Personas are “fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted #demographic that might use a site or product” (Wikipedia) and it is a widely used tool in many industries: from software development to entertainment product development to online #marketing and #socialmedia marketing.
For a #social media marketer, #personas can be your marketing campaign’s imaginary friends. Playing with imaginary friends helps kids learn to interact with real people and personas can teach you to interact with a real audience.
Personas are defined by their unique traits: different levels of experience with your product, different benefits for your organization, different income levels, etc.
There are lots of ways to create personas. You can ponder who they are, every day; what they want, all the time; how they interact with your product or company; what may help this interaction or prevent it from happening; and more. Or you can do research that will include statistics compiled by experts on this audience or asking anyone working with these personas on a daily basis: salespeople, teachers, trainers, bosses, installers, tech support, among others. You can also use your current site statistics or your social media pages insights.
It takes time to create them but it is very worthwhile, because a good persona (set of personas) can focuses you content or your whole campaign.
To appeal to social media users, you need to know who they are first and a new infographic from marketing firm Aimia can help you with that by identifying six types of social media personas—from the “No-Shows” to the “Mix-N-Mingler.”
The personas and the analysis of social media drivers along trust and control axes are certainly worth noting. I may have some doubt about a graduate student with $80K income or percentage of population with income of $95K, but I am sure U.S. Census Bureau would approve. What’s your take?
