shay

I wrote a post today on the importance of defining personas — it’s on our strategy blog at Viget.com — but didn’t really explain the particulars of this process and its effect on content.

Of course, when you understand your audience, you’re better prepared to WRITE for them. Maybe this is common sense. But what’s unfortunate is when, for example, bloggers at big companies try to leverage a new (informal) social media tool but use the same, stiff, informational voice observed throughout their traditional marketing sites.

When we define a persona at Viget, we think about how that user wants to interact with the site. Inherently, we have to consider the content — how does that user literally want to be spoken to with words in addition to the design and development features that marry for a pleasant user experience.

I’ve talked about a couple ways to stand out from the crowds by capitalizing on some crucial real estate — the about page, error pages, for example — and understanding your audiences is still a part of being able to craft really smart copy for these areas.

Anyway, check out the post in its entirety (with a pretty example, too) for more specifics.

I wrote a post today called To Thine Own Self Be True on VigetAdvance, which is all about web strategy. Part of strategery in the web that I love so much is finding the best ways to communicate through writing. With all the design bells and whistles, and the sweet user experiences custom development can offer, sometimes consistently what throws me off is a typo or grammatical error.

For example, I hate it when people use “over” instead of “more than.”* Drives me bonkers.

Anyway, I can *gulp* understand that not everyone chooses to pursue a copywriter. I can even appreciate that people make grammatical mistakes. (I make mistakes, unfortunately, and admittedly hardly ever, in fact potentially never, but occasionally, I think.)

But one exercise I believe is absolutely crucial to conveying legitimacy to users is to exude your unique tone and voice across all of your site’s content. That personality should crop up in design and development features. It should permeate every aspect of the user experience. Then, she can leave your site feeling like she knows you — because you consistently spoke to her in an authoritative but personable way — which means she’s more likely to visit you again.

Clients we work with occasionally struggle to define themselves, so in the strategy blog today, I broke down an exercise I’ve encouraged clients to undertake in the early stages. I’ve heard regularly that they’ve benefited substantially from it, and it’s relatively easy to do; all you have to do to get started is talk.

Oh, and then write. A lot.

* Yes, I know this is debated and that some camps think “over” is acceptable. I’m just not in that camp. I’m also not in the Oxford comma camp, if you must know.