Posting comments on blogs is a great way to improve your SEO and drive traffic to your site.  But you’ll leave a better impression on those who read your intelligent and witty comment if they can see of picture of you while they read your words.

When I leave a comment on a blog, it looks a bit like this:

You can easily set this up for yourself.  It’s an easy thing to do and I’ll take you through the steps one-by-one.

First, you need to understand where the picture comes from and that answer depends on what kind of site you are on.

Social Networks.  If you are on a social networking site, like Facebook or LinkedIn, that picture is stored in your profile.  As such, the photo displayed is specific to that site.

Blogs.  Some blogs will let you post your comment via your profile on Facebook or Google+; in those cases the picture displayed is the same one on your profile.  On most blogs, like this one, you fill in a comment form and include your email address.  That email address is then used to link to your avatar image at Gravatar.com.

Gravatar: a gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog.

It takes just a few minutes to set up your Gravatar.com account:

• Go to www.gravatar.com

• Click Get Your Gravatar Today

• Fill in your email address and click Sign Up.

• Check your email account for the confirmation email that will contain a link to set a password.

• Click the link in the email.  Choose a username.  Your username will be used in your profile address so choose something people might recognize you as — and pick something you can live with because you can’t change it!  Check to see if it’s available by clicking Check.  Choose a password.  Click Sign Up.

• Now, you can upload an image to be used as your new gravatar! Click “Add One by Clicking Here” to upload your first image.  Choose the location of your image and click Next.  Crop your image to the correct size using the provided tool and click Crop and Finish!.

• Choose a Rating for Your Gravatar.  I recommend staying with G rated Gravatar’s.

• Now, you’ll see a screen that shows your email address and your uploaded image.  They are linked correctly if your image is displayed to the left of your email address.  If it is not displaying correctly — or if you’d like to change it — double click on the picture you would like to associate with this email address.  Click Confirm.  Now, the image should display in the correct location.

You can use one Gravatar account to manage all of your email addresses and their associated gravatars.  Simply click Add a New Email Address or Add a New Image to add them to your account.

What image should you use for your gravatar?

Most branding experts recommend that you use a professionally photographed head shot for your avatar image and that you use one image across the entire web.  This is really the best advice when you are representing your business online: one professional image that lets people see you as the human behind your business.

But there may be times that you are online just as you and don’t want to link that back to your business.  For instance, if you are visiting dating advice blogs or gaming sites.  In these cases, you might want to separate the different parts of your life with different images and associated email addresses.  When you are online just as you, feel free to use whatever image you like.  I’d recommend sticking with G rated images though.  Remember, the Internet is forever and you don’t want to be embarrassed in the future about a choice you make today.

Setting up your personal gravatar is easy.  It takes just a few minutes.  If you haven’t yet done it, go do it now.  Feel free to post a quick comment here so we can all see your new gravatar.

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