Gravatars 101

If you’ve been blogging for long enough then you’ve undoubtedly noticed that some users have small pictures that show up next to the comments that they leave. They may have a picture of themselves or it may be a custom picture that they’ve created. Either way, these little pictures are affectionately known around the online world as “Gravatars,” a clever play off “avatars,” and have become staples around successful bloggers and casual bloggers alike.

Gravatars: Defined

A Gravatar, as defined by en.gravatar.com, is an acronym for “Globally Recognized Avatar.” In layman’s terms, it’s a picture that you’ve uploaded onto the Gravatar website that, once uploaded, becomes associated with a certain email address. Anytime you use that email address – for example when you’re filling in the required fields on a blog commenting form, or participating in an online chat forum – that picture will show up next to your name and help to identify who you are and set you apart from everybody else that is also commenting.

Setting up a Gravatar

When you go to the website you are given two options for setting up your personalized Gravatar: one way will set it up so that it will be tied in with your WordPress account and the other way will allow you to create and activate your Gravatar even if you don’t have a WordPress account by linking it to your email address.

For WordPress Users:

1. Log onto the Gravatar website using the same email address connected to your WordPress account.

2. Select the method you will use to import your photo.

3. Arrange your photo how you want it to appear.

4. Select the appropriate rating for your photo.

5. Confirm the photo and you’re finished! It will now link to your email address and appear when you leave comments.

For Non-WordPress Users

1. Head over to the Gravatar website and click on the link that says “Get Your Gravatar Today!”

2. Type in the email address you want associated with your Gravatar to get a link with instructions detailing how to proceed.

3. Select and upload the picture that you want as your Gravatar.

4. Once uploaded the website will send it to your email address and the Gravatar will be linked to it from there on out.

The Importance of Utilizing Gravatars

Aside from being ridiculously easy to set up, there are several important reasons that every serious blogger needs to take the time to set up a Gravatar.

The internet is such a vast place that it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially with blogging – after all there are hundreds of millions of blogs out there, all vying to be recognized. By having a Gravatar that pops up every time you leave a comment you begin to set yourself apart from every other anonymous comment out there, identifying you as an individual and not just another faceless name. It helps you to create a brand identity that follows you around your circle of the internet.

Since it’s probably safe to say that you comment on and interact with more than one blog, having a Gravatar that shows up by your comments allows people to bridge the connection of who you are from blog to blog. This will help you establish your role in the community and help you to come across as a more professional blogger. The more professional your online presence is, the wider range of opportunities you’re likely to come across.

One thing you do have to be mindful of is uploading an image that could make you look like a spammer. It’s usually safer to upload pictures of yourself because people take you more seriously that way. The last thing you want is to be flagged as a spammer because your picture was misleading. It’s wise to stay away from the generic pictures that you can find on all Windows desktops and go with custom photographs.

So Easy a Caveman Could Do It

As social media forums such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogging continue to grow and establish themselves as staples in both our professional and personal lives it’s important to find ways to set yourself apart. Creating and uploading a Gravatar is one of the simplest things you can do as far as creating an identity on the Internet, only taking a few minutes of your time and giving you a wealth of benefits in return.

When you consider all the pros that accompany having a Gravatar there’s really no reason not to set one up for yourself – you’ll quickly establish more credibility as a blogger and widen your online presence. When people begin to recognize you on a wide variety of blogs their trust in you will exponentially grow as well. In fact, when you look at the big picture, there really are no disadvantages to setting up a personalized Gravatar.

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The craze sweeping the nation this winter season comes from the NFL. Of course I’m talking about Tebowing, originated by Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow, and you either love him or hate him. Purging religious beliefs from the equation, Tim Tebow along with the Broncos have strung together a series of impressive comebacks before recently bowing to the superior Brady Bunch and the Patriots. Denver was left for dead on multiple occasions through three quarters plus in games, only to rise up like Lazarus to overcome the football Reaper and stand in victory.

Is there a management lesson in this over-hyped story for small company owners, executives and corporate officers ?

Tebow’s type of play has been derided as unsustainable, tagged as downright ugly, and parodied on Saturday Night Live. It’s also been applauded by evangelicals, adopted by presidential candidates, and embraced by middle-America. Yet the most exceptional thing that this phenomenon demonstrates is clutch behavior, doing your best when it’s all on the line, and it has been on display in sports throughout the decades in names like Reggie, Jordan, Montana and Gretsky. Tebow is the latest, albeit more unconventional representation of clutch production in crunch time. But is it abrupt, divine intervention, or a predictable strategy?

Fit Your Game Plan to Your Talent

If you’ve caught any of these Bronco games, you know that a few weeks ago, John Fox and the coaching staff kept it very simple, dumbing down the playbook, or so it seemed, so Tebow could get by. In a pass-happy, copycat league that is the NFL, Denver went almost wholly to a game plan of running the ball and clamping down on defense. With a few deviations, it worked. The coaching staff made the unconventional routine, shortened the games, and stayed within striking distance.

Tebow isn’t Manning or Drew Breese, and their offense wasn’t built that way with the players around the quarterback. Tebow is a rough, solid, contact-loving athlete who thus far relies more on a big heart and hard work than traditional passing talents.

There is more than one way to succeed!

As a leader in business, you may not have elite level talent or the mix of people on your team bus that you may have wanted. So what? Take stock not only of what human resources you have and what they’re good at, but of the strengths you may have in plant and machinery, intellectual property and patents, pricing, operating systems and capital. This is standard SWOT analysis with a capital S folks. Be aware of your weaknesses and seek to soften them right now by playing to your strengths. Nothing derails a business faster than trying to be what it isn’t.

Keep in the Game Until the 4th Quarter

The Denver game plan is playing to the strength of a running game that wears on the other team, shortens the game by exhausting the clock, and keeps the Broncos within winníng distance at the end. It’s this clutch time when Tebow magic happens, but that magic is almost predictable. The other team is exhausted, discouraged that this bible-thumping personality is even close after being statistically dominated for three quarters, and just a bit worried of being another fact on the Tebow legend wall. Perseverance wears down opposition like water in a stream smoothes over the stones.

In business if you have a goal, focus on it like a laser, and keep attempting again and again, success is inevitable as long as you believe it. Top performing sales persons know this when trying to crack the biggest accounts. Manufacturers demonstrate this every day by making things smaller, lighter, quicker and cheaper that do things we didn’t think feasible five years earlier. Set a business goal, create a plan that minimizes risk and moves you continuously toward it, and seize the opportuníty when it eventually comes.

Elevate Your Team

Now this is the leadership goal we all have, to raise the game of everybody in the organization. Easier said than done.

I’ve heard dozens of experts in recent weeks apologize for the Tebow success.

“He’s not the one kicking 59 yard field goals.”

“He’s not playing great defense.”

“He’s not making great catches on poorly thrown balls.”

Amazíng! That Tim Tebow — he’s a really fortunate guy. Let me ask you this, do you think the fact that all of those other players are stepping up is a fortunate coincidence? Before the coaches put Tebow in as a starter, the defense was allowing a lot of points, the kicker was missing kicks, and receivers had their share of lapses and then some. So what happened?

Leadership by example happened. Nothing sparks the defensive side of the ball more than seeing their second-year passer trying to run over linebackers, and literally doing it. Tebow’s not a queen. He gets dirty and bloody, playing more like an offensive lineman than a quarterback. The last thing anyone else on that team wants is to be shown up by this kid in the hard work department, and suddenly, the whole team is leagues ahead of where it was to open the year.

How do you lead by example in your company? The ways you can are too countless to list. Do whatever it is you ask employees to do, or be ready to when a key employee calls in ill. Pay vendors on a timely basis and watch the company ethics improve. Reward first-rate performance without being asked and everybody starts improving on the job. You are the commander of the company, and everything you do is being watched and emulated. Be aware of it and you’ll raise the game of your team like Tebow does.

Losers Have Hope – Winners Have Conviction

The Tebowing process of falling to one knee in prayer or thanks, the self-effacing pep talks in the huddle, and the poise under strain are the body language not of blind optimism, but of belief. When belief is followed by action, it becomes conviction, and that is infectious and hard to stop.

One of the biggest business clichés going is that Hope is Not a Strategy. Well here is the procedure of conviction, the absolute certainty that things will work out as good as they can, and when they don’t, something even greater will come out of the temporary setback.

How would you run your business if you really believed you couldn’t lose? What product lines would you grow? What people would you hire? The basic fact is that worry over possible results put more stress on us than when the worst actually occurs. I’m not advocating being risky or silly with your money or time. What I am saying is that if you have absolute conviction in your course of action, you’ll begin to do the other 3 things we’ve described: you’ll focus on your strengths, keep regularly progressing toward your goal, and improve the effectiveness of your employees and business partners.

Each of these 4 elements tends to feed the other, and suddenly you’ll find out that your success is more predictable than divinely inspired, although a little bit of providence doesn’t ever hurt.

Website Engagement Techniques: The Caricature Effect

Marketing is all about getting noticed, getting remembered, and motivating people to action. Whether it’s a website, display ad, or video, it must first grab people’s attention, it must stop the viewer from going onto the next website, turning the magazine page, or clicking the stop button. In order to accomplish that increasingly difficult task, you must understand the Caricature Effect.

The Caricature Effect

The Caricature Effect simply stated says that what we notice is variation from the norm. Caricature artists exaggerate reality because that is how we visually distinguish one person from another. Human beings are preprogrammed to look for patterns and variations in those patterns, it’s how we recognize who people are, and it is a basic survival mechanism that helps us recognize danger and distinguish friend from foe.

By distorting an individual’s prominent facial features the caricature artist mimics the human brain’s way of remembering who’s who. Our brains are not cameras that take pictures and file them away for future reference. Our memories are malleable, they change and alter over time and experience, and as a result the things we remember best are the things that stand out, things like Bob Hope’s ski-jump nose or Albert Einstein’s wild white hair. The reason caricatures are so effective is because they emphasize the distinguishing differences that we recognize and remember. So how do we use this fundamental, hard-wired human characteristic to further marketing agendas?

What We Notice Is Variation From The Norm

Getting noticed is job-one of any marketing vehicle, so in order to get people to stop, look, and listen we need to use all the available communication elements at our disposal.

When developing a video campaign we use concepts that demand the mental processing of information by shocking, stimulating, puzzling, or tickling the funny bone of the viewer. These techniques force the audience to think, process, and decode the message, and by generating this mental activity we embed our client’s message in the audience’s consciousness. Depending on the brand and/or product, implementation can range from subtle to obvious with the trick being to make people sit-up and take notice by forcing them to think.

Pattern Recognition – The Same But Different

Human beings have evolved to watch for patterns and when an audience recognizes a familiar scenario they leap to a conclusion. It’s a way of making quick decisive decisions that can either help or hurt communication. Properly used pattern recognition can lead your audience where you want to take them, but if the pattern is too obvious or hackneyed, it can lead to viewers dismissing your message.

Let’s face-it, consumers have become increasingly jaded by too many ads that yell at them like a Billy Mays commercial, or promise improbable results like so many diet schemes, or scare the hell out of people with legal disclaimers warning of everything from headaches to heart attacks like most prescription drug ads. These feeble attempts to standout like a pair of John Daley golf slacks only succeed in reminding the audience how completely desperate, or disengaged the advertiser really is.

If you want people to remember your message you have to alter the pattern by varying from the norm so that it forces people to mentally process your information. It’s as simple as a story with a twist like how a comedian sets-up a punch line, or how a magician sets-up an illusion.

In other articles I’ve written extensively about techniques for using video but here let’s discuss something even more universal – photography. It is one of the most economical ways to create the kind of mental stimulation that makes people remember your site and your message.

Photo-Visual Engagement Techniques

Most every website has photography of some sort on it, but like most video implementations, it is rarely used to its full potential. Obviously, do-it-yourself snapshots reek of amateurism but even professional royalty-free images can be as innocuous as DIY snaps are unprofessional, and as we have stated, bland, featureless images are just not going to stimulate anyone’s memory.

Cinegraphs

Cinegraphs are photographs that move. They are created by combining a series of still images into a gif animation. The best cinegraphs use subtle movement like hair or clothing blowing in the wind to cause the audience to take a second look. What appears at first to be a regular photograph creates a “Did I just see it move?” reaction, and that’s the kind of subtle yet powerful feature that can get people to remember your site, your product, and your brand. Like any technique you have to know how and when to use it in order to enhance your presentation and reinforce your message. Just parachuting in a technique for technique’s sake is no better than a meaningless royalty free image used as filler.

Sequence Images

A sequence image is a still image that combines a series of images into one photo. Unlike cinegraphs, the image doesn’t move but it does provide a kinetic quality by showing a series of varying poses all combined into one photograph. This kind of image can be very striking and powerful and can cause your viewer to take a moment to decode the story it tells.

Selective Color

Color is another area that often gets forgotten. Different colors have different psychological effects depending on the context in which they are used. In addition to the color choice, using color as a consistent marketing communication element helps enhance and embed your identity and brand image. Many Internet entrepreneurs pay little or no attention to color imaging and it is really unfortunate as it is often an inexpensive but effective way of making a profound impression.

Photographs today are generally full color images but if you’re not controlling the color in your images then you’re missing a great chance to make a memorable impression. Of course lack of color (black and white photography) can be just as powerful if used properly. Jack Daniel’s is a brand that uses black and white and selective color extensively in its marketing.

There are several ways to use selective color in your photographic imaging. Jack Daniel’s uses a lot of black backgrounds or B&W photos and copy combined with color product shots of the bottle that has a B&W label but is filled with the golden elixir.

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The companies that make a real impact in the marketplace are not the ones that produce what people think they want, but rather the ones that produce what people will want but don’t know it.

The ability to know what people will want before they know it exists is not a result of intensive market research, focus groups, or telemarketing surveys. Knowing what people want is based on understanding the human condition: the motivating factors that move people from disinterest to action. Steve Jobs was unrelenting in this philosophy and it resulted in changing the computer, music, movie, and telecommunication industries and more significantly how people live, work, communicate, relax, and in some ways, think.

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‘Make A Dent In The Universe’ – Steve Jobs

This is not an approach taught in business schools or self-help marketing courses designed for business neophytes. An entire industry of self-help consultants has exploded on the Internet, all designed to produce mediocrity, all based on rational analysis of what was, rather than what will be. Not many will búy into this alternate approach but that is what makes those who do, so special.

Conventional Wisdom Breeds Mediocrity

Inventing the next big thing in and of itself is not good enough for you to make that dent in the universe. Those who ultimately profit from innovation are not necessarily those who invent it. History is littered with sad stories of entrepreneurs who lacked the ability to implement and communicate their vision to the masses. You have to know how to execute, communicate, convince, and brand your vision in the minds of your audience.

Xerox may have developed the original concept of a graphical user interface and mouse, and they may have had the resources to dominate the future computer market; but they myopically saw themselves as a copier company, and instead chose to turn over the keys to the kingdom to Apple for a relatively small investment stake; much to the chagrin of the Xerox researchers who created the original technology.

The Xerox strategy was textbook business school think – stick to what you do. It’s not so much that the concept is wrong, it’s that the concept must be reinterpreted for a business environment where traditional corporate culture and methodology doesn’t understand, and can’t keep up with the pace of new technologies, and the new forms of competition they breed.

History Repeats But Some Nevér Learn

When Xerox realized their miscalculation they tried to capitalize on their original research by creating their own computer, but they failed because they lacked the vision needed to implement something that would spark the public’s imagination. Kodak, Polaroid, and the movie and music industries have all succumbed to the same lack of vision.

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Where Xerox was run by professional managers who relied on conventional wisdom and traditional methods of operation and decision-making, the Macintosh division of Apple was run by a virtual cult leader who did whatever it took to bring his vision to market.

It’s not that Apple didn’t have the same corporate managers and engineers within the organization, they did, but their efforts resulted in the failed Lisa computer, leaving Jobs to lead his band of Silicon Valley pirates to something truly innovative. But the genius of Macintosh wouldn’t ever have made an impact without Jobs’ steadfast focus on excellence, and his Rasputin-like communicative powers.

The Board of Directors, all experienced corporate executives, even tried to kill the famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial that introduced the Macintosh. The commercial is not only regarded as one of the most influential commercials ever made, but just as importantly, it established the metaphorical language and positioning grammar of a revolutionary brand.

The Grammar of Communication

In order to make an impact and create an identity for your NBT (next big thing) you need to develop a written, oral, and visual language that expresses, explains, and describes the fundamental emotional value proposition your brand delivers.

Every aspect of your business from product, packaging, and logo design, to website layout, iconography, and copy, to photographic and video presentation must all speak with the same voice, the same style, and with the same enthusiastic visionary assurance. You need to develop a brand patois that says: this is who we are, this is what we can do to fulfill your desires, and this is why you need us.

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Tom Derresteijn, partner in Studio Dunbar writes on his website visual-communication dot com about a variety of concepts that help focus marketing attention: inside-out thinking, paradox, and fragmentation.

Inside-out versus Outside-in Thinking

What we have been describing thus far is what Derresteijn refers to as inside-out thinking as opposed to conventional corporate outside-in thinking.

Most business professionals have been educated and trained in the pseudo-science of business management, always looking for rationality in how people behave, when in fact people most frequently respond to emotional triggers of psychological desires. As a result most corporate managers do not understand the impact of imaginative design and creative marketing communication.

Corporate executives worry more about next quarter’s stock market results than they do about the products or services they provide. As a result they play it safe and give people what they say they want by relying on market research.

Ad agencies are quick to adopt the approach because (a) rationalizing decisions on research was an easy sell compared to explaining clever creative, (b) agencies could charge quite a lot for the research, and (c) if things went wrong they had a built-in scapegoat, the research.

The underlying problem is simple, people don’t know what they really want until they see it, so you can play it safe and wait for the competition to bury you with something bigger, better, and cheaper, or you can follow your instincts and work to make a dent in the universe. It’s business, there are no guarantees no matter what approach you take, so you can aim for something special, or you can aim for mediocrity.

Paradox

The ‘Think Different’ slogan used by Apple in the 1990s for the Macintosh was brilliant in its duality. Not only did it position Apple against IBM’s “Think” slogan, it conveyed the complex, conceptual conflict found in human nature: the desire to be different and the same simultaneously. The Macintosh was convivial, an easy-to-use machine for the masses, while at the same time it was an alternative to the establishment Big Blue for those who thought of themselves as different or special.

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Hello Jill,

If you could only ask 10 general (non-industry-specific) questions of your new SEO customers, what would they be and why would their answers help you help them?

Thank you,
Andrew

++Jill’s Response++

Hi Andrew,

Great question! I have a variety of different questionnaires that I send to clients, depending on the type of ‘SEO consulting’ (http://www.highrankings.com/seo-services) that I’ll be doing with them. For any SEO service, the more information I get from the client about their business and website, the better I can help them with their SEO.

Here’s a selection of some of the questions I ask and why they’re important to the overall SEO process:

1. What Web Analytics Program Do You Use, and Can We Have Access to It?

Web analytics are the key to measuring the current level of SEO success (or lack thereof). They’re also the key to determining whether any future SEO implementation is helping to bring more targéted traffic. Therefore, it’s critical for me to have access to this information regardless of the level of SEO service I’m providing. If you use Google Analytics (GoAn), it’s very simple to add new users to the account and in most cases it’s fine to provide report-only access (rather than admin). Along with GoAn, I also ask for access to the client’s Google Webmaster Tools (GWMT) account. These days, if you have GoAn access, you can usually add the same website to your GWMT account as well, which makes the process easier.

2. What’s the Purpose of Your Site and who is Your Target Audience?

This is a seemingly simple question, yet it often stumps many clients. Some of them will cop out: “Well, the purpose of our site is to sell our product.” And your target audience? “Umm … anyone with a credít card?” Not very helpful. If you don’t have a good handle on who the people are who are buying your products, how will your SEO consultant help you bring those people to your website? An SEO consultant needs to have a clear picture of who you are because everything we do hinges upon this — from the keyword research to deciding what type of content needs to be written, to how you might want to attack social media marketing. If you’re an SEO consultant, I urge you to push for deep answers to this question.

3. Are There Any Other Domains or Sites That You Own or Control, or That You Used to Use Instead of the Current Domain? (Please list them all.)

This information is important so I can assess any duplicate content issues. I need to know whether that other site I found that is using nearly the same content as yours is owned by you, or if someone scraped yours. I also need to know if you’re using multiple domains as an SEO strategy (so I can smack you!). I added this one to my questionnaire when I kept finding doorway domains or other sites that my clients *forgot* to tell me about. Even those who really do forget or who purposely don’t tell me about their additional domains aren’t getting away with anything. I usually end up finding them during my website audit process. So if you’re a client, do us both a favor and come clean from the start. This will save us all some time down the line! (And I was just kidding about smacking you !)

4. What Have You Done so Far (if anything) About Optimizing Your Site?

My favorite answer to this is “nothing” because that means we’re starting with a clean slate and have nowhere to go but up! But most clients these days have done at least some rudimentary SEO. While I can usually spot any on-page optimization, it’s helpful to hear it from you. Sometimes, the things clients say they’ve done (e.g., created keyword-rich Title tags) don’t actually seem to be done when I look for them. That tells me that your idea of SEO and mine may be quite different, and it’s good to know this up front. It’s also good to know if you have already been through a string of SEOs and what each of them has done to the site during their tenure.

5. Is There Anything That You May Have Done That the Search Engines May Not Have Liked Regarding Previous Optimization Efforts for Your Site?

This one is sort of an addendum to the last one for those who may have *forgotten* to tell me any bad or spammy things they (or a previous SEO) may have done. While they may have not mentioned anything spammy in the last question, this gives them the chance to add anything that they weren’t quite sure was on the up-and-up. Very often, the client may think something was bad or caused problems, when it’s actually innocuous. Other times, there can be a big mess to sort out — e.g., all kinds of paid-for spammy-anchor-text links. As an SEO it’s helpful to know right away where to focus my efforts.

6. List the Websites of Your Three Biggest Competitors. Why Do You Feel They Compete With Your Site?

I like this question more for the second part than the first. It’s always interesting to see why people think another company or site is their competitor. Very often, the only reason people think it is that the other site shows up in the search results for the keyword phrase that the client wants to show up for! While that may make them your competitor, it also may not. It may simply mean that you’re shooting for the wrong keyword phrases. It’s also very helpful to look at competitor sites to see how they’re set up and whether they seem to have done much in the way of SEO or not.

7. What Do You Feel is Your Most Unique Selling Proposition (USP)? Why Would These Clients Come to You as Opposed to Anyone Else Who Offers the Same or Similar Products and Services? What’s Different or Better About Your Product or Service?

Hat tip to Karon Thackston for these questions, because they are ones she always asks before doing any copywriting for a website. Along with who your target audience is, these are some of the most important questions for any client to think about and answer. Sometimes a client will have a great grasp of this and provide lots of valuable information, but more often, the best they can come up with is that they are “more friendly” than their competitors <sigh>. In today’s competitive marketplace and search results (especially since Google’s Panda Update), it’s critical to be able to differentiate your products and services from the rest. And even those who have an excellent grasp of this don’t always make it clear to the users of their website, which is something that will need to be fixed.

8. After a Potential Customer Visits Your Site, What Specifically Do You Want Them to Do?

This is a wonderful way to understand what the various conversion points of your website are. If your only answer is “Make a sale,” then you likely need to add some other smaller conversion points, such as signing up for a newsletter or updates, following you on social media, filling out a contact form, calling you, etc. As an SEO you need to know what all of these points are so that you can make sure that the client’s web analytics are set up to correctly capture all the conversions, and that the website is properly leading people to complete those conversions.

9. Do You Have Social Media Accounts (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Google+) and if so, What are Your User Names?

This is important to see if and how they’re using social media. If they’re not using it at all, as an SEO, you must determine whether they should be. If they are using it, a quick review of their accounts will show you exactly how they’re using it. For instance, you’d want to look at whether they are simply tweeting out links to their own content via an automated feed, or if they are also interacting with their audience. This will help you devise an appropriate social media marketing strategy for them down the line.

10. Is There Anything Else You May Have That You Think Will Provide a More Complete Picture of Your Site?

It’s always a good idea to have a final, open-ended question such as this in case the client forgot to tell you anything within their previous answers. You may learn all kinds of things that you would not have otherwise learned without asking this question.

Those are the most important ones that should get you started. While you can ask all these in person or on the phone, I find it extremely helpful to have it all in writing. It also provides the client with the opportunity to think about their answers and get additional input from others within the company, as necessary.