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Transcript

6/1/26 #ContentChat: Creating Personas That Actually Get Used · #ContentChat

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, welcome to Content Chat.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Erica Heald, and today we are going to be talking about sketching meaningful audience personas, which is chapter three of my book, Content Foundations.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the fourth video podcast in our Content Foundation series.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We previously had chapter one, which was Brand Voice, and chapter two on Style Guides, following the initial one, which just talked about why I wanted to do this instead of doing a traditional audiobook, with the TL and DR being, hey, nobody wants to listen to me read through all of the prompt instructions and template fields that make the book such a useful tool.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: So all of that stuff is still going to be in here.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of today's session, I'll let you know what you can find in the book that I did not get into in our conversation today.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So stay tuned for that.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: But first, let's just, you know, get ourselves all on the same page and in the right mindset.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And let's, you know, I'd like to ask each person who's watching this, who's listening to this, to answer this to themselves.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have personas that are actively used today across your organizations, across your organization, or are any personas you have mostly sitting in a folder somewhere?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or are personas honestly something that remain on your never-ending to-do list?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, is that in most organizations, if there are any personas, they're created once by someone in the organization, maybe with some input from the content team, maybe not, but they're created once and shoved in a file folder or uploaded to the brand SharePoint site, and they're never revisited.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And they get really, really outdated incredibly quickly.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: They become basically marketing artifacts instead of decision-making tools.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And worst of all, a lot of times those personas are not made because of any first-hand experience that the person who drafted the persona has with the audience, with your customers, or with the subject matter.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it's frequently a lot of assumptions, third-party research, or the dreaded, hey, why don't you listen to this recording that our salesperson had with that person on a completely different topic than what you need in order to create a well-rounded persona?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the reason that this matters is, you know, content creators to do a really good job and to inspire their audiences, they need to have context for whatever it is that they're creating.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I do have a snoring French bulldog in the background.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry about that.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Second of all, new team members also need context so that way they can get onboarded effectively.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want a new hire, be it an in-house person or an agency or a freelancer, you don't want them having to come back to you every time they have a question.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you absolutely need to have those personas in place to give them the context they need for what they're doing.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And last but not least, your AI tools need that context too.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: While they may say that they can glean everything they need to know about your audience automagically by you putting in a few words, by you answering a few questions about your industry, they really can't.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, you can't create audience-centric content if you haven't documented who your audience is and what they actually need.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't rely on an AI tool to figure that out for you.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't rely on a bunch of third-hand information being compelling enough to differentiate those personas in how your content is able to actually help them.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start by kind of talking through some misconceptions and about what actually makes personas useful.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, first, let's just put it out there that personas are not just a list of demographic facts.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I rarely have found it to be incredibly useful to know that somebody has 2.3 children.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, that's kind of frightening.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does that point three child mean?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a cat?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a rabbit?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Guinea pig?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what does this data mean?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times it's just information that you might be able to use to create a target segment if you're purchasing advertising, but when you're creating content, especially B2B content that needs to speak to those goals and those goals and challenges that your audience has, it's not there, those demographic facts are very rarely something that helps me do my job.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: But on the flip side of that, you're not trying to create a fictional biography about your ideal uh persona because probably there's multiple people involved with your purchasing process.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: There are multiple personas.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And creating a long-winded narrative isn't necessarily going to help anybody create better content for them either.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Also, personas are not just a stock photo paired with a clever name like Sales Pro Sam or Marketing Maven Michelle, and with a bunch of general assumptions that you've made about them.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is one of the uh most frequent personas I've seen is one where everyone has spent so much time thinking up and maybe even arguing about the clever name for the persona versus creating a persona that's actually useful.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, lastly, personas are not just a document you create to check a box so that way you can say, oh yes, we totally have personas when you're asked if you have personas either to share with a new hire or input into a tool.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Personas really are meant to help you understand what it is that is going to be really helpful to the people that you're creating your content for.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going, they're going to uncover the goals that they have, what's going to make them maybe successful at work, the challenges, what's getting in the way for them of them doing their job or meeting those goals?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: What are their primary motivations?
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: What are they going to be measured on?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: What are the constraints that they're working with?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of information do they actually need?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: At what level do they need really detailed in the weeds how-to content, or do they need higher level strategic making the business case kind of content?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: For the decision-making process, are they the final decision makers?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they somebody who's part of a buying committee?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or are they an independent user who's going to be making that use case to the head of their division?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And last but not least, what are the content preferences for this specific persona?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're all different.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I personally am a reader.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I read very, very quickly.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can read upside down and backwards.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want things written down if I want to learn from them.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for other kinds of content, of course I love video content and audio content.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to learning, I want experiential learning in person, or I want to be reading something.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Or ideally, I want something to read while I'm having experiential learning.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, but that's just me.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not everybody else that I am marketing to.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important that we take the time to understand for each of these segments what are the different types of content they like, what are the ways in which they want to consume that content, and how can we make it easy for them to switch between the different modes of content that they might like.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you know at the end of the day, if you've created a truly useful persona that's going to help you with your content creation, you're you need to evaluate it and ask yourself if your content creators can use this persona to make better decisions without you being in the room.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: If your answer is no, then it's probably not detailed enough or focused on the right information.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's some real talk.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's, you know, it's, I know it can be a lot to put the time in to make that business case for going out there and being able to actually create those super valuable personas, but it's absolutely the only way you're going to be able to get it to work.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have four big mistakes that I have seen over and over again when I've come into new organizations, either as an in-house hire or as an external consultant or freelancer.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one that we've kind of touched on for a second there, but is the most frequent one, is over reliance on demographics.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thing is, is age and job title rarely tell the whole story.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can say, hey, yeah, we're we're targeting millennials with this, and their job title is this.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're the head of content, they're the head of engineering.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not all millennials are the same in the same way that not all Gen Xers or baby boomers are the same.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: We're all unique individuals.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And just trying to get skate by on age and job title means you're gonna be making a lot of assumptions that are probably going to be a little irritating to your end users.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, if your content team never gets to talk to your customers and audience, they're not gonna be able to create meaningful personas for them either.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Shared goals so much more frequently matter than shared demographics.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I have so much more in common with other people who have similar goals as me as an entrepreneur, a small business person, a consultant, and an author.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have so much more in common with people with those goals than I do people who just happen to live in a geographic circumference around me or who happen to have, let's say, gone to my high school and shared my, you know, shared my um location and age group because of proximity way back in the day.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Similarly, you can't create really compelling personas if you only have third-hand access to other people's conversation recordings.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: For whatever reason, in too many organizations, there's a feeling of there being an owner of the customer, that either customer service or sales is the owner of that customer relationship, and anybody from content or marketing needs to go through those teams as a gatekeeper.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, is that gate needs to be opened sometimes.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just say no unless you want to keep having content be created that doesn't quite hit the mark and doesn't resonate with people.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the conversations that people in sales roles or in customer service roles are having are not necessarily going to uncover those aha moments, those kernels of truth, or those specific turns of language, those specific terms of phrases that keep turning up when you have more than one conversation with the people that you're trying to reach, you start understanding them so much better and being able to create relatable content if you're the one who's had those conversations and then been able to turn those conversations into truly relevant, bespoke personas.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the second mistake that we see frequently, and especially when you're looking at some of the content intake briefs that I've seen, frequently people have too many personas.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing is, is if you have more than a couple of personas, it's gonna be really difficult for anybody to internalize those personas and to really understand what makes one group that you're looking to speak to different than another.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that complexity becomes the enemy of adoption of those personas.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So pretty quickly, teams stop using them.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're using AI tools, the AI does not know which persona is most relevant or worse yet, tries to create content or output that speaks to all of them everywhere all at once.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's terrible.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, even if you do have personas in place, another mistake that happens is that they're never updated.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a big project maybe to create really deliciously detailed um conversation, data mining rich personas, but then they've never been updated again.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's looked at them again.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're still referencing customers that have moved on from your product or that aren't in business.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, is that you know, markets change, your products they change, and customer needs change.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're just thinking of your personas as one and done, then you're really missing out on keeping them as an everyday tool to create better content.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Last but not least, mistake number four is keeping personas separate from your content processes and some sort of brand standards fault.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Personas are not something that should only be considered when you're having a sales conversation or when you're doing any kind of brand-related marketing work.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your personas should be part of content planning, included in content briefs, be front and center of editorial decisions, and be part of your measurement.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: You should be measuring whether or not your content is reaching that right person at the right time that the piece of content was created to speak to.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if your content isn't being created with a persona in mind in the first place, oi, you're seeing right now the problem already of not having those personas defined.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because you need to have a persona defined in order to have your content be speaking to someone and be relevant to them, be valuable for them.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: All of this is why I feel so strongly that personas are such a strong part of content governance programs.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your personas are who you're communicating with, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: So similarly with what we talked about previously in this series, your style guide is how you communicate consistently, your brand voice is how you sound, but those personas are the who you're communicating with.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's so important to have those things be working together and be integrated because if they're not, then you're not going to be able to craft the right voice.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be consistent in the right way.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be using the words or reflecting the goals that that person has that your content needs to reflect.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Documented audience understanding helps your internal teams, your freelancers, agencies, subject matter experts, AI tools, and everyone have the guidance in the context they need so that they are not putting your brand first.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: They're putting your customer first, which is so important.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're creating content that's only speaking to you and your goals, why should anyone else care?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why should they respond to it?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why should they share it?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to have that audience first focus.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have that, if you haven't documented your audience understanding by creating personas, you're asking both your humans and your AI tools just to take their best guess.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with that, of course, is my best guess is gonna be different than your best guess and somebody down the hallway's best guess.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So don't leave people guessing, okay?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So next week we're gonna talk about taxonomy because personas and taxonomy are content marketing BFFs.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The personas help you understand your audience, and then taxonomy is what helps you organize content around their needs.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So in the next um edition of Content Chat, we're gonna explore why taxonomy is still one of the most overlooked content foundations and why we need to change that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so that your key takeaways, if you take away nothing else from what we've been talking about, is personas are decision-making tools, not documentation exercises or something that the brand team has created in order to waste time, spend budget, and annoy you.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're really helpful tools, but only if they are focus on audience goals, challenges, and information needs.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Also, they've got to be integrated into your everyday content processes, otherwise, they're not going to be a valuable resource.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: But when you have them in place, that's when the true content magic is going to be able to take going to happen.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have the book and you want to go deeper on uh personas, in the book you're gonna find some persona development frameworks, persona evaluation guidance, examples and practical applications, and AI assisted persona development prompts and workflows.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hope to see you back here next week for chapter four Taming the Chaos with Taxonomy.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll be talking about why organizing content around audience needs is one of the most important and overlooked content foundations.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hope to see you soon.