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Connecting WordPress with Social Media
Gravatar, avatars and linking to social media through WordPress Global.
If you have blog content, you may want your readers to share that content. In this article, Linda offers a variety of ways to help your readers share what you've written. The focus in this article is on Gravatar, avatars and linking to social media through WordPress Global.
Gravatar Punch
Since I've been on Gravatar a while, and on WP even longer, I'm unsure how the conjoining between the two sites took place or when it happened. I just know that, now, I can work from two different sites to create an avatar, to switch that avatar around and to create links and ways to communicate in both places.
Now that you're registered at WP, you might want to head to Gravatar to create an avatar. An avatar is an image that you see alongside a Web user's name in many instances. If you have a FB page, a blog, a Twitter account and more that all link together as YOU or as your business...then WP and Gravatar can be likened to the foundation for that connectivity in many ways. Gravatar, basically, creates a way to identify yourself across the board at many social media sites through an avatar and through your personal preferences to connect various social media sites.
The Gravatar site is easy to use, and they link to a ton of instructional sites and guidelines to help you delineate how to use your avatar and your profile. Once you connect between Gravatar and WordPress, you can open your WP account and see that your profile at WP imitates the one that you created at Gravatar. The profile you create can be self-edited so that your public image displays only what you want others to see:
Note: This profile is shown at Gravatar, but anyone can reach it through WP as well. Note that you can include a number of profile photos and links to other sites as well as links to your Twitter account and about twenty other social media sites. You might also note that your larger image will be pixelated, or lossy, because Gravatar seems to refuse to post the larger image on any given avatar photo.
You might note, too, that when you register at WP Global and at Gravatar and return to check out your profile at WP, you'll see the following:
The arrows above point to the fact that if you add new photos and new links to external services (meaning social media sites), you'll be conducting those activities through Gravatar.
Linda Goin
Linda Goin carries an A.A. in graphic design, a B.F.A. in visual communications with a minor in business and marketing and an M.A. in American History with a minor in the Reformation. While the latter degree doesn't seem to fit with the first two educational experiences, Linda used her 25-year design expertise on archaeological digs and in the study of material culture. Now she uses her education and experiences in social media experiments.
Accolades for her work include fifteen first-place Colorado Press Association awards, numerous fine art and graphic design awards, and interviews about content development with The Wall St. Journal, Chicago Tribune, Psychology Today, and L.A. Times.