Social Media Writing Tips: Get A Persona

If you’re just starting a business, you could be winging it or researching your heart out. At the beginning, it seems a million decisions have to be made before you can start making money. That quick idea turns into hours of wondering who your brand is serving, what colors represent your brand, and how you position yourself in the market. If you’re still stuck toward the beginning in brand-identification mode, here are two things that may help you get back to making moves, at least when it comes to writing.

Dial it in.

Your brand and your client should be BFFs.

Understand Your Ideal Client as a Person

Every brand should have one persona that they’re marketing toward, maybe two. Even if they get customers who aren’t in their targeted demographic, a clear focus helps brands stay true and cohesive with messaging and imaging. Brands that target millennials can be super easy to spot, because right now the trends tend toward light pink and sparkles. Any brands come to mind?

Even if you’re not their target demographic, you likely understand instinctively who brands are talking to (or at least when they’re *definitely* not talking to you). Brands targeting younger women tend to use new slang, talk about pizza or tacos, and refer to current trending shows on Netflix. Brands targeting 30 year old women will likely feel a little more mature: fewer sparkles, more jokes about loving sleep, and more love for Rihanna. Sometimes, these will overlap, like when past trends come back into fashion (like how the 90’s are cool again now). That’s probably why you can find a good Friends reference almost anywhere these days. Which leads me to:

Create a character or persona for your ideal client. Sometimes it’s easy to identify a real person or character close to what you’re looking for, that already exists. Let’s say, for instance, our client is a “Monica.” We would talk to her very differently than a “Phoebe,” because she cares about different things.

Even if our brand is the same hotel, our focus shifts depending on our target client. For Monica, we would talk about service, quality, and cleanliness (or showcase those things). For Phoebe, we might talk about the vegetarian options at the hotel restaurant and the efforts we put into keeping the nearby beaches clean for sea turtles. Same hotel: different focus.

Understand Your Brand as If It Were a Person

This is similar, but there’s an important distinction. Your ideal client persona will dictate WHO you’re talking to, but your brand persona will dictate HOW you talk to them.

We want to keep the voice consistent for our brand so people know what to expect, to a degree. Just like we curate our feeds to be harmonious, the voice needs to be consistent. Finding a persona that fits the brand makes the job so much easier.

Some brands are energetic and knowledgeable. Others are more gentle and soothing. If you’re selling candles and pajamas, you’re probably going to use softer words than if you’re selling sports cars and software. Think of who your brand would be if it were a person. To go back to the earlier example, Monica speaks differently than Phoebe, though they’re both women from New York.

When you remember the people behind the accounts, you realize that social media is just that: social. Your brand will be easier to remember and interact with if it has a recognizable personality (and look, but we can talk about that later).

Are you having trouble writing for your business? I’d love to help. Comment below and I’ll do my best to work through it with you.