InSights Group

We are doing company launches, brand management, running companies, and in general trying to keep up with you in changing the world!

How to write to your dream persona

What’s a persona?

In marketing, it’s a description of the characteristics of a person who fits an idealized profile.  It’s your ideal customer or client.  It’s a description of the type of person you’d most like to be able to talk to, and to influence.  In blogging, it’s the type of person you’d most like to have as a loyal reader of your blog.

Who is that person?  Are they young, old, male, female?  Do they have a certain income level?  Certain interests?  Certain hobbies?  Do they work in a particular industry?

Going through the process of describing this “dream person” will enable you to write more effective blog posts.  Identifying the persona of your ideal customer allows you to talk to that person.  Doing that is much more effective than trying to talk to the world in general.

Describe your ideal customer (your dream person) as best you can.  Then just write to that persona, and that persona only.  Never mind everybody else; they’re not nearly as important.  Write about the things that would interest that person(a), that would touch their emotions, that would be interesting and useful to them.

You may end up with several distinct personas that you want to write to; that’s OK.  You might want to give them first names, and write to Bob on Mondays, and Fred on Tuesdays, and Susie on Wednesdays.

If you do this, you’ll find it much easier to come up with ideas for blog posts, and it will be much easier to craft an effective message.

This is a guest post by Tom Harris. Visit his awesome and amazing website here.

What is Persona Branding?

At the Insights Group, we teach something called Persona branding. It’s branding your name, your face, who you are and what you do – all as a complete package. It’s not leading with your company name. Quite honestly, it’s leading with your face and leading with your name, because that’s the most memorable part. That’s what people remember, and that’s the person they are ultimately doing business with.

How do you keep personal social media separate from business?

This will depend on your mission for participating in social media. If you are an entrepreneur, your social media sites should reflect you as one person, with different interests. Your personal and your business life are probably overlapping anyway, so your social media presence will too. Share some glimpses of your personality in your posts, and create an online persona. This does not mean that you should release all of your personal details, or air anything that is too personal online. Why would you want to share too much online anyway? Even when people think something is private, whether a direct message to someone, via email, or only visible to friends online, anything you put into this electronic media is available online, forever. Before you hit publish or send consider that you are taking out a billboard on the interstate. Does your message pass the test?

If a company is developing a social media strategy, they may be tempted to create a presence for the company. Consider how you feel when you read a message from XYZ Company, versus one from Jane, the marketing director. Any message that comes from a person is way more personal, and we’ll be more inclined to listen. Visit Facebook or Twitter. Look around. How do you feel when reading posts from a company? Let your response be the judge, and then ask your customers what they want. At the very least, a company needs representatives blogging and posting. Share a bio of each of the contributing individuals. Create a company persona and then let us meet the individuals in that company. It’s a must.