A lot of authors, agents, editors, etc. have gone into some serious detail about the importance of an online platform. For those of you not in the know, that’s basically what sorts of social network sites, blogs, etc. you have on the internet.

Think of the platform as a place for your little writing career to jump off of. The more people know who you are, the springier your platform is.

The thing is, with facebook, twitter, formspring, foursquare, and every other trendy worded network out there, it can be more than just a little overwhelming. (Then shouldn’t I have just said overwhelming?) So, we’re going to start simple.

With your Avatar.

What’s an Avatar? It’s the cute little picture in all your online profiles, and (don’t freak out or anything) it needs to be fabulous.

You probably knew that already, but here’s something you might not know yet:

You should use the same Avatar on every network, blog comment, website, whatever.

Invisible person in my fake audience says: What? You mean I can’t express my individuality with my avatar by uploading a thousand different cute pictures of baby animals and changing them out whenever I want?

That’s what I’m saying, invisible person. Your avatar has to be the exact same on twitter as it is on facebook as it is on goodreads as it is on myspace. How the heck are you going to build your brand and make yourself recognizable if you look different everywhere you go?

Your avatar is like your logo. Heck, for some of you– it is your logo.

So, your assignment today is to come up with a really great avatar, go through all your social network sites and blogs and make it the same.

Here are a few that stuck out when I went through the last few tweets in my stream:

Stick a link to your new avatar below in the comments. I’ll pick a few and talk about why they were great choices!