Explaining audience personas to a fourth grader

[Jono Smith]

I'm looking for a concise and simple way to describe what audience/buyer personas are, what they are used for, and why they are beneficial. My current description is very jargony:

"We are in the process of developing a series of digital audience personas to provide greater depth to the audience segmentation we have historically used to define our online storytelling. Unlike traditional target audience segmentation, these personas will provide greater depth and context to our target audience segments by focusing on one character who embodies the predominant qualities of the larger group. These personas will bolster our extensive demographic and psychographic data with more qualitative information that is paramount to all content decisions. The five initial personas we are going to develop are..."

Any suggestions on improving upon this explanation?

[Matt Moore]

"We want our writing to have impact. We have lots of data about our readers (who they are, where they live, what they eat for breakfast) but that doesn't really tell us who they are. A persona is a way of describing someone who represents a bunch of our readers in terms of who they are, what they are trying to do and why. It allows us to write for a person rather than a pile of statistics. Our 5 personas are..."

Matt Moore

+61 423 784 504

Sent from my iPhone

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[Rachel McAlpine]

Jono, it's fantastic that you asked for help in translating your industry jargon. And Matt, you've done a terrific job. Sorted!

[Jono Smith]

Thanks, Matt! And speaking of personas, here's a very interesting contrarian view: "Why customer personas may be an outdated marketing technique."

Some of the comments are priceless reading: http://www.businessesgrow.com/2015/04/27/customer-personas/#disqus_thread

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Jono Smith: linkedIn | blog | twitter | (c) 202.236.1079

[Matt Moore]

Jono,

I've heard a few complaints about personas over the years.

I think there are situations where they are not helpful and, even when they are helpful, they can be done badly.

However, many teams do not know who they are writing for or are writing for people unlike themselves. Personas can play a role here.

In the work I have personally done, it is rare to end up with just one persona. And personas are not a reason to avoid talking to, or testing content with, your readers.

Regards,

Matt Moore

+61 423 784 504

Sent from my iPhone

[Tony Chung]

The contrarian perspective of "writing from the gut" is great if the CxO who knows both the business and the target customer base intimately well is also the person who writes all the content. Most of the time it's rare for the CxO to be involved at this level. In some instances the executive don't know their customers at all.

For a large government project we had trouble gaining complete buy-in from the SMEs and execs for the personas created by a third party UX agency. We modified our descriptions specifically to relate to the content needs at the moment of interaction with the site.

This provided the flexibility to serve different users based on the portion of the site they found when searching for their problem. 

For instance, let's take the example of signing up for a recreational program. Most of the users in this category want an easy experience to sign up and pay for a course. But they are usually also willing to dig deeper to read more information, and maybe sign up for another, or a different course.

However, a person who gets a parking ticket or other permit violation wants to find out quickly how to make this thing go away. Either they want quick access to the laws and a process to dispute the ticket, or a direct line to pay the fine.

Alternatively we considered a professional category user who understood our regulations better than anyone and wanted written backup to give their clients who wanted references.

Personas described this way (with the typical names and faces) allowed us to layer information based on the person's need. Plus it helped our non-UX stakeholders to understand our objectives. After all, 80% of web visitors don't needs the micro level detail. The 20% who do can phone the specific department, and the SME would gladly talk about their passion.

-Tony

[Marcia Riefer Johnston]

For a savvy look at all sides of this question, listen to this conversation ("Personalization vs Persona-ization") between Scott Abel and Robert Rose, videorecorded during the Intelligent Content Conference in March 2015. http://mxp.getmura.com/blog/personalization-vs-persona-ization/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonvqzLZKXonjHpfsX56%2BUpUaO3lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ATsRiI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQ7HNMadx1LgEWhQ%3D&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mkto&utm_campaign=ccmx

[Jono Smith]

I wanted to share a brief write up on the digital content strategy and person creation project we embarked on earlier this year at Make-A-Wish: http://a.wish.org/1KXORDt

In a nutshell, we created a new digital content vision and strategy for our organization to help diversify our digital storytelling and messaging efforts. We are in the process of rolling it across our enterprise (60+ chapters and affiliates).

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Jono Smith: linkedIn | blog | twitter

[Marsh, Ed]

Talk about the right content at the right time – I’m meeting with my manager tomorrow to discuss the persona concept.

 

Thanks!

Ed.

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[cliff....@yahoo.com]

Isn't text anticipation and replacement wonderful?

I'm assuming Jono typed and meant "persona creation project."

Otherwise, I'm afraid that link would expose me to TMI…

Cliff

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From: Jono Smith <j...@jono.us>
To: Content Strategy <content...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 4, 2015 12:43 PM

Subject: Re: Explaining audience personas to a fourth grader

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