Internet Marketing Tips - Choosing A Profile Image or Avatar

Last week, we showed you how you could jump on the social networking bandwagon and sign-up effortlessly. We even shared a list of people you should follow or become a fan of. Now that you’ve got that brand-new account, this week’s tip is to teach you about adding a profile image or avatar to make yourself stand-out across the various sites.

While we are all probably guilty at one time or another of using an image from the Internet that we found that we liked a lot, we need to remember that we often cannot use these images for our profile photo. This includes images of famous people, brands, company logos, etc…

The reason why you cannot use such images is one, they aren’t your images. Second, you are misrepresenting yourself and the person, brand, company, etc…by using someone else’s picture as your own.

So you’re probably wondering what to do in this situation. Here are a few tips to help get your creative juices flowing!

• If you’re an artist, create your own profile image that is representative of you using photo editing software!
• Whip out your camera and have someone take a picture of you.
• Use an existing photo that you already took – feel free to change out your picture each week depending on what you have going on.
• Ask for permission to use an image (you’ll probably be told no, but at least you tried).
  

If there's a topic you would like for me to address or if you have questions on using profile images or avatars, send an email to internetmarketing@marketamerica.com and include “profile image” in the subject line.

Sincerely,
Your Internet Marketing Manager