Integrating personas into online social media accounts

[Shaan]

Hi all,

I'm working on establishing a client's Twitter and Facebook persona for existing handles, and wondering if any of you have come across research or anecdata to support best practices on ensuring the transition to the persona goes smoothly and isn't jarring for followers? Currently they don't use a persona at all, it's primarily a somewhat voiceless amplification platform for their content. Thank you!

[Shaan]

To clarify a bit: we're not creating a fictional "character" that will be engaging with followers, rather we're establishing a persona that embodies the voice and communication style that the actual handle managers will use as a guide when creating content. So perhaps some specific questions I have are:

1. Should the implementation be gradual? Or can it just be started all at once?
2. Is there any need to announce to followers that they should expect to see some changes in how we run the handle? (I'm thinking not)

[Paola Roccuzzo]

1. Are the new guidelines setting a voice and tones that are dramatically different from the current ones? If so, I would question the guidelines. Unless this is part of a major rebranding exercise, you shouldn't alter your voice overnight. Consider that Twitter and Facebook will treat your content in a log format: if people scroll down on previous posts they will have a very disjointed perception of your company's voice.

2. Nope. No. :)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Content Strategy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to contentstrate...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to content...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Tony Chung]

And I would take the alternate approach. Going from nothing to something overnight won't register one peep in the social media sphere. So readers look at the status update list and see something change drastically after a specific date. I'm willing to bet that nobody will notice, especially if the personality of the status updates improves the readers' perception of the company.

Change away. Change wholeheartedly. And change wholesale.

[Hilary Marsh]

For clarification, aren’t you just talking about having voice and tone guidelines? This doesn’t sound like a persona as I understand it.

Either way, to answer your questions, my thoughts are that if you do make a big shift in voice, many people may not notice, but the ones who are most engaged might. But even if they do, I don’t think there’s a great need to announce anything — if someone responds publicly or privately on the channels themselves, you can address it then, but that’s not likely to happen.

—Hilary

Hilary Marsh

President and Chief Strategist, Content Company

312-806-7854  |  hil...@hilarymarsh.com

Content strategy for associations, nonprofits, intranets
http://www.hilarymarsh.com 
also hilarymarsh on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Slideshare, etc.

[Shaan]

Three great replies, thanks! Right out of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, too.

To Hilary's question, correct, it comes down to voice and tone guidelines in the end, but we're presenting them as personas because we find that creating a persona based on our understanding of the target audience makes it easier for those stakeholders to understand and trust our recommendations. Some of them are a little skeptical about the value of this project :)

I'm leaning toward a just-do-it-all-at-once approach as I don't think it will be a dramatic shift. It's a corporate client so we're not going off the deep end here, just a number of smaller shifts to engage the audience a bit better. Looking for any hard data to back up that recommendation, but I bet that's going to be hard to come by.

On Wednesday, May 6, 2015 at 11:49:49 AM UTC-7, Shaan wrote:

[Trisha Brandon]

Last year, my agency took over an account that was mainly used for broadcast messages with new tone of voice, strategy and topic focus. The client was highly stressed that the existing followers would leave in their droves. They didn't at all! If you believe in your new approach, just do it.