"Personas" are imperative for content strategy. "Personas" tool comes from user experience area. "Personas" is a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience. "Personas" are realistic descriptions of your target audience.
"Personas" help to bring richness to otherwise statistical data. They provide greater depth and context to generic target audience groups by focusing on one character who embodies the predominant qualities of the larger group. Personas enrich different content data with more qualitative information that is extremely important for all content decisions.
"Personas" answer such questions as: What are the common goals of a target audience? What is their information seeking behavior? What are their frustrations? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is a typical user scenario? Why they access content?
These questions would have huge impact on types of created content, where it is published, how it is published, how it can be found, how it is governed. Thus personas present critical information that inform the planning, creation, management, and evaluation of content. This would help to plan a better user experience.
Examples of personas could look like this:
- mechanical engineers;
- marketing and sales professionals;
- attorneys.
These groups of people, as an example, would have different goals in their work style and the content which they create and use.
A "persona" can also include demographics such as age and gender, the stage of life the person is in, goals they have, and challenges they may face.
There are three main principles in creating "Personas":
Location
This is not about geography, this is about understanding where your audiences are digitally active. You need to know which content they use, what they read, which social networks they use, etc.
You also need to understand what devices they are using, and ensure that your content is being delivered in a way that is accessible on that device.
Motivation
Different consumers are motivated by different things. Some value new content, others value historical content, while many are interested in overall content on a given topic.
Finding this motivation will ultimately drive the direction of your content.
Participation
Different audience groups interact with content in different ways and for different purposes.
You need to understand not only what content your audience consumes, but how they consume it, how they engage with it, and how they respond to it.
This is ultimately about choosing your message and tone for each audience group depending on their current need.
"Personas" have valuable effect on the conversations and requirements gathering from key stakeholders. Content stakeholders are scattered between a variety of different departments and their content needs are different. This approach would help the overall content strategy by directing content stakeholders expertise and efforts towards creating content management model and its governance. Content strategy ensures that that enterprise content management is going to be effective.
Without personas, you may only be guessing what content your audience needs instead creating and managing content which your audience is actively seeking. Documenting your personas, even if it is done in a quick way, is key to keeping everybody focused on the same audience.
You may have multiple personas that you are targeting, but the content you write should be directed to a specific audience (persona) and serve a purpose which can be measured.
Personas are critical component in an organization’s overall content strategy.
Galaxy Consulting has over 17 years experience in creating content strategy for the effective content management. We have always created "personas" and found it to be very effective. Contact us today for a free consultation.
