Addressing the trust…
In our last email, I was speaking with you about how you could use stories about historical characters and other famous things that many people can connect to, with the intent of invoking emotion and education. But still…
What about trust? Those stories might help you build some rapport, however…what about trust?
Psychological studies indicate that our trust in strangers is dependent on their resemblance to others we’ve previously known. Essentially, we make decisions about a stranger without any real information about them based on their similarity to others we’ve encountered.
Studies indicate we do this even when we’re not even consciously aware of this resemblance. So…
What does that mean if you want to sell things online, anonymously?
Well, it means that you’re better off if you start doing something to put a “face” to your efforts…
…because what people generally think of when they think of someone who doesn’t want to be identified is someone who is up to no good.
You can start with an avatar. By that I mean:
“an avatar is a virtual representation of a person or an alter ego of the user. It is commonly used as a profile photo for video streamers and in online forums”
There are a lot of free online tools out there to create this avatar, but basically, you are looking for a cartoon-like character that will represent you in your online endeavours. It basically represents YOUR face online.
Fotor(dot)com/avatar-maker is one of those sites that will allow you to create an avatar for free. Of course, they have their premium version, but the free one is fine.
Avatarmaker(dot)com is another one. With this though, the ads are a little aggressive, so be careful you are selecting the right options to advance the software and not just clicking on an ad.
A third option is the fairly well-known Canva, which has its own version of an avatar maker. You can find that one over at canva(dot)com/create/avatars.
There are plenty more out there like the above three that I just mentioned. If you just poke your nose around the internet a bit looking for things like “open source avatar creator” you’ll find something.
Another alternative to all the cartoon-style stuff is something that looks more real. If you head over to:
thispersondoesnotexist(dot)com
You’ll find that the website will just generate a random face of a person every time you refresh. It’s done with A.I. and although it looks like a real person…
…it’s not. Completely unique, not a real person.
You could get really creative and take your completely unique, not a real person and turn it into a cartoon with a free resource like the one found over at:
befunky(dot)com
The point here is, although there are endless options out there (especially if you start throwing in the apps on smartphones…)
…don’t take forever on this. Figure out a simple cartoon or picture that is meant to represent your face online.
Use this picture wherever a picture of you is asked for online when you are trying to represent yourself for business.
The second part of this is a logo. A decent avatar that you are consistent with, combined with your logo can go a long way toward building trust and rapport with people.
I’ll be talking more about the logo in our next post because the avatar and logo really need to be for two different things. If you use them in the wrong way, they do not help you at all.
Until Next Time
Dominus Owen Markham
