Written on January 18th, 2009 at 12:01 am by Darren Rowse

Use Gravatars to Add Personality to Your Blog

Blog Design, Blogging Tools and Services 56 comments

In this post Jack Gamble from Babeled sheds some light on a handy service - Gravatars which is a tool that many people are adding to their blogs (I’ve got it operating in the comments section of both TwiTip and Digital Photography School at present).

An important thing to remember as you develop your blog is to build an identity that distinguishes you and your site from the rest of the blogosphere. One tool that can help to accomplish this is the use of Gravatars.

Gravatar is the abbreviation of the phrase “Globally Recognized Avatar.” In short, it is a small image, normally a head shot, of the author or commenter. The Gravatar you chose will be tied to your email address; therefore any enabled site will automatically feature your image next to your comment.

The sense of sight is relied on more so than any other. In a text dominated world, it is difficult to quickly establish an identity with readers in the short time most people will spend on any page of your blog. Think of a newspaper in the editorial column where popular columnists will feature a small photo of themselves next to their articles. This allows the readers to quickly put a face on the writer.

Choose your Gravatar carefully. Don’t pick just any picture. Make use of an image that lends itself to your blog’s identity.

Let’s look at two writers over at Babeled.

gravatar-1.jpgThe first is yours truly. I write under the pen name “Man Overboard.” This name was derived from my former job as a commercial fisherman and it is also a play on words that hints at my tendency to overreact to certain issues.

As you can see, the Gravatar I have chosen shows my ugly mug through a port hole on my old boat making a face that says “don’t take me too seriously.” This small image next to a comment or blog post immediately tells the reader more about me than a full page of text ever could. Above all, it does this while occupying only a very small amount of valuable space.

-2.jpgNext is our very own Cartoonist who goes by the name Keeks. Take one look at his Gravatar, a cartoon self-portrait, and you know everything you need to know about this guy and his obvious sense of humor.

Another reoccurring piece of advice you will commonly receive at ProBlogger is to frequently comment on other blogs. Most sites require you to enter your email and URL to comment. The Gravatar you chose will be tied to your email address, so any enabled site will recognize you and hence your Gravatar image will automatically appear next to your comment. Again, the Gravatar will help to identify you as a face with a personality (and more importantly a blog) of your own. As you make your way throughout the internet, the chances that your Gravatar becomes noticed increases with each comment.

Also, by placing the same picture on your profile at various social media outlets you will increase its visibility and effectiveness. Be sure to use the same profile image for Mixx, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Facebook, and any other social networking tool you employ. Each time you display the image it becomes product placement for your blogging identity.

Gravatars become even more important for multi-author blogs. At Babeled, I am one of many regular writers. My Gravatar, and that of my coauthors, is a useful tool that allows our readers to quickly distinguish between the many personalities that contribute to our various topics. As the comments develop, the Gravatars create the impression of watching a dialogue between two easily identified writers with different points of view.

If you don’t already, I encourage you to enable Gravatars on your site and start using them immediately. You will find this practice very helpful as you strive to separate yourself and your site from the endless sea of bloggers on the internet today.

~Man Overboard

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56 Responses to “Use Gravatars to Add Personality to Your Blog” - Add Yours

  • Sohail

    January 18th, 2009 12:52 am

    I am always in favour of using Gravatars, y don’t you use theme here on Problogger Darren?

  • Sinhalablog

    January 18th, 2009 12:54 am

    Gravatars are best way to show our uniqueness when we make comments in others blog. I use it for a long time, But this blog post is very useful for me.

  • John Lampard

    January 18th, 2009 12:54 am

    Gravatars are also a great way of helping to sort spam comments from genuine comments. Very few spammers are using gravatars.

  • Firas Steitiyeh

    January 18th, 2009 12:56 am

    Very true, i do believe so much in Gravatars since they are a very important part of branding any blog… But i have been looking for someone to create a cartonic avatar of me, any volunteers? heheh please suggest anybody you know that could create cartoon avatars.

    Thanks,
    Firas

  • Neil

    January 18th, 2009 1:12 am

    I’m commenting on a blog with a gravatar for the first time so let’s see if it works…

    Good post @problogger, in case you don’t get my twitter message.. can you recommend a wordpress plugin to enable gravatar?

  • Very Evolved

    January 18th, 2009 1:46 am

    @Sohail – I second that question!

    But I can understand not using them too, if it interferes with the ascetic of the site, especially those with a simple and clean layout.

    Just a question to Jack or anyone else in the comments:

    Do you know if the use of gravitar images with ether contribute to your bandwidth usage, or slow down the loading of your pages?

    Patrick

  • Rafael Marquez

    January 18th, 2009 1:46 am

    This may just be happening on my computer, but why aren’t avatars enabled on this blog? I agree with the points made, but why aren’t they enabled here? Just curious.

  • Anthony

    January 18th, 2009 2:39 am

    good post…Problogger always on top of whats going on…

  • Firas Steitiyeh

    January 18th, 2009 2:45 am

    Darren, why don’t you use them over here? any specific reason?

  • Bill Bolmeier

    January 18th, 2009 2:49 am

    Boy if anyone didn’t think an article like this wasn’t needed. I was just trying to explain to some folks in my life who are new bloggers about avatars and gravatars, and I get the deer in the headlights look. Ultimately they get it as they browse around and interact.

    I can also see not using them from a point of view that a popular blog gets huge, and loading one more thing on the page might have an impact on load times. There are people who want a fast loading blog so people don’t get frustrated waiting and then end up leaving.

    I love gravatars just because of the whole putting a face with a name or if a commenter doesn’t use their face at least you get another angle on their personality if they use something that reflects them.

  • David Hobson

    January 18th, 2009 3:01 am

    I use Gravatars on my blog and beleive they do improve the look of the comments.

  • Man Overboard

    January 18th, 2009 3:02 am

    @ Very Evolved

    An excellent question. In short, no. We have not seen any noticeable delays in page loading since adding Gravatars to Babeled.

    Although I’m sure if we ever saw something like the Digg Effect there might be a potential for Gravatars to slow things down. I have noticed that they use Gravatars over at Zen Habits and despite the high volume of traffic and comments over there, the pages load rather quickly.

  • Gre M

    January 18th, 2009 3:16 am

    @Very Evolved

    The gravatar images are uploaded and stored on another server – not the one of your self hosted site. So if you are using WordPress as we are for example, it is a simple php call to the gravatar server that pulls in the images, causing no extra bandwidth usage to the hosted server.

    This coupled with using donncha’s WP Super Cache plugin yields no slow down on the site and even safeguards you against large traffic spikes.

  • ChasingSanity.com

    January 18th, 2009 3:34 am

    I just started using Gravatar. I had a vector image built in my likeness. Of course, the irony is avatars are not enabled here, so you can’t see it.

  • Rahul

    January 18th, 2009 4:11 am

    Yes true, your gravatars represent you in a way too. But hey, you’ve not enabled gravatars in problogger why?

  • Mrs. Accountability

    January 18th, 2009 4:12 am

    I just recently removed my avatar from my site. I am writing under a pen name, but would rather not use my own face so I went to http://www.faceyourmanga.com which allowed me to pick facial features that match my own face. Like picking face shape, hair/eye color, etc. Pretty neat. Okay, so now maybe I’ll add it back again. Or maybe I’ll take a photo of myself that I like and photoshop it. Thanks for this post!

  • Dev

    January 18th, 2009 4:39 am

    nice post on Gravatars. But Darren why u were not using Gravatars in your blog.

  • Scott Williams

    January 18th, 2009 5:27 am

    I agree on the gravatars; however I recently swtched over to Wordpress’ Intense Debate commenting platform. It has tons of upside; but everyone wont take the time to create an account with a gravatar.

  • krissy knox

    January 18th, 2009 5:28 am

    I like gravatars. They help me to instantly recognize who each reader is, in case I haven’t yet come to remember someone’s name.

    Why don’t you use them? Is it because you want a clean layout?

    krissy knox :)
    my main blog: Sometimes I Think
    Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/iamkrissy

  • bean

    January 18th, 2009 5:40 am

    ROFL
    Last night I gave out a lesson to my blogging students on branding and identity. Of course, it had a section on Gravatars. Now if I only had this post to link to in the lesson yesterday…
    Thank goodness for Twitter updates!

  • Scott Prock

    January 18th, 2009 6:27 am

    I love blogs that use some sort of gravatar commenting. I used to have it set up on my blog, but just switched to Disqus with the FaceBook Connect integration.

    I can now leave the comments open to everyone and have better spam control, and I like the social networking aspect of the Disqus commenting platform. There is so much information available for each comment with a hover of the mouse over the avatar.

    I have seen some mention that Disqus being Javascript based will take away a blog’s SEO for comments, but I think from a user point of view it’s far superior.

    Great post, thanks … Scott

  • scott

    January 18th, 2009 6:41 am

    Anyone know a good place to get a cartoon avatar?

    If so, please notify me on my blog (just click my name)

  • David at Animal-Kingdom-Workouts

    January 18th, 2009 7:24 am

    I’ve used gravatars before, although maybe it’s time to change mine to something more animal like. My current Gravatar is “Mr Incredible”, but that’s more because I am such a big fan of the movie.

  • Darren Alff

    January 18th, 2009 9:07 am

    Do you think having a logo as an avatar is a good or bad idea? For example, Darren could use the Problogger logo instead of a picture of himself?

    I see the photo of the actual person being good in the short term because it’s more personal, but what about a company or blog that wants to build long term value? Is using a logo as an avatar a good or bad idea?

  • Elizabeth at About Stress Management

    January 18th, 2009 9:30 am

    I JUST created a gravatar for myself yesterday, and was dealing with all of these questions (this article would have been great to read!)

    I have noticed the posts from Very Evolved and The Daily Mind only because of their unique / adorable gravatars, and have visited their sites because of it! As for my own, I used a picture of myself that may be a little too ‘perky’, and am still wrestling with whether or not to use a logo. I guess we’ll see.

    Anyway, great post! I’d like to add my vote to the group, that it would be fun to see gravatars here (especially since I have one now)! I wish I could have them on my own site, but can’t right now.

  • Matt | Small Biz Bee

    January 18th, 2009 9:54 am

    I love gravatars, it gives personality to those interacting with my blog. In fact I’ve come to “recognize” others by there avatar, and it is a great way to build a brand online.

    Matt

  • E-Busienss Blog

    January 18th, 2009 10:36 am

    Good post, but why don’t you use gravatars here?

  • Vern at AimforAwesome

    January 18th, 2009 10:50 am

    I’ve used gravatars for a year and they really do add a bit of life to the site where previously the comments section was boring and without personality. I still find that most people don’t have gravatars.

    This post reminded me to go through all my sites and make sure I have gravatars in the comments plugin!

  • Mark

    January 18th, 2009 11:26 am

    I’m not against Gravatars and I like them on other sites. I also created my own Gravatar for these sites that I visit and comment on but for my own site I don’t use them.

    Unfortunately they just don’t look right. I fiddled around with my code and CSS but no luck, they still look crap.

  • avideogameplayer

    January 18th, 2009 11:36 am

    Interesting. But I think I wanna look into it some more…

  • mike

    January 18th, 2009 12:37 pm

    I may sign up and start using them also. I do seen them on loads of blogs and I never signed up so I missed out on my profile photo showing in comments.

  • Terry Krysak

    January 18th, 2009 12:41 pm

    I started using Gravatars after I first started following Shoemoney, and I think they are great. Once I fooled around with it and came up with one I did not hate, I used it everywhere possible. I think it is crucial to your branding.

  • NeoTechie

    January 18th, 2009 12:59 pm

    Showing our true colors, definitely helps us increase our readership. Thanks

  • timmy

    January 18th, 2009 3:00 pm

    I love getting to know my readers better and a great way of doing it is by seeing what they look like! That’s why those silly cat pictures or cropped South Park characters seem pointless to me. I say pick a pic that show’s who you are (a self-pic or drawing is best IMHO)

    I’m trying to get my readers to go and get a gravatar (Avatars and Gravatars )

  • DotA-Utilities.com

    January 18th, 2009 3:08 pm

    nice check my website I have added Gravatars~!
    http://www.DotA-Utilities.com

  • Pavel

    January 18th, 2009 4:18 pm

    Cool, this looks something like mybloglog. I’ll give it a try sometime! :D

  • Dustin Boston

    January 18th, 2009 5:52 pm

    By using a Gravatar and the same avatar in all your public accounts (Facebook, et al) you also create a personal brand.

  • Tammy

    January 18th, 2009 7:25 pm

    My husband and I are using caricature gravatars for our new blog. The gravatars are taken from the header image. We’re really happy with the way they turned out. We got them done through http://www.caricatureking.com (the artist we used was Brian). We took advantage of the “TrialPay” offer they have, so we got the header images and gravatars for free. Free is good! :-)
    We’re working out the final kinks on the blog but it’s fairly presentable…

  • Melissa Miller

    January 18th, 2009 10:52 pm

    I use one; thanks for the post! Love your gravatar!

  • Make Money Online Tips

    January 18th, 2009 11:26 pm

    Darren why don’t use Gravtar here?

  • Daniel

    January 19th, 2009 12:32 am

    Yes, I agree with that too.

  • Asher Awesome

    January 19th, 2009 1:17 am

    Hi,

    You’re right, gravatars do bring some life into the comments section. It helps to differentiate between different users as well as giving it a sense of human interaction.

    Asher

  • The Net Experiment

    January 19th, 2009 1:11 pm

    Hey Darren,

    good point raised – why don’t you use gravatars on your site?

    By the way I made some videos on how to set up gravatars at my blog just in case some of your readers may find it useful :)

    Derrick

  • JayTee

    January 19th, 2009 5:26 pm

    Gravatars are a must for any new blog. I would say one out of three blog readers use them now.

  • pokrate

    January 19th, 2009 5:30 pm

    All forums and blogs must enable gravatars, so that it becomes easy to track the poster.

  • Jon

    January 19th, 2009 9:27 pm

    I agree, I like gravatars as well… useful for many applications. I would prefer it tied to a website than e-mail though.

    Jon
    http://Buzvia.com – Where’s Your Traffic Going?

  • pepito

    January 20th, 2009 1:32 am

    ok i will try what u suggest rite now ….hope it will help me!

  • MTO

    January 20th, 2009 2:46 am

    I use identicons at one of my sites.
    It provides a unique avatar to each IP.
    I’ve seen some sites when gravatars displaying identicons when the user doesn’t have a gravatar. How is this done?

  • iambored

    January 20th, 2009 4:31 am

    Gravatars are great. I’ve been meaning to sign up to them for a while now, but every time I remember, I get sidetracked.

    I like the idea of a “Personal” blog that does not talk about what you do at home, but that makes you feel important and unique. Everyone, no matter who, wants to be unique.

    I always try and do that with my blogs. – make them personal.

    http://www.iambored.co.za

  • Jacob Share from Group Writing Projects

    January 20th, 2009 5:01 am

    WHY DARREN DOESN’T USE GRAVATARS – it’s very simple.

    Almost every post on Problogger gets dozens of comments, often well over 100.

    For each and every comment, your browser needs to pull in the image from gravatar.com. The gravatars would make each Problogger article very heavy in terms of file size and slow to load, making the entire Problogger experience much less enjoyable.

    It’s not worth it, in Darren’s case.

  • Velvet Blues

    January 20th, 2009 6:14 am

    Gravatar is great, but every now and then it is slow. We will be caching our gravatars soon so that we can minimize download time.

  • Man Overboard

    January 20th, 2009 7:00 am

    @Velvet,

    Check out Gre M’s comment above on how Gravatars do not affect download speed.

  • Ravi Ahuja

    January 20th, 2009 5:29 pm

    Gravatars give comment poster a personal feeling to there comment. They like to see there picture with there comment. This also increase there branding which is more important to them.
    http://www.earningguys.com

  • uwak

    January 20th, 2009 7:08 pm

    well….unique and identity is important thing……..

  • Cheap iPods

    January 20th, 2009 7:56 pm

    I love the Gravatars, I use them on two of my blogs and I really like how it personalizes the comments.

  • CREATIVEGoddess

    January 24th, 2009 1:10 pm

    As a visual person, I really like Gravatars -they add personality to the comments.

    Additionally, I wrote on the topic last fall about the importance of an avatar how to design a creative one for yourself.

    http://tinyurl.com/57db27


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