If you’vre read my post about the importance of having your own avatar, you’ll maybe want to give this technique a go, and make a cartoon to represent you.

Nervous About Using Your Photograph?

Sometimes blog owners are nervous about placing photographs of their faces online in avatars. Maybe you don’t have a good likeness to hand, maybe you’d like to lose some weight (count me in here), or maybe your face is more suitable to radio.

Whatever the reason, you’ve decided that a recent photo is not what you want to use to promote yourself online. Of course you can choose another image altogether. Sometimes for example, I use this one here on the left. . I got that by using this icon search engine to locate images suitable for the persona I wanted to be for that particular forum. What you use is up to you. You can even start with an image of your face, and use it to make a cartoon or line drawing of yourself to use as an avatar. See the video for an example.

To make your cartoon, you will need your original image, a free account at Jing, and a photo-editing program like Photoshop to get started.

In this demo, I started with the image of Pamela on the left, then created the cartoon or rather, the line drawing on the right. Pamela is a business coach she specialises in coaching for copreneurs – couple in business together. She comes highly recommended.

Maybe you’ve noticed when comments are left on WordPress blogs, that some people have a small personalized image beside their comments while others do not?

When you leave a comment on a blog, if you haven’t set yourself up with an avatar your comment will be branded with a default or a generated avatar as chosen by the blog’s owner. This means that when you comment on blogs, post on Twitter, Facebook, most forms of social media in fact, (and some forums), that you won’t be branding yourself with an image that people in your niche will learn to recognise.

Here are some examples of default and generated avatars used on WordPress blogs for commenters with no avatar of their own.

Mystery Man
Gravatar Logo
Example Monster Avatars (these are generated)
Example Wavatars (these are generated)
Example Indenticons (these are generated)

I’m sure you recognise them.

How Do I Get My Own Avatar?

The answer is you set up a Globally Recognized Avatar or Gravatar. It’s easy and it’s free!

1. Find a photo of yourself or an image of something that you wish to represent you online
2. Crop it so that it’s square and about 200px x 200px in size
3. Go and sign up at Gravatar
4. Associate the photo with your email address or email addresses (if you a number of email addresses you may want to have a different photo for each one. Or you can use the same photo for each email address. It’s up to you.)
5. You’re done. The next time you leave a comment on a blog, or post in a forum your little image will mark the spot. People will get to recognise your little avatar and this helps to build trust.

Note that if you sign up for a gravatar, any places that make use of Gravatars where you’ve already left a comment or a post, will instantly apply your new avatar. This also means that when you tire of your gravatar, you can change it easily and everywhere, all at once.