Content marketing is extremely popular these days, and for good reason. Readers receive valuable information, while website design specialists and site owners get the marketing and relationship-building benefits that come with being a trusted source. It’s a win-win proposition, but the popularity of content marketing does come with one potential downside.
When everybody has a blog, how do you make yours stand out?
If you really want to rise above the pack, your blogger needs to write for the right personality. Developing personas is the best way to understand your audience, and develop content that suits the personality of your prime targets.
What is a Persona?
Creating personas means looking beyond target demographics and other generalized measurements of your audience. Nielsen Norman Group, which conducts research into user experience, defines an online persona as a “fictional, yet realistic description of a typical or target user.” It’s a way to truly get to know the people you’re writing for, and learn how best to connect with them.
Building a persona is a bit like creating a realistic social media profile for a person who doesn’t actually exist. You start with the basics of what you know about your target audience, then flesh out a more specific personality from there. Where do they work? What are their goals, and concerns? What motivates them? Your goal is to create a personality sketch, highlighting how the persona’s characteristics influence the way they’d interact with your client and speak about the products and services you discuss.
How to Create a Persona
Personas are a popular marketing tool for website design and marketing, so you won’t need to look far for help developing your own. A quick search for persona templates will reveal plenty of tools you can use to get started. No matter which template you choose, however, there are some specific data-points to include to develop an effective persona.
- Start with age, gender, and location. The location typically doesn’t need to be exact, unless your business has special ties to a specific address. Instead, consider overall characteristics, such as whether your persona lives in a rural area, a suburb, or a city.
- Next, look at employment. You’ll want a basic idea of what your persona earns, and what type of industry they’re in. If you’re blog is geared toward professionals in a specific field, spend some extra time on the employment section to make sure you hit the important details.
- Above all, your product or service is a solution for a challenge that your persona faces. If you want to pitch your solution effectively, you need a deep understanding of the situation it solves. Start by looking at your persona’s goals, and the challenges that stand in the way of achieving them.
- Once you understand your persona’s challenges, consider the ways in which your solution fits their needs. What sets your service apart from the competition, and how can you get that across to your readers? Your marketing and product research will help fill in the gaps, here.
- Some marketers prefer to dig even deeper, and include the target’s leisure activities and other “non-essential” information. While this type of information can help in some situations, Nielsen Norman Group suggests leaving it out, unless you have a specific need as it relates to your business.
Professional Website Content Development Services
Creating personas typically works best when it’s a group project. It’s not easy to create an accurate portrayal of a fictional human being, and having multiple voices involved helps ensure that your personas are as realistic as possible. The payoff is more than worth the effort. With well-developed personas in hand, a skilled blogger can gear your content directly toward your specific targets. The result is a blog that speaks to your core reader, and content marketing that delivers on its promises.
At Emphasize Design, we offer all the tools you need for effective inbound marketing, including the best website design in Calgary!
