How do you update your personas as your audience evolves and grows?

2 How often should you update your personas?

There is no fixed rule on how often you should update your personas, as it depends on various factors such as the speed of your industry and market changes, the amount of customer feedback and data collected, the diversity and dynamism of your audience segments, the frequency of launching new products or services, and the performance and conversion rate of your current content. As a good practice, you should review your personas at least once a year or whenever you notice a significant shift in your audience's behavior or feedback. Additionally, you may want to update your personas more frequently if you are running a campaign, introducing a new product or service, or entering a new market.

3 What data sources should you use to update your personas?

Updating your personas requires gathering and analyzing data from multiple sources, both qualitative and quantitative. Customer surveys and interviews are direct ways to get feedback from customers, while customer reviews and testimonials offer indirect insights into their opinions, experiences, and emotions. Social media and online forums are platforms to monitor conversations, questions, complaints, and praises. Analytics tools help track and measure customer behavior, actions, engagement, and conversion on your website, blog, email, and social media. CRM and sales data provide an understanding of customers' demographics, psychographics, purchase history, and loyalty.

4 How to update your personas step by step?

Updating your personas is not a difficult task. Begin by reviewing your existing personas and determining what needs to be changed. Utilize checklists or templates to evaluate your personas and ensure they are accurate, relevant, and comprehensive. Collect and analyze data from surveys, interviews, analytics, and CRM to gain insight into customer characteristics, behavior, and feedback. Utilize persona builders, editors, or generators to create or modify your personas. Ensure you update the essential elements such as name, photo, bio, background, role, goals, challenges and pain points, motivations and drivers, content preferences and consumption habits, buyer's journey stage and decision criteria. Finally validate and share your updated personas with your team and stakeholders using tools like personas tests, reviews or presentations. Make sure you get feedback and approval from your team and stakeholders to ensure alignment with your content strategy and goals.

5 How to use your updated personas to create better content?

Updating your personas is not enough. To create better content that meets your audience's needs and expectations, you need to use them. Brainstorm content topics and formats that match your audience's interests, challenges, and goals. Tailor your content tone, style, and language to your audience's preferences and personality. Map your content to your audience's buyer's journey stage and decision criteria. Optimize your content for SEO and social media by using keywords, hashtags, and meta tags that appeal to your audience. Measure and improve your content performance with metrics and KPIs that reflect your audience's behavior, engagement, and conversion.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?