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Persona Mapping

Thinking about the people you would like to engage with is a lot easier if you use a bit of structure to help you get into the weeds of who people are and what they need. Using this three step process will help.

Step 1: Define your personas

Our activity Defining the Cast is a great way to get started with defining your personas. Once you’ve done a basic overview, you can ask more questions about your personas:

  • Who are the people you are trying to serve? What’s their name? What is their position in their company?
  • Which details about them are relevant to this context?
  • What do they want? What do they need?

Target Group: communication teams, content creators, strategic direction

Time: 1 hour + audience research

Material: Whimsical Template

Goals: understand your desired audiences and their content needs

Step 2: Create your Persona Spectrum

A Persona Spectrum is a way of grouping your individual personas together. Ask yourselves:

  • What do your Personas have in common? Do some of them have similar needs?
  • Think of a way to group your Personas and name those groups
Example of Persona Spectrums for the Digital Credentials Consortium

Step 3: Find their journeys

We often use a four stage engagement model to help determine where our audiences are in terms of their engagement with a particular organisation or project.

cc-by-nd Visual Thinkery for WAO
  • Awareness – The first stage invites you to think about how your particular group hears about you or your project for the first time. The questions to as are How do they hear about us and how would we like them to hear about us?
  • First Engagement – Stage two identifies the first interaction a person or a group has with you or your project. What is the first action that they take and what action would you like them to take?
  • Build Relationship – Stage three is about your interaction. How do you build relationships with people or groups and what value can you bring?
  • Deepen Engagement – As people deepen their engagement with your organisation or project, you’ll want to show them that they’re valued. So how can you ensure consistent engagement with your most engaged audiences?

Our Persona Spectrum Mapping template can help!

Click here to access the template to make your own copy

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