Eyes are the window to the soul and also the gateway of trust. When having an on-line conversation people need to see it’s you. A gravatar is the easiest way to be sure people are reminded who you are by seeing an image of you. Remember relationships are built on trust.
Video:
[embedyt]http://youtu.be/pBRxw0gwQ1k[/embedyt]
Podcast:
[powerpress]
[ssb buttons=”facebook, gplus, twitter”]
Video Transcript:
Hi. Craig Lambie here, the Chief IT Guru here at the Auspicious Arts Incubator. I’d like to welcome you for this week’s Hot Tip Tuesday. This week I want to talk about a global avatar and that is called a ‘gravatar’. I’m sure you all have an avatar. It looks something like this or something or like this (which is John Paul and I). Essentially it’s just a square image which you’ve used and you probably got one on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or somewhere that you are on the internet.
The reason to have something like this is it’s about branding: branding yourself as an artist, and consistency across all of the different social networks. It’s very important to be consistent in your branding so that people recognize you. The reason to take that across and use it on Gravatar, which is another website. It’s a very simple website. You go to gravatar.com and you add that same avatar image that you have and you put it on to Gravatar. What it does is it associates that image with your email address.
When you send an email some programs will go and look at your gravatar and associate that image with you so that when the person opens the email they can connect your face to the person that they’re receiving the email from. When you make or write a comment on a website, on a wordpress.com website in particular but on a lot of other websites they go off and get your gravatar and put it next to your comment. It really provides that consistency for who you are across the whole internet. It’s really important for that branding and that keeping yourself together.
Size doesn’t really matter as long as it’s square and you want it to be fairly professional looking. You don’t really want other people in the photo. Don’t cut out a photo of you at a party or something like that. Keep it simple, plain background with you, eyes open, smiling ideally in a sort of professional stance. You don’t need to get it professionally taken but a good avatar image for the internet is really good for your brand as an artist.
If you found this Hot Tip really useful please like this video. If you think that somebody that you know would really benefit from watching this video please share it. Please write a comment. We would love to hear about the issues and problems that you’re having with your avatar. If you have any questions about how you can create one please write it in the comments and we’ll create a dialogue.
Here at the Incubator we want you to more than survive we want you to thrive. In order to thrive you need to subscribe. Please subscribe to our channel and I’ll see you next time.