Within a short period of time that changed and I started seeing other commenters with the name Barbara.

By that time I knew I wanted to build my online presence so I added my last name.

Today’s Lesson

When I travel through blogosphere, I see many bloggers who only use their first name as their online identity.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with that, however, it can be confusing, and can be a detriment.

Example: Let’s say your name is Clifford AND you don’t use an avatar*. You comment on blogs, build your online presence and soon become well known in your area of expertise. All is good in your world.

Than along comes another avatar-less Clifford, who begins to comment on the same blogs as you do, AND his blog is in the same niche as yours.

Those of us who follow links, may assume Clifford #1 and Clifford #2 are the same person.

They’re not. but we don’t know that because there’s little or no information to differentiate between the two.

The work Clifford #1 has put into developing his online presence could take a hit while Clifford # 2 could have just gotten an unexpected boost to his readership and reputation.

That said, I realize many bloggers choose not to use their real last names, nor do you have to.

Some choices are:

1. Choose a very unique log in name

This can work well for those who blog anonymously, however if the day comes when you want to “come out”, it may be necessary to do a large “media” blitz to notify those who know you by your pen name so they continue to follow you.

2. Make up a fictitious last name.

Keep in mind, if you do this and you want to build an online presence, be consistent and use the same pseudonym on all blogs and social media sites you frequent.

3. Use your first name and the name of your blog

Something like “Barbara @ BWAB” (Blogging Without A Blog) is something I had considered, however at that time I already had two blogs and wanted the option of linking to either one without changing my log in name.

4. Use only the name of your blog

This can work well, except it may appear impersonal to some.

5. Use keywords

Many bloggers like to use keywords to describe themselves and their sites, however depending on the keywords, your login name can appear spammy.

For anyone trying to build their online presence, the name we use becomes crucial as it can follow us forever on the world wide web.

What say you?

Today’s Assignment

How did you choose the name you use online?

Have you ever encountered confusion because two or more bloggers have the same name?

Care to share?

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This post was inspired by part of what Kelvin Kao said in his comment on the *Who’s Who In Blogosphere post,

I am someone that needs a last name to attach to a person since a common first name, like, say, Jennifer can be anyone. Also I have a habit of changing the names of rss feeds in my feed reader to the blogger’s name, so I tend to have better recognition for blogger names than blog names.

Me

Sometimes you’ll hear them called gravatars (globally recognized avatars), but many just say “avatars”.

I like to call them ADvatars since they “ad”vertise who we are.

In some ways they are like our calling card.

Since they brand us in blogosphere, it’s suggested we use the same image on all sites we frequent and that they represent how we want to be known, whether by our photo, our logo or an image which best represents us.

Today’s Lesson

Recognition online is very important.

So the questions become, “What is the best way to brand ourselves?”, and “How will others recognize us?” .

By our name? By the name of our blog? By our avatar? Or, all three?

To test what brands us the best in blogosphere, I’ve created a little game.

Listed below are three columns with the names of 20 random blog authors, the name of their blog, and their avatars.

I then scrambled each category.

To play, take time to study each list and see if you can match the author to their avatar and to the name of their blog.

Don’t cheat. Honest answers will help all of us to gain better recognition in blogosphere.

Ready to match them up?

Good Luck!

AUTHOR . . . 1) George . . . . 2) Keith Davis . . . . 3) Kelvin . . . . 4) Mandy . . . . 5) Hilary . . . . 6) Tess . . . . 7) Raul . . . . 8.) Lisa . . . . 9) Tony . . . . 10) Joella . . . . 11) Heather . . . . . 12) Linda . . . . 13) Chania Girl . . . . 14) Julie . . . . 15) Wendi . . . . . 16) John Hoff . . . . . 17) Evelyn . . . . 18) Friar . . . . 19) J.D. Meier . . . . 20) Lori Hoeck

BLOG NAME . . . Practically Intuitive . . . . Alien Ghost . . . . Heather Villa . . . . WP Blog Host/Blog . . . . Trottersville . . . . Blogs With Wings . . . . Positive Letters . . . . Mandy Allen.com . . . . Sources Of Insight . . . . Tumblemoose . . . . Puppet Kaos . . . . . Easy Public Speaking . . . Living Happiness . . . . jbulie’s blog . . . . Think Like A Blackbelt . . . . Life’s Little Inspirations . . . . Abundance Tapestry . . . The Bold Life . . . . Roses 2 Rainbows . . . . Deep Friar

AVATAR

Today’s Assignment

How did you do?

How do you recognize  fellow bloggers? Is it by their name? The name of their blog? Or their avatar?

Care to share?

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P.S. To repeat what I mentioned in an earlier post, for those of you who haven’t added an avatar/gravatar to your profile; it’s very easy. Refer to my post titled, “How To Get and/or Add A Gravatar to Your Post Comments”. If you have any questions of need help setting up your avatar, please feel free to ask.

Want more of the game? See: How Branding Works In Blogosphere and Are Domain Names Overrated?; earlier posts in which we matched other bloggers to their avatars.

First, let me introduce Andy Bailey. He is the developer of the famous CommentLuv plugin and has kindly agreed to participate in my A.S.K. (Answers Sharing Knowledge) series.

It’s not often a developer of a plugin stays as active in the progress of a plugin as Andy does. Since its inception, Andy has updated the CommentLuv plugin many times, with each update making it better than the last.

For those who use the plugin, the latest update includes a red heart. Hover your mouse over the heart and it will show more about the author of the comment, their avatar and what sites they’ve been visiting. (See question number two for the specifics.)

Let’s get started and listen to how and why Andy developed the CommentLuv plugin.

1) CommentLuv has become the most popular plugin used for building community on blogs. As the developer of this plugin, what inspired this idea?

Thanks for saying it’s the most popular! I hope it will continue to be a useful tool for bloggers to install. It always surprises me when I check the stats to see how many people are using the plugin; at last count it was processing up to and over 150,000 comments per day! It’s funny to think of how it started as a simple plugin for WordPress owners and WordPress commentators only. Since then, I’ve made quite a few updates to it and I think the latest version 2.5 CommentLuv is the most stable, compatible and feature rich version yet.

I made it partly as an opportunity to take my PHP knowledge a bit further, but the main reason was for comments and traffic. They seem to be the first things a blogger wants to get for their site and if I could provide them with a way to get more comments and traffic, then it would be a worthwhile project to do and may even increase my own traffic from the people using it.

It started last year when a widget called blogrush came out to display links to other blogs similar to your own. It was supposed to increase traffic for your site, but I thought it had its faults, mainly the fact that the more traffic you got, the more links of yours got shown. It sounded good at first but it seemed to be more beneficial to sites that already had a lot of traffic rather than the ones who needed it most.

I thought a better idea would be to link to the people who comment on your blog rather than some random site that happens to already get a lot of traffic. This way it can increase the amount of comments because of the incentive of a titled link and if more blogs use it and you comment there, it can increase your traffic too, all without doing anything extra than what you already do with your blog and your visitors.

I was pretty sure it would encourage comments and it would help to see what the blog visitors were posting about and give something back to them at the same time. Plus, I was interested to see if I could code it myself. (ever the geek I am!)

I spend the majority of my online time either on my own blog or at my commentators blogs. I am a busy guy so I don’t really have the time to log on to all sorts of social networking sites just to see what my visitors are up to. I wanted a little bit of community/social linking without having to leave my own site or the long process required to maintain a blogroll, so I guess you could say I made it because I’m too lazy to log on to social sites! Also, it feels nice to make something useful (even better when they post about it on their own site!)

2) You’ve recently updated the CommentLuv plugin to include a red heart. Can you elaborate on why you did, and how this feature can help bloggers?

I put the heart option in to give visitors to a Commentluv enabled site a bit of interaction with the page or posts commentators. I know on many occasions I look for other things to click when I’ve finished reading a post or after I have commented. Having the heart info box there helps me decide where to go next. Plus, I think it’s another incentive for someone to comment when they visit, and it also builds on the community feel of a site if a visitor can see the profiles of who comments at your site and what other sites they comment at. All without leaving your blog until they see a last blog post they like where they can click and do it all again.

Sometimes I follow a last blog post to a site and see they use CommentLuv too, so after reading their article I click on one of their commentators last blog posts and so on. Doing this can keep me going through CommentLuv sites until I go full circle and end up on the blog I started with. Having the heart and profile box enhances this even further by allowing me to see details of all the other commentators too. Things like noticing certain people popping up again and again at other CommentLuv sites make me realize how much of a community there is amongst bloggers. And of course, everyone likes to see their avatar and name displayed on someone else’s site!. I’m pretty sure it will help to generate even more traffic and comments which is what the plugin is supposed to do for a site owner, and seeing it happen to more blogs than ever, all from something I made myself is really satisfying. I feel kinda famous

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about CommentLuv, I’m always open to ideas for improvements or features so let your readers know they can visit my support forum or the ComLuv.com site if they have something to ask or tell me.

You can download the 2.5latest version of CommentLuv at ComLuv.com where you can also register your url and take advantage of the extra features for members on CommentLuv enabled blogs. You can also enter a description of your site to be displayed in the heart info box and specify things like your default cache age, feed location and more.

In Closing: Thank you Andy for taking time out of your busy schedule and answering my questions. I also want to express my appreciation for developing the CommentLuv plugin. Personally I appreciate it, and I know the readers of Blogging Without A Blog are grateful, as well.

Today’s Assignment:

Knowing many of you use the CommentLuv plugin, how has it helped you in your blogging activities?

Join in the conversation and share with others how using CommentLuv enhances your blogging experience. I’m looking forward to your answers.

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Let’s face it, people can be judgmental. They see something or someone and instantly make an assumption.

Drive a flashy sports car and it implies you have money. Live on the “wrong side of the tracks”, some people think you’re “less than”. Wear wrinkled, dirty clothes and you could be labeled as “low life”.

It’s often written we only have a short amount of time (usually seconds) to make a first impression.

But what about online? On your blog? Does the same apply?

Yes, it does.

Today’s Lesson

I often stare at my blog and ask myself if it reflects my intent, if it reflects “me”, and the message I’m trying to convey.

When I look at my header, it fits my personality. It’s nothing elaborate, not too fancy, not too flashy, actually, rather simple, but professional looking. (I think.)

The body of my blog, shows others what’s important to me.

My content takes center stage. (well it’s not in the center, but you know what I mean)

My left sidebar starts with the most recent New Blog Of The Week. (you all know I love to promote new bloggers). Next, is my answer to Digg’s front page. It lists my highly most commented posts. ( I love comments). Below that are the most recent commenters, complete with the avatar and name. (I want to promote other blog authors, too.) Below that are random posts, and my blogroll.

The right sidebar is mostly for navigation purposes. You’ll find my subscribe buttons, what my blog is about, my most recent posts, categories and the beginning of my book review section.

As you’ll notice, what’s important to me is, or starts, above the fold.

As I visit other blogs, I look and make an assumption of what’s important to them. If everything above the fold is ads, that blogger is (probably) hoping to make money from their blog. If it’s half ads, half content, that says something too, as do photographs.

Today’s Assignment

If you look at your blog through a reader’s eyes, what will your readers first impression be?

Are you are on target with how you want your online presence portrayed?

Or, does it need to be changed?

P.S. Mine has changed many times since I started blogging.

Photo Credit: pedrosimoes7′s photostream

What an exciting week it’s been. We just concluded the second round of interview topics with Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress) and learned:

1) Revisitng old posts can provide fresh content

2) How to Manage our feed readers

3) And then we Wooped it up.

4) On Tuesday we welcomed our first teenage blogger to the NBOTW series

On to the Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds (FEFF).

If you didn’t follow the comment thread on Wednesday’s post, Lorelle stopped by and shared a link for anyone who uses Firefox and the Greasemonkey Scripts Extension which will help speed up our reading/commenting time. I used it last night while visiting blogs and estimate I shaved 20 minutes off of my visiting and commenting time. It’s fabulous.

Lorelle has written a post detailing the use of this script.

I’ve also been cleaning house (no, not my home, although that needs it, too). I’ve been tidying up my blog by removing the monthly archives list (it was 17 months long), taking off all affiliate ads (In over a year they haven’t made me a dime), and for my recent commenters, I removed the snippets. My “Recent Commenters” now shows your avatar and name with hopes of giving you more name recognition and traffic to your blogs.

Although it’s my blog, it’s all about you!

I hope you like the changes.

Have a great weekend!