Who is your digital audience? And how to determine your content strategy for them. This is a talk I gave at the Information Industry Network's Digital Content Strategies event 21 April 2016. #iidigital Full post on Medium: https://medium.com/@ianrobins/how-to-develop-your-audience-personas-and-build-content-strategies-for-them-fe21588f10a7#.wziktsuda

1. 6 simple steps to convert site analytics
data into valuable audience personas
And how to build content strategies to service them.

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/weekinreview/09lohr.html?pagewanted=all

3. “5 years ago we were writing for
robots (for Google).
Now we are writing for people.”
Kevin Delaney
Editor-in-chief & president
Quartz

4. Site-as-a-service
“Journalists need to understand and interact
with people as individuals and communities,
rather than as a mass.
Journalism needs to shift from creating content to
providing service, helping the people we serve
better meet their goals and needs.”
Jeff Jarvis
Media blogger, adviser and professor

5. PART 1 |
6 simple steps to convert
site analytics data into
valuable audience
personas

6. A persona is a way to model,
summarise and communicate
research about people who have
been observed in some way. It depicts
a specific person but is not a real
individual.
Smashing Magazine
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-1/

7. The purpose of personas is to create
reliable and realistic representations of
your key audience segments for
reference. These representations
should be based on qualitative and
some quantitative user research and
web analytics.
Usability.org
http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

8. They help you define your key digital
audiences to create an understanding of
their characteristics and needs.
They establish data informed insights that
enable you to create content strategies
that engage, retain, and serve your digital
audiences.
PURPOSE OF DEVELOPING AUDIENCE PERSONAS:

9. Capture what you’d like to
know about your audience.
Filter down to 5 to 10 key questions. These will give you
initial focus when you start looking at your data.
1

10. 1 How many people come to our site each month?
2 What content interests them most?
3
How long do they spend reading? What type of content has the longest / shortest
read time?
4 Do people consume different types of content on different days?
5 What are people doing at different times of the day?
6 What are people consuming when they visit us on a mobile device?
7 How does that mobile behaviour differ from desktop audiences?
8 What content or sections have the lowest bounce rates? Which have the highest?
A few starter questions

11. Explore your site analytics to
identify trends & behaviours.
You’ll have a lot of data. Use your questions to help filter
down. Start looking for patterns that you can explore.
You may need to look at your how you use content tags to
help you collect meaningful data.
2

12. Area of focus Observations
Content interests (themes, topics, sections)
Format of content consumed (style, length, type)
Time of day most active
Days of the week most active
Frequency of visit each month
Length of visit each session
Mobile consumption
Desktop consumption
Other characteristics
A framework to capture your observations

13. Segment your audience
into frequency of visit.
You can focus in on those that you want to
understand more.
3

14. Flyby
audience
Loyal
audience
Power
audience
1 - 3 4 - 20 21+
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
How we define our audiences

15. Flyby
audience
Loyal
audience
Power
audience
1 - 3 4 - 20 21+
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
pieces of content
consumed on our
sites each month.
Focusing in on our loyal audience

16. Explore building
segments of
audiences to help
develop
understanding.
Examples are by business size
or mobile device consumption.
*personas are meant to depict an individual
person. But if you are unable to do this
initially, this can be a useful approach.

17. Develop 3 key personas
from the data.
Start simple. Develop early personas as a presentation.
Evolve later.
4

18. Area of focus Audience 1 Audience 2 Audience 3
Content interests (themes, topics, sections)
Format of content consumed
(style, length, type)
Time of day most active
Days of the week most active
Frequency of visit each month
Length of visit each session
Mobile consumption
Desktop consumption
Other characteristics
Identifying your audience groupings

19. WHO ARE THEY
Job title or profession (1st party data)
Industry
Location
BROWSING HABITS
Frequency of visit per month
Most popular time of day
Pages consumed per month
Time spent reading
Sites they are active on
Social sharing
AREAS OF INTEREST
Type of content consumed
Popular topics / sections
Favourite reads
Format of content consumed
DEVICES USED
What devices do they use
What do they read on each
device
Length of visit by device
Format of content consumed
Name your
persona
Gathering the data to develop your personas

20. Engage editors and
other interested teams.
Encourage conversations about your personas.
How do they compare with what other teams might have?
What surprises are there?
What else would people like to know?
How could they use them within their work?
How will you use them?
5

21. Tell the stories within
the data.
Find the stories within your data and personas and
share them internally. See how you can evolve these
with different teams to embed the value of personas.
6

22. Bring your audiences
alive internally.
Publish your personas internally, somewhere visible.
Help people understand who your audiences are.
Keep asking for feedback. Keep evolving.
Analytics is just the start to developing personas.
7

25. PART 2 |
12 steps to creating
effective content
strategies to service your
audiences.

26. 1 CURRENT CONTENT APPROACH
2 CONTENT VISION
3 ROADMAP
4 CONTENT PURPOSE
5 STRATEGY
6 GOALS
7 KEY ACTIVITIES
8 CONTENT STRUCTURE
9 PUBLISHING STRATEGY
10 KEY RESOURCES
11 ACTIONABLE METRICS
12 TESTING AND ITERATIONS
Content strategy framework

27. CURRENT CONTENT APPROACH
Where are you now?1

28. CONTENT VISION
Where do you want you
content to be?
2

29. CONTENT ROADMAP
How will you turn your
vision and goals into a
quarterly roadmap?
3

30. CONTENT PURPOSE
What’s the purpose
of your content?
4

31. STRATEGY
What are your key
strategies for creating
valuable content?
5

32. GOALS
What do you want to
achieve with your content
for this audience?
6

33. KEY ACTIVITIES
What are the key activities
you need to deliver your
goals?
7

34. CONTENT STRUCTURE
What content structure
is needed?
8

35. PUBLISHING STRATEGY
What will be your
publishing strategy?
9

36. KEY RESOURCES
What resources do you
need to support the
strategy?
10

37. ACTIONABLE METRICS
What measures should be
in place to help you take
actions to improve?
11

38. TESTING AND ITERATIONS
How will you test your
strategy, apply your
learning, and evolve your
approach?
12

39. AUDIENCE PERSONA: Name of your persona
CURRENT CONTENT APPROACH What’s your current approach for this audience?
CONTENT VISION How might you need to develop the content you create for this audience now you have insights?
ROADMAP The key milestones or steps you need to take over the next 3, 6, 12, 18 months to move towards your vision?
CONTENT PURPOSE Describe the purpose of your content aligned to the insights you have on your persona.
STRATEGY What’s your key strategies for creating value for your audiences through your content?
GOALS
What do you want to achieve with your content for this audience? How will it engage, retain, and grow your
audience?
KEY ACTIVITIES What are the key activities you need to deliver your goals?
CONTENT STRUCTURE What content formats are needed? What are your style guidelines? How will you structure your content?
PUBLISHING STRATEGY How often will you publish? Where will you publish? What time(s) of day will you publish? What day(s) of the week?
KEY RESOURCES What resources are needed to support the implementation of this strategy?
ACTIONABLE METRICS
How are you going to measure the impact and performance of your content? What actions will you take from
these metrics?
Developing your content strategy

40. AUDIENCE PERSONA: Name of your persona
CURRENT CONTENT APPROACH
CONTENT VISION
ROADMAP
CONTENT PURPOSE
STRATEGY
GOALS
KEY ACTIVITIES
CONTENT STRUCTURE
PUBLISHING STRATEGY
KEY RESOURCES
ACTIONABLE METRICS
Content strategy - TEMPLATE

41. Thanks for listening.
I’d love to hear your ideas,
approaches, and advice.
ian.robins@siftmedia.co.uk
@ianrobins