Your Identity on Entrecard

One thing I love about Entrecard is that you have total control over the design and content of your card. It is no like a university in which all students have the same design of identity cards and all that changes is their personal information. No! With Entrecard, you can choose any of their designs and add text to it, or upload a design you have created yourself. All that matters is that your card should be 125 x 125 pixels. Have you ever noticed how important you Entrecard badge is? It is like an identity, a representative of your blog in the Entrecard community. As a representative, it is supposed to represent and speak for you or your blog.

Your Entrecard Badge has a Mouth

Some Entrecard badges will say quite a lot about you and/or your blog while others will not say much. Some badges, though saying nothing, will prompt, tease or challenge a user to find out for themselves while others will just lay there, dump and not giving any impression. When you advertise on someone’s site, your Entrecard badge is likely to get very many or just a few clicks to your site / blog depending on what your card is telling visitors to that site. Remember that an Entrecard user may be dropping on about 50 or 300 blogs a day and the only thing that can force him / her to stop and click on your card is its nature. He / she does not know about your blog yet. Only your card can present an invitation.

Photo Entrecard Badges

Entrecard Badges with a blogger’s photo or avatar are very common in the Entrecardosphere. If you are a popular blogger and people know your photo or avatar, just seeing your badge will tell them “hey, this is John Chow, Pro Blogger, Dosh Dosh, etc. Even if you are not a very popular blogger but have your photo or avatar in at least three spots on your blog, and have some traffic, people will still be able to recognize your badge and relate it to you when they see it.

Some photo Entrecard badges contain not the blogger’s photo or avatar but a picture of a scene or another person. They say a photo speaks a thousand words, and I think I believe that. What will you think of if you saw a card with the following photo scenes:

• mother carrying a baby
• man and woman in wedding dress
• man and a woman in bed facing opposite directions
• field of completely green grass or trees
• photo of a beach
• rising or setting sun
• dark night with stars in the sky
• man climbing a money tree
• very slim woman or very muscular man
• playing card
• variety of dishes

I strongly believe from the above Entrecards, you can give a vivid description of what the blog is all about. You can then decide to visit the blog, or not depending on whether the subject matter is within your interest zone.

Adding Some Text to the Photo

An Entrecard badge with just a photo can say thousands of things. If your photo is a bit difficult to interpret, why not consider adding a bit of text to it? Some Entrecard badges are made up of just plain text, which could be the title of a blog, a blog’s tagline, the category to which the blog belongs, or a more or less longer description to help the story unfold.

Using a Logo or Fav Icon

Some bloggers (like myself) prefer using their logo as their Fav Icon, and subsequently their Fav Icon as their Entrecard Badge. I really don’t know why a blogger will use this method. I use it just for the sake of consistency. Lately, I also decided to use my Entrecard badge as my Avatar. In this case, anyone that sees it anywhere can know it is AZ Blogging.

What do I Think about Entrecard Badges?

To me, the nature of an Entrecard badge doesn’t really matter. All I think it should be is “Unique”. The nature of your card will let it speak too loud or say nothing at all. Both loud and silence have their pros and cons, so it is left for you to decide. A loud card will immediately tell a visitor everything about your blog and they may not have the interest to click and visit it. Likewise, someone who has been targeting your blog will visit because your card says your blog is just what he/she has been looking for. A card that says nothing will not prompt someone to click and visit your blog because they will not actually know where they are gong. Likewise, many people will also want to click on a silent card out of curiosity so as to find out what the blog is all about.

If however, there is an advice I will like to give you, it will be “Do not change your Entrecard Badge too often”. You must make it a unique and consistent ID.

Please tell mw what you think about your Entrecard badge. Mine (A Z) is almost silent, saying it is the “everything” of “something”.

Is your Entrecard Badge speaking? What is it saying? Please share with me

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