Empathy is an essential tool for content creators and strategists. We need to understand our users’ why to identify content topics and approaches that will resonate with them. But empathy alone isn’t enough.
Empathy won’t tell you whether your user prefers a 500-word explainer or a 3,000-word deep dive. It won’t reveal if they’re researching options or ready to make a decision. And it won’t help you choose between creating one comprehensive article or two targeted pieces.
User personas can help fill these gaps, but only if they’re built with content teams in mind. Many personas, while valuable in their own right, rarely help answer the questions content strategists need: What format does this user prefer? How deep should we go? What’s their relationship to the topic? Where are they within their user journey?
Flipping the script
At a previous company, we had access to robust, research-backed personas, but these were focused more on conversions and advertising partnerships. They didn’t provide enough guidance on creating content that would keep users coming back.
So editors defaulted to empathy and to leveraging their subject-matter expertise. The content performed well enough, but we struggled with retention and building deeper connections. And this is where content-specific user personas can come in: content teams need personas built with content strategy in mind.
Components of a good content-focused user persona
When building a content-focused persona, think about:
- Journey stage: Are they gathering information, learning about a new topic, or ready to make a decision?
- Content delivery preferences: How and where do they consume content? Mobile vs. desktop? Focused reading vs. multitasking?
- Preferred format: Do they prefer quick answers or comprehensive guides? Reading, video, or audio? Web or social platforms?
- Knowledge level: How familiar are they with the topic or brand?
- Relationship to the topic: Do they have personal or professional experience, or are they supporting someone else?
For example, if I’m creating content for a busy working mom with young children, long-form content may not be a great fit. Instead, I’d want to think about bite-sized content that could be quickly consumed between work and parenting duties.
Likewise, if I’m creating content for a user who is in the research stage of buying a new product, I wouldn’t want to write an in-depth review of a single brand; instead, I’d focus on exploring key features to look for or on a roundup of a range of brands.
Tip for cross-functional collaboration
If your content team isn’t currently involved in the user persona creation process, reach out to the team leading it, highlight the value content teams bring, and ask to be included.
Building these personas requires empathy, something content creators already excel at. In addition to regularly putting ourselves in our users’ shoes, we also have strong subject-matter expertise. Both skills can add significant value to the persona development process.
How to create a user persona
You don’t need to start from scratch or wait for a formal research initiative. While user interviews are a traditional way to gather insights and develop a user persona, there are other ways content strategists can reach audiences—through the content!
If your brand has a social presence, read the comments to see how your content is resonating with readers and begin to understand their concerns and needs. You can (and should) directly ask them questions, either in a post or by DMing a user to see if they will share more context about a comment they’ve posted.
If you run a newsletter, look at the content readers are engaging with and again, ask them direct questions. When I led a newsletter team, I was surprised by the quality of the responses we received when we asked our readers direct questions to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges they faced, their expectations for our content, and the areas where they needed more support. We even used their responses to help shape our newsletter calendar and, by extension, other on- and off-site content plans.
AI hack
You can use AI to help parse through user feedback to develop user personas. Stay tuned for a future post where I’ll walk you through the steps to do this.
User personas in content creation
User personas are only as valuable as your team’s ability to use them. But using personas doesn’t mean pulling up a document every time you write. Get familiar enough with your personas so that thinking about them becomes automatic when you’re planning or creating content.
Here are some ways to layer personas into your processes and workflows:
- Editorial planning: Before a strategic planning session, review personas and identify content gaps for each persona.
- Brief development: Reference the target persona in content briefs to remain grounded in the key audience and align writers with user needs.
- Quality review: When reviewing content, ask yourself, “Does this serve x persona or are we trying to serve everyone and instead serving no one?”
- Performance analysis: Segment your analytics by persona so that you can better identify the content and approaches that resonate with that persona, and then make changes as needed.
Content personas and SEO
Content cannibalization is a regular topic among SEOs. And for good reason. You risk confusing the SERP and splitting or negatively impacting traffic, which can affect ad revenue and site health. You also risk being penalized for creating spam content.
Sometimes, in the interest of avoiding cannibalization, content teams can skew too far in one direction, risking the user experience. This is where user personas can come in. User personas can help to clarify who a piece of content is for and what information will be most relevant to that audience.
For example, a parent supporting a child with ADHD will have different needs than an adult seeking guidance for managing their ADHD. While you could create a super article that covers the topic from both angles, this likely won’t serve the reader unless the reader is a parent to a child with ADHD and also lives with ADHD.
The better solution from a content strategy perspective would be to create two articles. They may rank for some similar (or even the same) keywords, but they serve distinct needs for two user personas: a caregiver versus a person living with a condition.
If you’ve developed these two distinct user personas, you can use them to have a more productive conversation with your SEO team and land on an approach that demonstrates the value of meeting each user’s needs.
Similarly, if caregivers of children are not among your user personas, you’d want to skip adding any information, either in the main article or in a secondary article, about caring for a child.
How content personas support user retention
Content personas can help you show up where your audience actually is. We explored SEO above, but that’s just one channel. When you understand your users, you know which platforms they’re on and what they’re actually looking for.
And once they find you, personas can help you create content that actually helps them rather than generic advice. When content feels like it was written for them, they’re more likely to come back.
Utilizing user interviews to develop user personas for content: A case study
While developing a new content offering, the marketing team created user personas. While valuable, they didn’t offer enough information to develop a content strategy.
They developed their personas with a focus on audience segmentation and acquisition. While I needed to build my content strategy with user acquisition and retention in mind, I had additional needs.
Working with our UX research team, we set up a second round of interviews. As the content lead, I provided recommendations for several focus areas. I wanted to better understand where user needs had not been met historically, the main challenges they faced, and the expectations they had for how content delivered through the proposed product could support their needs.
I then used my own insights from the recordings to refine the original personas to better support content needs. Based on these updated personas, we refined our approach to better serve our audience segments.
For example, one persona needed quick, overview-type guidance they could reference during short windows of downtime, while the other was looking for deeper context steeped in research that they would be unlikely to find elsewhere. Both groups wanted actionable, accessible, and unique tips that they could immediately put into practice.
Based on these insights, we doubled down on our research, seeking those “aha” moments that could support both user groups, and then updated our tone to sound authoritative without isolating the novice group. We also incorporated callouts that would be easy for the knowledgeable group to skip over, but would provide overviews on key concepts to the novice group.
Insider's tip
If you have user personas that aren't giving you what you need to support your content strategy and approach, ask for access to the interviews or other resources that were used to develop them.
Try this week
There are several low-lift, high-impact ways you can start incorporating personas into your content workflows. Here are some ideas to get you started. Pick one, or come up with your own approach.
- Test the “who is this for?” question. Review one underperforming piece of content and ask yourself, “Is this trying to serve multiple personas? Does this meet the needs of the intended persona?”
- Audit your top performers. Look at your top 10-performing pieces of content and identify which persona each supports. Look for gaps. Are you neglecting a key persona/audience?
- Review existing user personas. Identify gaps when applying them to content, and develop a plan to refine them to support your content team.
Do you use personas in your content workflow? If so, I’d love to hear about your approach
Suggestions for further reading
A Closer Look At Personas: What They Are And How They Work
How to master user intent with SEO personas
How User Personas Can Improve Your SEO Strategy
Inclusive User Personas for Content Strategy and Writing
Using Personas for More Effective Content Marketing
User Personas for UX, Product, and Design Teams
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