The Internet has evolved a lot from those times when it was, among other things, a tool for chatting up girls and presenting your ethical or racial dissatisfaction. It was a clear results of being anonymous and wanting to express your opinion online. That certainly doesn’t mean that people don’t still use it for those things today (unfortunately) but if you are running a blog or a website business, you obviously want a different kind of approach. You want credibility!
A laughing matter
I have always been a fan of humor and promoting stuff through it. It has proven to be very motivating and refreshing for me and people tell me I’m good at it. Next to teaching people, making them laugh is something I enjoy.
It is another great way to reach out to people and show them that you are also human like them. That you do not have any super powers that helped you succeed online or in any activity you are blogging or teaching about.
Humor is like fire, if you control it well, you won’t get burned and everything will be nice and warm. Letting yourself run out of control will make people frown upon your jokes and generally think “Who the heck does this guy thing he is?”. You do not want to turn yourself or your blog into a joke!
“Selling is a deadly serious business. So is buying. Always remember that your reader is on your site to do business. Not to be entertained.”
Make Your Words Sell! – Joe Robinson and Ken Evoy
Anonymous or not
There are tones of blogs out there and some of the authors might not be comfortable revealing their real photo or their name. I think it all depends on the subject and if you have a good reason to stay anonymous, you should, but it is a lot more beneficial if you don’t.
During the summer I have read good posts about anonymous blogging and there are two posts I’d like to share with you right now. Some of you may already know the author of the blog because she is a great inspiration to a lot. The first blog post is Being Anonymous Can Hurt You where Lisa talks about a woman with a blog about depression and how she didn’t want to reveal her real identity so that her family doesn’t find out about her problems from the Internet. The other one is more of a discussion about Should This Woman Blogger Be Anonymous?.
Both posts are a great read, especially the first one that shows the difference of before and after being anonymous. What’s your story?
Forum and blog-comment avatars
What kind of image should you use when commenting on a blog or participating in discussions on a forum? If it is a highly controlled, moderated or paid community, you should definitely provide an image of yourself.
It doesn’t have to be the one that you took on the beach with your belly sticking out or the one where you can make out your license plate number or home address from – there are nice ways you can make your photo secure but still be able to show yourself. Things like blur filters, black and white filters, gray scale filters and other monochromatic techniques.
If you are not yet using the fantastic service called Gravatar you should! What is Gravatar? It is short for Globally Recognized Avatar and it is basically an avatar (which you assign) that you can bind with your email address and every time you use that email address when commenting on a Wordpress blog, your assigned avatar will appear next to your comment. There is a possibility to assign more avatars and bind them to different email addresses.
Those are just the few steps you can take to start being a member of your community and engaging with your readers.
We don’t need to know that about you, okay?
Now we address the issue of people being too informative about their personal lives. Some bloggers like to take a sharp turn away from their niche now and again and talk about their life, parents, family, travels … Ok it’s nice to know that your daughter just got her first tooth. But is your Internet marketing blog the right place for that information?
Having a 5-page “About Me” link will also make you look quite egocentric in my opinion.
The best approach for this would be just making another blog about yourself. Give people a chance to choose if they want to read about you or not. As much as being anonymous can hurt you, so can providing too much information about yourself. Learn how to balance it out and you will be one step closer to success.
Conclusion and question
I would like to finish this up with a question directed to the readers. The question is:
How do you deal with providing people information about yourself?
Having spent some time surfing and commenting on blogs in the last few months I have noticed that people usually pick one image of themselves and use that image EVERYWHERE. Is that good or is variety better?
Alison Moore Smith (2)
Dennis Edell (2)
Karl Foxley (2)
Agent Deepak (1)
@der_schneider
says
Hi Gordon,
nice Post there. And it’s surely quiet some discussion. Personally I like to show my foto and try not to be to anonymos. But as allways it’s about finding the balance. With social media sites beeing even part of looking for people to hire for a job, there surely are some boudaries.
At last, from my experience the two most visited parts of almost any website are “team” and “about”. So I think it’s clear, that people are interested in some basic information.
Regards and thanks for sharing.
Elmar (real name!)
DerSchneider´s last blog ..der_schneider: RT @mrpaulsimon: Awesome Visualization of Social Media Usage Around the Globe [Infographic] http://bit.ly/5xflJl
@McKnightikus
says
Thank you for your comment Elmar!
It is very important for me, like all others, because I like to see how people respond to what I’ve said and conduct my own little research based on it. It’s great how much you can learn and how many ideas you can get from just simple feedback.
A month ago, I also noticed that my About Author page was getting an unusual number of hits compared to the rest of my content, so yea, people are interested who you are. They want to know who’s experiences they are reading through …. an ex-Google employee or just some random guy trying to stand out and make it.
@Ileane
says
Gordon,
This is an important post and you have 2 excellent examples from Lisa Irby from 2createawebsite to help illustrate your point. I consider her a great role model for every blogger and website owner.
I signed up with gravatar before I even began writing my first post. It think that using the same image is important too. It’s the best way for people to find you if you are using different social media tools. For example, my user name might be slightly different on Digg than it is on Twitter, but when people see my gravatar they know that it is me.
I do a lot of commenting on blogs so I made sure to sign up for a Disqus profile since many blogs use the plugin. I also make use of OpenID.
I am voting for this on Blog Engage and retweeting it as well. I look forward to reading the additional comments too.
Thanks!
ileane´s last blog ..Blog Engage Activity for Ms. Ileane Speaks in November
@McKnightikus
says
Disqus and OpenID are also great and every blogger should have an account ready because you never know when you might need it. Thanks for mentioning them, I forgot about those. They are not so frequently used but I did see them on a few blogs. Also appreciate the votes on BlogEngage! Any chance you might post about Friendster on your blog?
@coopchad
says
Great points, Gordon. I do agree that there are plenty of instances where remaining anonymous is probably best. However, if you’re trying to build a following of any kind, like for a blog, etc., then having your real identity and even a photo is best. People will always connect more easily with a persona that is real.
I noticed my follower count on Twitter began to rise more rapidly once I used my real name and photo, as opposed to something totally anonymous.
I also agree that gravatars are the way to go. It’s the easiest way to present a consistent image of yourself, which is incredibly important if you’re trying to create a community and get some return traffic to your site.
As always, nice work!
Chad´s last blog ..Is This Spam? How To Tell.
@McKnightikus
says
Thank you for your comment Chad, it’s nice to hear someone say “I noticed my follower count on Twitter began to rise when I used my real name and photo”. That’s the best result you can get and I think it’s worth the effort.
It’s also important that, if you use more images of yourself, that you remain recognizable on those images. I have a few images where you wouldn’t say it’s me … like the image I used at the beginning of this post
One is best if you’re everywhere. it all goes back to making things as simple as possible.
You hit a sore spot also, I can’t tell you how many people I have refused to listen to simply because they are Homer Simpson in a forum. LOL
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Blogging Halted Here – Don’t Despair, This Is A Good Thing!
@McKnightikus
says
Hehe, yea we all know a few I guess
I also prefer using one or two images max just to add some variety. I see some people changing their images on Twitter every once in a while and that’s great as long as it looks like the same person. Thanks for stopping by!
@karlfoxley
says
Great points. I think it helps when you have a clear objective in mind when you set out in the realm of a business website or blog. I would encourage people to market themselves just as much, maybe even more so, as their business. People take out SEO packages with us because of the relationship (trust) I have built with them and being anonymous wouldn’t have given me that opportunity. However, like you say, people who stay anonymous have their reasons and it hopefully works for them.
I think Gravatars are a great way to establish yourself across the net, personal branding, as people will start to become familiar with you from other blogs before they even come to your site.
The information I share about me is pretty much in the realm of ‘this is all you need to know’.
Thanks for sharing Gordon,
Karl
Karl Foxley´s last blog ..Introduce Yourself and Get Some Link Love!
@McKnightikus
says
Personal branding makes a huge difference when you are providing a paid service or consulting. I’ve attended a presentation yesterday about branding and they talked about how branding a single person is important and how it can improve a business. A great example of that is in politics. My next post is going to be about branding – it is a very interesting subject for me.
Thanks for stopping by Karl, I have followed you on Twitter and hope to communicate with you more in the future since I am also interested in SEO.
@lionslinger
says
For the benefit of honesty and trust I believe it is important not to be anonymous and show our real identity. How can possibly someone engage with you if you are not open. A picture and a name is all that is needed.
@TriumphCIO
says
Gordon,
Excellent points! I really liked your advice about subscribing to Gravatar to improve your consistency across blogs, comments and other sites — something I need to do myself, in fact.
And, as other commenters have noted, there are times when you do need to be anonymous. For those, I recommend still creating a consistent persona with a unique name that you use consistently for this purpose. That way, it still gives you a way to build a brand for that persona, and if it proves valuable you can always reclaim it into your own personal brand later.
For example, suppose that you love to keep up on and comment on politics, but you don’t want your comments there to impinge on your professional business persona/brand. By creating a secondary account and name (e.g., PoliticalJunkie2), that you use across all websites for all your comments and blogging, you are still using all the same techniques that you, Gordon, are recommending above, without confusing your professional brand.
Mark Cummuta
@McKnightikus
says
Creating an alias can also be as effective as sharing your real name. The whole thing is basically called branding – which I will be writing about in my next post. Thanks for stopping by Mark, your example is very good.
What’s great about Gravatar is that it allows you to link more avatar images to a single email address and then you can chance which one is your active one whenever you want. You can also add more email addresses and link other avatars to them. Which avatar is shown depends on which email address you enter in the comment box. That way you can have various identities for commenting.
A great use I found for this is that sometimes I like to comment with my Knowledge Reactor avatar (rarely though) and sometimes I like to comment with this one that I’m using now. It all depends if I’m representing myself and my blog or my entire KR project.