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Creating Substantial Personas and a Meaningful Brand Tone

Published August 20, 2021

A conversation will always be more substantial when you know the person you’re conversing with, right? The same is true for your social media content. Deciding WHO your audience is will always provide more meaningful engagement.

Getting on social media and just throwing out some words that sound like something you would say just doesn’t cut it. You must know your audience, and the more personally you know them, the better your content will be.

We’re not talking about just making a quick guess and going with it. We mean, taking the time to dig in. Gather your leadership team and get them involved. Have a good conversation and come up with two to three different “characters” or personas that represent your customer base. 

Here’s what we want you to decide about this persona:

  • What is their name? (Have fun with this!)
  • What is their age?
  • What are their family details? (Kids, marital status etc.)
  • What is their career?
  • What is their household income level?
  • What are their hobbies and interest?
  • What are their fears in life?
  • Describe a day in the life of this person.
  • What is this persons motivations to engage with your brand?
  • What are their hesitations to engage with your brand?
  • What products and services do you have that will help them or solve their problem?

Get creative with it! We often like to ask our clients to think of their favorite customer. The one that they wish they had a million more of and then model their first persona after that customer. Give them a silly name that is a bit of a spin-off of your actual customer. You don’t have to tell them you did this unless you’re tight like that.

For the second and third personas, we like to direct our clients to think of the different services/products they offer and the different types of customers that would use those different services/products, then create one or two more personas around those customers using the same process.

Creating Substantial Personas and a Meaningful Brand Tone

The next factor in deciding how you will approach your social media content is to determine your voice and tone. This is heavily weighted by your personas, because if your target persona is a 75-year-old lady, chances are she won’t respond to the use of street slang. Or maybe she will, but I know my grandma isn’t that hip. 

When doing this exercise to determine your brand tone and values, take some good time to answer these questions. Really think about them from a “top of the mountain” point of view and answer with care.

Brand Tone & Values Guided Questions

  • What is the organizational goal here?
  • My brand makes me feel:
  • If a loyal customer described my brand in one word, it would be: 
  • Interacting with my brand encourages people to: 
  • The mission/purpose of my brand is: 
  • Two words that sum up the mission/purpose:
  • I DON’T want my brand to be: 

The answers to these questions should make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and give you a refreshed motivation to helping your business thrive. If it doesn’t, then what are you even doing, man?

Creating a Content Strategy Statement

The last little step is the best part! The part where we see it all come together. The part that gives us a tangible reminder so that we can have a simple reminder of who we are and what kind of voice to use on our content.

Here’s what you do. Complete this sentence by using the goals, audience, and values above into this content strategy mad libs. This will help center the type of content that you will be creating. Put this sentence on your desk, as a note taped to your computer, wherever you will be reminded of it constantly as you work. 

The content/social media strategy we produce helps us to (meet organizational goal) by providing (type of) content that makes (specific audience) feel (emotion) so they can (complete their goal or task).

There ya have it. If you do this exercise, we’d love to hear from you to see how it went! Now, go out and conquer the world, friends!

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