Are you hoping your well-thought-out social media content brings in new customers? Why not increase your chances by spending a bit of time understanding your target audience. One technique, taught throughout graduate-level marketing courses in academia and widely practiced by top ad agencies and PR firms, is to create target personas. A persona, or a fictional character created to represent your target audience, can be embedded into facts and stats and all that fancy quantitative data many of us love to employ. But by adding the qualitative element to your research — the persona — you will indirectly be humanizing your brand to, you guessed it, attract more human customers.
Identify a Real-Life Model Persona
Before I get started creating a persona for any brand, I like to first identify a real-life friend or relative or neighbor who matches, as precisely as possible, my desired target audience. For example, if I’m a writer who specializes in writing pet bios for local animal rescues, I might select Moira, the receptionist at my dog’s veterinarian office. I know she’s an animal lover, that she has two rescue pups, and that she occasionally fosters a cat or two. Essentially: Moira is my target audience. So to qualify this real-life human into a persona, I might take along my notepad the next time I visit the vet; and while waiting for good ole’ Fluffy to get his next round of vaccines, I may jot down the key characteristics that make Moira, Moira. For any answers not immediately apparent based on physical observation or existing knowledge, just use some critical thinking and good judgement to fill in the blanks.
Example Real-life Persona — MOIRA
Age: 31
Sexual Identity/Gender: Female
Occupation: Vet Receptionist
Educational Level: Some college
Web Habits (Platforms, Blogs): Tik Tok and Facebook. Obsessed with posting pics of rescue pups in need of a home. Religiously reads DIY hair color blogs and the SPCA newsletter.
Attitude toward your service: Loves the fact that writers freelance as animal bio writers.
Values toward others: Prefers kindness. Loves helping others — especially animals.
Typical Day in the Life: Up early to walk the dogs and fix her hair for work. Usually runs errands on her lunch break to get back home to the dogs right after work. If she goes out on the weekends it is to a dog-friendly brewery or dog park.
Quote that represents her: “Choose Love.”
Create an Ideal, Fictional Persona
The next step in your qualitative research is my favorite step. And I suggest you have fun with creating your ideal fictional persona, too! I do want to emphasize this is fiction — so there are no right or wrong answers. Again, simply use your best judgement to create a persona of the ideal potential customer — the one for whom you post!
Example Ideal, Fictional Persona — MATTHEW
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Occupation: Store Manager, Coach Factory Outlet; Founder, Fluffy & Furry Animal Rescue
Educational Level: Master’s degree
Web Habits (Platforms, Blogs): Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Travels endlessly, but also posts pics of his pets back home, at a relative’s house, “missing him” while he travels. Listens to NPR and loves True Crime Podcasts.
Attitude toward your service: Prefers animals to people (unless they are buying a new purse). Sees animal rescues and those who write bios for an animal rescue as essential.
Values toward others: Alienated from his family at a young age — animals keep him going.
Typical Day in the Life: Up taking pics of his dog, cat, and bird (for his Instagram Stories) before the sun rises. Runs home from the Coach store at lunch to check on his animals. Started his animal rescue five years ago and dedicates his weekends to that work.
Quote that represents him: “Everything’s gonna be alright.”
Now it’s your turn! Take some time to add personas, or qualitative research, into your data and market research — and then get to it! You’ll find your social content gains more traction and fosters a higher level of engagement, once you know who you are posting for!
Ashley Henyan is a digital marketing consultant, a freelance writer, and the communications director for the American Red Cross of the National Capital & Greater Chesapeake region. Previously, she held leadership roles in digital communications and media relations with the Red Cross in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Ashley has developed curriculum and trained hundreds of staff and volunteers across the United States in courses like Leveraging Your Story on LinkedIn and Social Media Story Telling. She has been invited to discuss social media marketing and brand visibility on various podcasts and with local and national associations. Ashley has played an integral part in award-winning social media campaigns including honorable mention recognition with the PR Daily Content Marketing Awards and numerous Silver Telly Awards for Branded Content. She holds a B.A. in government and politics from the University of Maryland and an M.A. in English and creative writing with a concentration in screenwriting from Southern New Hampshire University, and an MFA in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Ashley’s work as a ghostwriter has appeared in national and international publications including Yahoo News, China Global Television Network, and The CEO Magazine.
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