Creating a buyer persona for social media

- [Instructor] Author and entrepreneur Seth Godin says, "you can't change everything or everyone, "but you can change the people "who matter for your business." But who exactly are the people that matter for your business? Before you start creating and sharing your copywriting online, you'll need to know exactly who you're writing for by creating a buyer persona for your social media posts. A buyer persona is a specific description of a person that represents your target audience. These descriptions usually include details like their interests, challenges, goals, demographics, and behavioral patterns. Here's how to get started. Think of it as a model of what your ideal customer might look like. First, dig into the demographics. I always like to say that the best place to start is where you already are. Take a closer look at the data on your current customers and social media followers. Speak to your customer service and/or sales team. Find out what sort of challenges are popping up frequently, what goals they're hoping to achieve with your products or services, and what their biggest hesitations are before buying. Conduct interviews or send out a survey. Ask your customers directly about themselves. And dive into your CRM, Google, or social media analytics to see what you can find out. Some of the details that you'll want to compile about your customers include location, age, gender identity, primary language, interests, goals, values, buying behavior, and whatever else might be relevant for your specific business. If you're a B2B business, you'll also want to consider things like industry, business size and job title or position. Identify challenges. Once you've figured out who you're speaking to, you'll need to know what's holding them back from achieving their goals. Some questions to consider here are, what are the roadblocks this person is facing that's preventing them from reaching their goals? What has stopped them from taking action so far? What are their hesitations or fears about moving forward? And most importantly, how can we help them overcome these obstacles? For example, imagine that you run the social media presence for a dentist's office. One of the challenges of your target audience might be a fear of dentists. In that case, you would want to focus your strategy on helping them feel more comfortable and safe, so that they make that first appointment. Determine goals. Now comes the fun part. Figure out what success looks like for your target audience. Some questions to consider are, what drives them? What does progress look like? What's the ultimate goal here? The answers can be professional, they can be personal, or they can be a mix of both. The key is to try and dig in a little deeper, to figure out what motivates them to take action. And last, put it all together. Now that you've done the research and learned more about that person you're trying to connect with, mold the data into a specific customer identity that you can refer back to as you create and share. Some companies even go as far as to give their buyer persona a name or a stock photo, so that they never lose sight of who they're speaking to. By creating your buyer persona, you're now one step closer to creating copywriting that speaks directly into the hearts of your audience. Get ready to create some content magic.