent who we are. Great post!
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Thanks Viviana, my pleasure. I agree, a gravatar is crucial for any blogger. Much nicer to see the person:)
Wonderful Lilach! I really couldn’t explain how important this gravatar stuff is and how many people take it so lightly and ignore it. Now since the web has become a place of interaction and (virtually) face-face business, having a gravatar (preferably a face shot) is absolutely necessary. Thanks for the headsup!
Thanks Jane I agree. Every day I’m surprised bloggers are still commenting without having one.
Thanks so much for sharing this! I see the question of how to set up a gravatar being asked all the time, so having a set of instructions like this is great. Having a gravatar is definitely a useful tool for bloggers, as it helps you to build brand recognition – I’m sure people will find this tutorial helpful!
Thanks Sarah, appreciate your comment. I agree and hopefully more bloggers will start to realise how beneficial it is just to do these very simple steps:)
Hi Lilach great post as usual, and thanks for your honest opinion on my site today! Anyway as you can see I have just signed up for gravatar (took me all of 5 mins) so no one has an excuse not to have one!
Seems to me people without pics of themselves have something to hide hey!
-Great post!
-P
Thanks Phillip, my pleasure. I often wonder why people don’t have a Gravatar and think it’s mainly because there isn’t a huge amount of information widely available on how to set one up. But it’s so easy, takes a few minutes and best of all is free. People will soon start running out of excuses:)
People who don’t get a gravatar of some kind are nuts. Most of the people who don’t get one are either total noobs to the world of blogging or else they are spammers. Even if you don’t want to put a photo of yourself on there, there is nothing stopping you from using a tasteful image of some other type.
Thanks Ted. I must admit I’m surprised that more people don’t have one. I agree, if you don’t feel comfortable using a photo then put your company logo or at least a nice image. Anything is better than no image:)
Thanks for sharing this is interesting! So do this only work on specified sites?
Thanks Pete:) It should work on any site where you can leave an email address in a comment, each gravatar is assigned to an email address rather than a url address.
Hi Lilach,
Great article that is a must read for anyone who is blogging.
Gravatars are all about branding oneself.
Like the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. My own experience
has also shown my gravatar attracts the kind of people I want.
Thanks for the great info,
Jeff
Jeff Faldalen recently posted..Steve Jobs life and what it can mean for you
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why isn’t mine showing up on your site?
Twitter: jefffaldalen
I’m not sure, if your gravatar assigned to the email address you used when you posted your comment?
I have never had this issue. My gravatar is registered with this email.
How do I register with you site? As you can probably tell, I am still
getting use to the new comment luv
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Twitter: jefffaldalen
Thanks Jeff, I’m really not sure why you’re experiencing this problem is your gravatar is assigned to your email account…. To subscribe to socialable the feed is here http://www.socialable.co.uk/feed
Thanks Jeff, my pleasure and I of course 100% agree:)
Thanks for the article. It is a handy reference and I shall add it to my favs. I’m only new to Gravatar and so far so good. I’m a big fan of CommentLuv too. Thanks for posting
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