Avatars - How to Choose The Right Avatar

> If you're building your personal brand in Social media, I recommend you read this post too: Using Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand <

One of the most important things regarding your personal brand is your avatar. Almost all social media platforms ask for avatars. In some cases you have to choose from a library, but most of the time you can upload your own image. Like with all branding, it is important that you're consistent. So rule number one is: Use the same avatar everywhere.

In the last 24 hours a large part of the tweeple I follow have changed their visual identity. Michael Gray started the trend by going green

... and he was followed by most of the SEO's on Twitter that day. Except a few punky rebels who went blue. Or red.

One of the blue rebels and a red devil

and my green avatar in my attempt to be one of the cool kids ;)

But changing colours wasn't the only trend on Twitter yesterday. Suddenly everyone was "going manga". One after the other the avatars took on the Japanese manga style.

Mark Davidson and Lisa Dilg in their "manga outfit".

You can read Lisa's story on how manga saved her day on Twitterstars when she had gotten into this state:

I've been thinking quite a bit about avatars lately and I like personal pictures best. Eyes catch eyes, so they should be visible. Now cartoons can be nice and you can exaggerate certain character symbols in them. But those mangas are almost all made at FaceYourManga.com. It's great fun but leaves little room for differentiation. A face has a lot more to differentiate than a cartoon made online (though I have to admit that you can do amazing things on FaceYourManga). Anyway, I couldn't resist seeing what I would look like manga style:

Good examples of cartoon avatars are Maki's manga bunny, smallplaces' bug and Rohit Bargavas Lego figure:

When you're having a hard time finding a picture that does you justice (well, or shows how you want to look, instead of how you look), you might pick a picture from your college years, 20 years and 150 pounds ago. Or some even find a picture of someone else, like Rishi did:

Nope, it's actually not him licking that bottle. That discovery has been great disappointment to many of his eager followers.

Like in all marketing, standing out of the crowd is vital. You want people to recognize your avatar the moment they see it, if they come across it on another network. Using icons and logos makes that easier. Dave Winget's logo is an excellent sample of that:

Dave Winget, aka @Wingnut

But it's not as personal and inviting as having a face shot where your eyes are visible. So a combination of both is probably best. PodcastSteve and Guy Kawasaki have got excellent avatars that fulfill this criteria:

Steve's avatar is a graphic picture of him doing a podcast interview. Again, like in his name, he gets his profession across. That is excellent work. In Guy's avatar he has a hat and a pink scarf. In the background you can see green peas. It makes a good background, but there's also a message behind it. I asked Guy why he chose this avatar and he said the hat was because of this and the peas because of this.

When I chose my avatar, I just picked a picture of me that I thought was nice. In the background you can see a 12.000 year old mammoth tooth and a fossil fish whispering some ancient wisdom in my ear (or whatever ;).

My wife found another picture for me that she suggested I would use. It's from a beach trip to the La Jolla beach in San Diego:

(that's actually sea weed around my neck)

Of course you could submit your photo to Hot-or-Not to see what picture gets the best score :)

So, I asked my network on Twitter this question:

Why did you choose the avatar you're using?
And here are a few of the replies I got:

@ingridf
hmm. because it is silly. it says something about my frame of mind. because it was a spontaneous moment. a good memory.

@54degrees
It's my business logo and I use it in my social media accounts to brand it.

@pprlisa
I picked my "regular" avatar because its the ONLY pic of me I have EVER liked, EVER

@rockson
It was during my real estate classses and I do not like my picture on my cards. Here is a blog post on it. http://is.gd/1D58

@LaraK
It's a photo of me that I like. It makes a good avatar b/c it's friendly and approachable, and people get a sense of who I am

@seosylph
because a) she's my sylph and b) I'm kinda shy.

How about you, why did you choose the avatar you're using? You can reply in the comments below.

Cheers
Hjörtur
(that would be @hjortur on Twitter)

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Comments

[Alysson]

Sadly, the image I use as my Avatar is one of few images I actually have of myself. As a photographer, I'm typically on the OTHER side of the camera. :)

Coincidentally, I've just charged my mother (who is an outstanding graphic artist - by the way - http://www.jollydodgers.com/home.html) to create an image that I will be able to use both as a favicon for SEOAly, as well as a global avatar.

I intend to keep my image on my website with the intent of building a personal rapport with my site's visitors, but I will likely change my Avatar to help build a bit more brand recognition for myself down the road.

[Hjörtur Smárason]

This seems to be a classical problem for photographers, Alysson. No picture of themselves. Thanks for the comment :)