Jacob Share on the Personal Branding Blog shared some great tips on using avatars for branding.

First of all, if you don’t have an avatar, get one! I went to http://en.gravatar.com/ to get one for my blog posts.

These are really important for branding yourself. You can use them for your Twitter, your social networks (like Brazen Careerist) and they also show up when you reply to blog posts.

I recently edited a photo to be use as my avatar. It comes out fairly recognizable even as a small image. The extremely small image is hard to see well, but you would recognize it if you had seen it around before. 

One thing I did with this avatar was completely edited out the background. This causes all of the focus to be on me. Since my hair was a shade different during the summer when the picture was taken, I changed the picture to black and white. I think back and white is very classy looking.

Your picture should portray how you want to be perceived. I wanted to look professional, but not still and unhappy like some professional pictures I have seen.

I created this avatar in a basic photo program called PhotoDraw. It was quick and easy and helps create a consistent look for my personal brand.

Rachel M. Esterline works as an account executive for Central Michigan Life, the nationally award-winning school newspaper at Central Michigan University. She is as an account executive for PR Central, CMU’s student-run public relations firm and as a public relations executive with the Student Government Association. Additionally, Rachel serves on the executive board of the Public Relations Student Society of America at CMU and has completed a seven-month internship with her university’s public relations and marketing department. Rachel will graduate in May 2010 with a degree in public relations with minors in journalism and communication.