Why Fake Social Media Avatars Suck – My Experiment

Shortly before Marty caused a ruckus with his avatar theory post, I had embarked upon an experiment of my own. I’d been taking careful note of the “popularity” of the hot chick avatars/personas that had been sweeping the social networks. I wanted to test that out for myself and see just how difficult it would be to blog as someone else. I figured I’d only be someone else up to a point – in other words, I was going to be my former self. I would assume the persona of myself at a younger age – mid-20’s or so. I would be reliving my youth, so to speak, which I thought might be fun for me, and would make for an interesting experiment as well. I would use an avatar that was attractive, but would not be identifiable as a particular person. I would create profiles under her name, and traverse the web as my new persona.

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Community Begets Community

There are a lot of pros and cons to having an online community associated with your site. The cons mostly center around having to manage people within the community (dealing with flamers, etc.). But the biggest pro, in my mind, is that community begets community. If you manage to get even a handful of core community members who are passionate about your site, they will inevitably spawn new members as they tell others about it. And much of the time, their enthusiasm for the site will filter down to the new members, causing them to be enthusiastic as well. It is this growth that will make your seo efforts easier, because you now have people who will link to your site if they have sites, or will create buzz in areas that contain people who do have sites.

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