For those of you who have been with me a while, you already know about my web guru and friend, Beth Hayden of Blogging with Beth fame.
I was trying to figure out how to add a tiny little picture of me (and you) to our comments so . . . of course, I called Beth.
She made this so simple that I invited her to write a guest post to share with all of you and she graciously agreed to do so.
Check this out!
(If you are interested in writing a guest post, check out the guidelines here.)
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A Guest Post by Beth Hayden
Are you regularly commenting on other people’s blogs?
You can use comments to encourage your favorite bloggers, to thank them, to show support, to give an example, or to contribute to the discussion in a myriad of ways.
If you’re commenting thoughtfully – and consistently adding your blog URL to the “Website” field in the comment form – you are hopefully seeing some traffic flowing back to your site as a result of your comments.
It’s a great (and FREE) way of picking up some extra traffic.
But there’s a way to make your comments even MORE powerful and making it even MORE likely that people will click through to your blog and sign up for your mailing list or become regular readers.
Perhaps you’ve been noticing recently that when some people comment on a blog, a little picture of the person appears next to her name.
Those little pictures look like this:
When you use that little image for your comments, it makes it more likely that people will click through to your blog from your remark.
A picture makes you more recognizable, more authentic, and a thousand times more relate-able than your name alone.
And that small image also has another HUGE benefit – it helps the host blogger get to know you.
I recently read an interview with Sonia Simone of Copyblogger in which she highly recommends using these little images.
She said if she can put a name with a face when she sees your comment, it makes you much more memorable.
And being more memorable makes it more likely that she’ll be willing to open your email when you write to her to submit a guest post for publication on Copyblogger.
If that’s true for Sonia, it’s true for tons of tons of other host bloggers, too.
That little image – that teeny little you – can make the difference between your emails getting OPENED and your emails getting IGNORED.
That little image we’ve been talking about is called a Gravatar. And they’re really easy to set up and use.
Go to Gravatar.com to set up your account.
It takes just a few minutes.
Tips:
- Make sure to use the email address that you will be using most often when you comment.
- Upload a great photo. This picture is going to represent you all over the web, so make sure it’s a good one – not one that is fuzzy, unprofessional, or otherwise unusable.
- You can upload more than one photo, but you’ll have to choose one to have as your primary photo.
- Remember your username and password so you can go back and change your pic if you want to.
Once you create your Gravatar, every time you use your email address to comment on a site that uses Gravatars, you’ll see your photo automatically appear if that particular blog has Gravatars activated on their site.
You don’t need to do anything special or upload that image again.
Just enter your email address in the comment box field, and Gravatar.com will do the work for you.
Create your own “little teeny you” at Gravatar.com today.
It takes five minutes and will start paying off as soon as you post your next comment!
About the Author: Beth Hayden helps business owners make more money
by helping them create fabulous websites, blogs, and social media campaigns. Get her best tips for improving your blog by downloading her free report, From Blah to Hurrah: 25 Ways to Make Your Blog Bigger, Better and More Profitable.
Hi Tamara,
Thank you for posting this topic. While I like to consider myself internet savvy, I must admit I had no idea about Gravatars and thought it was something for the younger generation. Thank you again and I’m happy to say I now have a Gravatar.
Christine
Hi, Christine! Thanks so much for dropping in! It’s going to be so good to see everyone’s faces here at Private Practice from the Inside Out! Even though you are in New York, Christine, I’m feeling closer to you already! Looking forward to seeing your smiling face and hearing your social work-savvy voice here often! Have a great day!
I’m really glad this was useful, Christine! Your comment made me laugh – I too thought this was something for the younger generation, and that maybe it was a little too trendy for me to care about. And then I read that popular blog authors really do use Gravatars to put a name with a face with people are commenting – and that is makes a difference in whether you get remembered or not! After that, I signed up for a Gravatar pretty quickly!
I know what you mean, Beth! But, I’m LOVING getting to see what everyone looks like – and I’m remembering my readers more easily already! This is so cool!
Thanks so much for the tip! I’m new to all this techno marketing, and this really helps me out!
Lindsey! So glad to have you here and appreciate you taking a moment to let me know this is helpful! I’m happy to hold your hand and sing, too, as we you build your practice! It’s good to see your face and have your voice here! Please do drop back in often and let me know you’re here!
Thank you so much! Will do! Your website has already been super helpful, and I know it has many more fruits to bear 🙂 Thanks for the encouragement.
Hey, gang . . . if you are looking for a really lovely customized Twitter background, check out Lindsey’s. Really simple and beautiful, very professional and sets her apart from the rest of the Twitterverse!
OK . . . so my web guru, Beth Hayden, just informed me that Lindsey’s Twitter background is not customized. The good news is that it’s available to anyone on Twitter. That’s just my subtle nudge to you guys to take the time to change the Twitter background. It makes your profile stand out. [Thanks, Beth, for the correction behind the scenes!]
Thanks so much again 🙂 I was very fortunate when I stumbled across the background because it actually matches our practice logo. And of course I love the simplicity of it. But I do really appreciate the compliment. I think it is simply taking advantage of what is out there that is free! And in this business I am all about the free stuff 🙂 Have a great day!
Hi Tamara, I am a student in community counseling and have really enjoyed your blog since I found it a month or so ago. Before I went back to school I made my living freelance writing, (which I still do) and as a marketing consultant. One of the things I always told my clients was to make sure they’re posting full feeds instead of truncated feeds. People are more likely to read you if they can get the full story in their feedreaders instead of having to click through. Like many folks with a long blog reading list, I rely on feedreaders to let me know when new content is up so I don’t have to click through a hundred-odd sites to see who’s updated. Because (like most of America!) I am super-busy, I rarely click through to the actual blog page these days unless I really really really want to comment. I know other folks do this, too, especially as Facebook has grabbed more people’s online time (I blogged for nearly a decade and as Facebook climbed boy did my comments drop even though my stats continued to increase). All of this to say, I would love Love LOVE if you would start posting your full feeds instead of the truncated ones. It’s in the “reading” setting in your WordPress dashboard so it’s a super-easy fix. If you don’t have feedburner installed, I’d encourage you to use that plugin along with the google FeedBurner service so that you can track how many people are reading you via feeds. In my own experience, about 1/3 of my readers read me only in their feedreaders so tracking that number was very useful. 🙂
Hey, Dawn – I hope you don’t mind if I respond to your comment, even though I know it was meant for Tamara. As her web person, I’ve usually got opinions about stuff she does with her site, so I thought I’d throw my two cents in here!
I see why Tamara’s not using excerpt feeds – she really wants to drive people back to her site so they can read more of her content and connect with her on her other social media presences (as well as encourage people to comment).
But I can also see this from your point of view, too – because for me, as someone who does read blogs in feedreaders, it does bug me when bloggers don’t give full feeds, because sometimes their excerpts (the parts that ARE in the feedreader view) are only ONE line of the post, or worse, sometimes it’s just the title of the post and that’s it). Tamara’s feed does gives at least a paragraph of the post and then a link to read more – I think she gives enough that people will get enticed and then if they’re truly interested, they click over to the full post.
I’d be curious to take a poll among her readers here, though – how many of you read Tamara’s blog in a feedreader? We do have some stats from Feedburner, but would love to know what people have to say.
Thanks, Beth, for chiming in. I love the idea of polling folks here about using RSS (a feedreader). I, too, use them to read others’ blogs. However, you are right in that my motive is to build a community here and elsewhere online rather than for each of us to remain as little silos in mental health.
Dawn, I completely understand your frustration . . . . I hope the content is rich enough that I can lure you back without the feed, though. I appreciate you taking the time to point out the downside to this editorial choice and value your voice on this site. Let’s see what the readers here think about this and I promise to revisit it in the future!
Maybe you could do a post for the poll? Because I’m sure folks will miss the request in the comments. I talked Cecily at Uppercase Woman into full feeds way back when ‘cuz I think that truncated feeds ultimately drive people away. I’ve unsubscribed from blogs with excerpts before and I’m sure other people do, too. I also read on my iPad and clicking the feed entry will open up and take me to a new window and force the window I was in to reload, which is a discouragement to click through, too. Then, too, if people are subscribed via email (I couldn’t tell if the subscribe button above is for the RSS feed or something else) and they’re reading on their phone they may save the email intending to click through later when it’s easier to read on a bigger screen but I bet we all know how quickly we lose track of our emails.
Honestly, I don’t have a dog in this fight personally because I generally click through on Tamara’s posts if the topic is clearly one that interests me but since it’s a marketing blog and that’s the advice I gave my marketing clients I thought, what the heck, let’s talk about it. 🙂
Dawn, you are making a persuasive argument for sure! I hadn’t even thought about how that reads on an iPad. Hmmm. Now I really will have to re-think this . . . and, yes, I think I can put this into a post soon, too. Thanks for your marketing-savvy contributions!
(Oh and one more small suggestion, I’ve had great luck with comment reply notification plugins. I’ve used this one for clients: http://www.ideashower.com/our_solutions/comment-to-email-wordpress-plugin/ and this one myself: http://theme10.com/comment-reply-notification/ I don’t really have a preference. It’s just an easy way to make sure people don’t miss replies. 🙂
Hmmmm . . . . NOW you’ve got my attention! I thought this plugin was already working. I love reply-notification plugins . . . . Will check on that right away. Thanks again for taking the time to share your suggestions and knowledge! I so appreciate it.
Hey, Dawn . . . I just double-checked and I do have the reply notification turned on. It’s at the very bottom below the comment box. Whew! Thought I had gotten really sloppy!
You do have the plugin turned on and it is working – I’ve been using it to track this conversation today! 🙂
Thanks, Beth, for double checking! Can’t imagine what I would do without my web guru! YOU ROCK!
Ok thanks — but there’s another one where instead of getting notified of EVERYONE’s comments you can just get notified if someone replies to you. That way you don’t get inundated with email but you can still be part of a specific conversation. 🙂
Ahhhh, Dawn! Nice! Thanks so much for pointing this out. Will definitely be looking for this one!
just checking to see if my gravatar works 🙂
Yes, Nancy, it does work! Congrats to you! Now that you know how to put your gravatar up, I’m hoping you’ll change it out to a real professional head shot of you so that we can all start to feel more connected to you!
Tamara and Beth, thank you for this post. I just discovered it, and finally had time to sit down and set up my Gravatar profile. Next, need to check my blog and see if they are enabled there, and then decide on an excerpt policy. Whew, our work is never done! But it is so wonderful to learn new things about how to be a more effective blogger.
Hi, Deborah! So glad that we could be of help and so happy to see your smiling face here as well as your voice! It’s so helpful to get the feedback and know that we’re on track! Thanks for dropping back in to chat!
Finally got around to getting an Avatar!
Hey, Pam! It’s good to have your face with your comments, now! With so many folks getting around to adding their Avatars, I feel like our community here is getting to be much more familiar with each other! Thanks so much! (When you add your Avatar, it actually goes back to all your previous comments and populates them with your photo!)
I feel like I am catching up on years of tips right here in one place. Thanks.
Thanks for this post, Tamara! I am learning a lot from your site/blog!
Hi, Camille! Welcome back! So glad I can see your smiling face these days!:)
Hello everyone,
Just wanted to join the conversation. I started a blog at http://www.nurturingresilientchildren.ca late last year and more recently on my clinical site http://www.samanthapekh.com, but since returning to work a couple of months ago and being busy with that set-up, this blog has been a bit neglected and updates and recent blogs I want to make have not yet made completed. I already had a gravator, but, humorously enough, I am not even sure how I stumbled upon setting one up. It most have occurred during one of my long evenings just randomly searching the net for prof develop ideas. Either way, I cant say enough about them. I really like them, I know for most people that remembering names is difficult, but images and pictures are quite easy. I also have clients mentioning my gravator image and how it helped them recognize me when I went to greet them in the waiting room and thus feel more familiar with me already.
I have been advised by tech savy people that using only one gravator image is best so that it can become like your branding and people can get to recognize you. The difficulty, I guess, is that profile-based gravators need to be updated now and then so that they match your age (i.e., having an image from age 20 would not represent you at age 40 yrs). This fact alone can cause some people to worry due to fears that their image could cause some potential clients to become “un-interested” in their services simply because of an image and not because of an actual lack of fit between the client and potential therapist. Although my gravator is within the last 10 years, a client recently said they were surprised I looked that way I do because I didn’t match my image…I have recently dyed my hair a much darker color.
And, one last thought, I am told that the ‘trend’ now-a-days is to use images that are a bit more ‘selfie’-style…otherwise, images that are still professional but look more down to earth and personable, instead of professional images reflecting a crisp and polished look.
I think this argument could go otherwise and I’d be interested in knowing other people’s thoughts on this.
Hi, Samantha! Welcome to Private Practice from the Inside Out and thank you for taking time to join this conversation!
Your tech-savvy people are correct – from a marketing / branding standpoint it’s important to use the same photo for all your online activities. And, those images need to be current. That’s why I’ve just had new head shots made. I’ll likely wait until my freshened up website is complete before I post them but then I’ll need to go back and update all my social media tools, too.
I’m not a fan of selfie’s for business purposes – at least not for my gravatar. As our personal and professional worlds continue to blur, it remains important to make conscious choices about your professional image. It needs to be warm and inviting rather than stiff and formal. However, that doesn’t mean you should have Disneyland or the beerfest you just attended in the background; nor should you be wearing after five or beach attire. (And, yes, I’ve seen therapists post all of this and more on their websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter profiles all in the name of “marketing.) That’s definitely not what you want to share to get business in the private practice of psychotherapy.
Hey, Samantha, I’m looking forward to checking out your website and blog and hope you’ll be dropping back in here often to chat, too!
Hi Tamara,
Yes, you are quite correct. Instead of referring to the term “selfi-style” photos I should have instead used the word “more informal” self-pictures.
Although I’m beginning to catch up and understand many of the new tech and social media type advances, terms, and trends, I don’t always remember the the proper terms when needed. This being such a case 🙂
I would agree, our images need to remain professional, but less formal is definitely the going trend right now.
Got it! I know when I was looking for photographers for my new photos, I had difficulty explaining what I wanted, too. I loved the work my new photographer, Dana Rogers, did. I showed her lots and lots of images I pulled from the internet and still don’t know how to more succinctly state . . . “I want more personality,” “I want personality,” and “I don’t want them to look like stuffy, boring, corporate headshots.” I want warm, friendly, and even a little sassy would be great!:) We’ll see how you think I did when the new website goes up!
thank you!
Hi, Melissa! You’re so welcome! It’s great to see your smiling face!
Thank you for sending out the email about setting up Gravatars! I just set mine up and this is my “test comment.” Hope it works!
YES! Now I can see your smiling face and so can everyone else, Sandhya! Lovely!
What a Gravatar is and why you should start using it right away – http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-is-gravatar-and-why-you-should-start-using-it-right-away/
Just taking a few minutes to say thanks for the tip and instructions. Now I have to find sites to follow and comment in order to take my Gravatar for a spin!
Haha! I love this Duane – “take my Gravatar for a spin!” YES! I look forward to networking with you! Let me know if you need anything at all.
Hi Tamara! I’ve been reading your website blog for awhile, but didn’t want to comment until I had my gravatar visible! (and like others want to see if it actually shows up!!) I realize this is an older blogpost, but it’s still one of my faves because I think the gravatar pic is really important, but you are the first one to have someone like Beth give us more info on it. Thanks for having her guest-post! Your website has so much great content; thanks for covering all the details of private practice so we can all become more confident and competent clinicians!
Ashlie! I’ve been waiting for your voice here! Welcome!!!
And, thank you so much for taking time to let me know that you’re finding what you need right here.
That’s my goal!
I’m bummed to see your gravatar isn’t showing up here and I’m wondering if you skipped a step somewhere along the way.
I haven’t heard from anyone else having trouble so . . . Will you please try one more time to set it up?
I look forward to networking with you!
Wow, thanks for sharing your knowledge! This is all new to me and I always wondered how people had little pics beside their names.
Awwwww, thanks, Katie! You’ve made my day! I hope you’ll tell your colleagues!
Absolutely!
Hi Tamara, I really enjoyed reading this article by Beth. I didn’t realise how helpful making comments would be, even though I had a Gravatar profile with my picture uploaded. I’ve learnt something new and useful today. Thank you, both! Preethi
Hi, Preethi!
Yea!!! You just made my day because, of course, that’s the point . . . too quickly learn something new and useful here!
I hope you will be back often to chat so that we can learn from you, too!