(Reading time: 2 – 4 minutes)

♪ Who… ♪ are you… ♪?
♫ Who who… ♫
♫ who who… ♫
♬ Who the eff are you! ♬
— The Who from “Kids Are All Right”

These words resound in my head, bringing back glorious days of screaming around the hills west of Bloomington, Indiana in a 1977 Buick Century Regal blasting FM radio. The Who was big that year. Good times. Sounded a little like this:

Oh wait.

That was actually Heart in ’77. Barracuda. This Who album hadn’t been released yet. Darn. But you should never let the facts interfere with a good story, &c.

The glory days… I hear everyone under 41 retching. Rest assured, I’ll be back to Ambient, Deep House and Down Tempo shortly.

So, who are you? Why don’t you leave a link? How about your Gravatar? Don’t have a gravatar? Well that’s no darn good at all!

Gravatar!

Gravatars have now become Important. I believe a good gravatar image will actually help drive traffic your way. It certainly can’t hurt.

From the Gravatar.com website:

Your Gravatar 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. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

Getting a gravatar is really easy: just register an email address for each different gravatar you desire to use. If you don’t have one yet, you should go get one right now at gravatar.com.

But don’t take my word for it, read more about the benefits of having your own gravatar:

• David Risley provides some useful tips for implementing gravatar support in WordPress: Using Gravatars On Your Blog – Why And How. David is an expert at personal branding as well, and notes that the global aspect of “gravatar” is a critical feature for carrying your brand with you, no matter where you appear on the internet.
• Thord Daniel Hedengren lays it out clearly in Gravatars: Why Both Commenters and Publishers Should Use It. He covers both the author and publisher side, recommending gravatar support for both. Fortunately, WordPress has this built in these days.

• Sean Hodge has an excellent article on Branding Yourself With Gravatars. Read about how to create gravatars to brand yourself in different contexts.

Good stuff.

Bonus Benefit: When your comments get caught in my Spam queue, like CommentLuv’s Andy Baily’s, and Elmot’s did recently, I’ll be able to see your smiling face and fish you out.