How to Boost Your Blog's Reach with Personas
The job market is competitive. You're a job seeker who knows you’re an awesome employee but you have trouble connecting with the right people. You’ve heard that creating content like blogs and videos can highlight your value and set you apart from the competition. But you’re not a writer and you don’t have a marketing background, so you’re not really sure where to start.
Once you’ve identified who you want to connect with, you can write more engaging content that resonates with your aspirational audience. One way to identify this target audience and tailor content specifically for them is to create a customer persona.. Let me show you how it can give you a powerful edge and boost your confidence in the job search!
What is a Customer Persona?
A customer persona is a tool used by product managers to help understand key traits and needs of a specific type of user. Developing customer personas allows product developers and marketers to “walk in the shoes” of their customer, improving the chance of product-market fit.
In the context of this blog, the “customer” is the person you want to talk to (a hiring manager/decision maker, recruiter/influencer, potential colleague/information source). Product-market fit is achieved by creating content that your audience engages with, boosting your online presence and hopefully getting the attention of the person you want to connect with.
Creating personas can help you to understand how people in your audience consume content. This means not only the language you use but also the platforms you post on. Understanding demographics and geography can play a big role in successful marketing.
Example of a Customer Persona
ChatGPT can be a great inspirational source. If you’re not sure where to start, try asking something like:
"Good afternoon, Chatty. I want you to help me develop a customer persona that I can use to quickly tailor blog posts in the future. Can you help?"
Chatty will give you a list of questions to get started, defining things like Demographics, Goals and Challenges, Interests and Hobbies, Values and Motivations, and Media Consumption Habits. Answer the questions to the best of your ability, but the beauty of using this tool is its ability to help you fill in the blanks.
For this blog, I created Mike the Financial Manager. He is 40 years old and lives in Calgary, AB with his wife and kids.
"Mike is a 40 year old male based in Calgary, AB, working as a Financial Manager. His wife manages the home and kids so he can focus on his career. As the primary breadwinner in the family, he feels pressure to bring home the bacon."
I’ll admit, I don’t know much about the financial industry or 40 year old men, so I’m relying on Chatty to fill in the blanks. I asked Chatty to suggest everything about this persona besides what I had originally prompted with. I didn’t want to include all of the suggestions, so I specified those which I wanted to include. This was done by a series of “What _____ do you think Mike has?” questions and “Please add to the profile _____.”
The final persona looks like this:
Create Your Own Persona
Over time, you can update the persona based on real feedback. Some key tips for using ChatGPT to help craft an audience persona:
Be specific and give them a name. The purpose of a persona is to help you empathize with a person. What makes this person different from others? How will they interact with your content? How will you remember them?
Ask ChatGPT for suggestions. Consider asking ChatGPT to fill in some blanks. For example, what other goals and challenges would this person have? Did I miss any values and motivations? Is this persona believable? If you agree with the suggestions, remember to ask ChatGPT to add them to the persona.
Revise based on reality. ChatGPT is a very useful tool for inspiration but does not replace real market research and validation. Adjust your persona based on lived experience! If you've based a persona on a real person, consider adding specific details like a favourite movie to tailor content even more.
Use personas to create content. Consider asking ChatGPT to suggest edits on your content based on personas you are targeting. This can help you find language that resonates better with your target audience, as well as determining the best platform to deliver the content. For example, I originally wrote my first blog post (Understanding Customer Needs: A Holistic Approach for Entrepreneurs) with an example about a car salesman, which I thought was a very relatable story. But when I asked ChatGPT for some insight into how my target personas would engage with that content, I decided to change the article to resonate more deeply with my target audience.