Did you know that only 1% of blog visitors take time to leave a comment? If you’re in that 1% you’re well on your way to making new friends in the blogosphere. Not only will the blogger see your smiling face but other visitors to the blog are likely to read your comment as well.

When you leave a comment you usually get to include your name, photo and web address. ( You also have to provide an email address but that’s not for public display.) However, it’s not always easy to see how to add that photo (also known as an avatar). And if you don’t have a photo, you often end up with “grey outline man” or some default robot sketch.

To save you some time, I recommend that you set up a Gravataror globally recognized avatar. By doing so your image will appear automatically next to your comment on blogs that are set-up to recognize Gravatars. There’s no need to fuss about the fancy coding behind the scenes, simply sign up for an account at www.gravatar.com.

Once you’ve logged in, you can upload a photo to Gravatar that will appear whenever you use that email address to comment on a blog. If you have more than one email, you can list them all or you can set up a different photo for each email. I use two Gravatar images – one for my office email and the other for my personal email.

Once you’ve set up your Gravatar, come on back  here and leave a comment test out how it looks. I look forward to seeing your smiling faces soon.