How to create a Gravatar?

I think the main reason people don’t use it is because they don’t know how to have one! But in fact, to have your brand next to every comment you post on blogs like that is pretty simple:

Gravatar comment example

Just head to gravatar.com and create an account! There, you will be able to assiciate an email address with an image you will upload. That is how a blog will be able to retrieve your gravatar image when you comment: with your email address. Of course, you can associate many email addresses with many images, so if you have multiple blogs, simply add an email address to your account with a new image and you’re done!

How will this help me establish my brand?

If you don’t comment on blogs, this won’t help you establish your brand. But, if you write 1,000 thousands comments every month and you have a nice little image next to your comments every time with your website logo or something like that, your brand will be well known across the blogosphere. For instance, my goal with putting the frogstr frog all over the place is that I want people to think: “What’s that damn blue frog I see all over the place?” and then visit the blog and get addicted to it

It takes five minutes

Even if you don’t really comment a lot, the process takes five minutes and it’s really a nice addition to your comments, so create one!

Blog owners like it

Blog owners usually like people to have a Gravatar because it adds a little something to the comments section: personality.

Conclusion, just create a Gravatar.

Let’s be honest here, I still care a little bit about Google, but only for long term benefits. When launching this blog, I did the traditional SEO tricks: link directories submissions, join social networks, on-page optimization, etc, etc. This means that not caring about Google does not mean not doing SEO. When I say I don’t care about Google, it simply means I don’t give a damn about my rankings so far.

The social strategy

My strategy with this blog is being a lot more active socially than I used to be with other websites and so far it pays off. This initial strategy was to get traffic from alternative sources and with that, the Google traffic will come. You know, it’s extremely hard to make your way into the Internet Marketing business because there are just so many websites out there and so many SEO being done. It’s hard to get good ranking for popular keywords and for that reason, I didn’t want to spend all my free time just to get decent rankings. The way I see it is: if my blog is good enough and that I’m an active blogger, traffic will come from alternative sources like other blogs and social networks. I must admit I’m getting decent traffic from these sources and I’m extremely satisfied.

The John Chow example

I used not to like John Chow and now I must admit his marketing strategy is one of the best out there. John Chow got penalized some time ago by Google for a too aggressive SEO campaign and for that reason, he’s not even ranked for his own search terms “John Chow”. If you type “John Chow” on Google you won’t get johnchow.com in the results for that reason. Then, how do you explain this guy is one of the best known blogger and has some really good traffic? The answer is quite simple: he has Internet Marketing strategies outside of Google. Yes he does use controversy a lot and viral stuff as well but he’s damn good at that.

We can’t all be John Chow

I can’t use a marketing strategy similar to John Chow’s strategy for the simple reason I’m not John Chow. I’m not good at generating controversy like he his and it’s not part of my personality anyway. I know what I’m good at and I use it in my own social strategy. What are your social skills? I know for my part I make friends easily, get a long with mostly everyone, I’m a good marketer and I’m also good at selling stuff in an honest manner. That being said, I know I can’t fake personality traits so I use what I’m good at. Write your social skills on paper and think about how you can use those skills in a social strategy to generate traffic.

Feels good

Not caring about Google feels good because you concentrate on what’s really important: building a network around you. Nobody can act alone in the web Business, you need a network around you. Google won’t give you that network, so you have to build it on your own. Then, the Google rankings will surely come anyway. I used to care too much about Google rankings and forget about what’s really important. Yes, this was giving me good ranking and traffic, but it was not as fun and didn’t have much friends in my niche.

You’re the master of your strategy

In the end, you do what you want. It would be stupid to ignore Google so YOU HAVE to do some SEO, but I don’t think it’s worth investing 100% of your time in that. You don’t want to be 100% dependent on search engines: alternative sources of traffic are equally important and you’ll get that traffic with a good social strategy. It’s your call as to what percentage of your time you invest in link building, seo, etc VS the time you invest in making friends and establishing your brand. The bottom line is that you have to do both correctly, but don’t ignore the power of a good social strategy.