When you sit down to write something for your website do you struggle to find just the right, compelling language? You want to show your readers that your team knows what their talking about. You want to establish your credibility.
But what happens too often in this desire to appear a “subject matter expert” – in marketing parlance – is the copy becomes jargon-heavy; it becomes more about the writer than the reader.
So how do you write web content for your business that is compelling and written for the reader? Create personas.
What Are Personas?
A persona is a fictional character, if you will, representing a segment of your target audience. The persona is written around a particular behavior or goal. For every goal, there will be a persona.
For example, say you own a wine store. You will have some customers that are wine connoisseurs and already knowledgable about wines. They are interested in finding out if you have a particular vintage available; that’s their goal. That is one persona.
You may also have neophytes who are looking to expand their understanding of fine wines and are interested in attending wine appreciation classes. That is another persona.
If you want to get fancy-pants (and larger enterprises will do this) you can create a great amount of detail to help build out each persona. You can name them, identify how old they are, what kind of car they drive, the kind of job they have. The more detailed understanding you have of your customers, the more detailed the personas become.
Writing Web Content With Personas In Mind
Once you understand what your readers look like and want from your website, you are better able to write for them. Again using our fictional wine store as an example, perhaps there are two different sections of the website based on the goals of the personas. One section highlights new and/or special bottles in stock. Another section might have more educational information and promote upcoming wine tastings.
By having personas for whom you are creating content, it becomes much easier to avoid the trap of writing for the writer, not the reader.
Want to learn more about marketing personas?
Click here to read “To Create Effective Website Content … Know Your Audience“