3 Steps to Create Buyer Personas & Buyer Journeys to Kick-Start Your Content Strategy

It's not enough to have killer content anymore; you have to know how your audience will absorb that content. Creating killer content won't do you any good if it's not something your users actually need.

Instead of jumping right into brainstorming content types, start by creating buyer personas and buyer journeys. This tells you who your buyers are and how they're shopping, giving you a clear idea of what you need to produce to make their decision easily.

Note that buyer personas and user groups are not interchangeable. Users use; buyers pay. Think about any kid's toy. While the child will ultimately be the one using it, the parent is the one you need to create content for because they'll be the one purchasing.

For simplicity sake, let's assume you only have one type of person you're targeting, but in most cases, you'll be marketing to a couple of different sets, so you'll need to replicate this process for each of your different audience groups.

1. Interview Your Audience

The first step in creating buyer personas is interviewing your audience. The key is to survey people who aren't your customers; your customers already know who you are.

There are two types of information you want to get during these interviews:

·         Demographic: Age, gender, family, income, occupation, education, geographic region.

·         Psychographic: Opinions, values, activities, interests, buying process, usage process.

Ask open-ended questions about how and when they purchased a product or service. The goal is to understand their process, not them specifically. Some good questions:

·         When did you know you needed this product or service?

·         How did you shop for this product or service? Name specifics.

·         How long did you shop?

·         What were you looking for in this product or service?

·         What were the most important attributes for you about this product or service?

·         How did you decide to ultimately purchase this product or service?

·         What did you do after you bought this product or service?

Typically, 10-15 minutes should suffice for each interview. Have an idea of what you want to ask, but don't just read off a sheet. Keep it conversational, and people will tell you more.

You'll want to conduct a handful of interviews for each segment in your target audience. After the first three or four, you'll start to see similarities in how people are answering the questions. Group those similarities, and that becomes your buyer persona.

2. Segment the Information to the Marketing Funnel

Now that you have the raw data, you need to put it into a way that's useful. That's where your marketing funnel comes in.

Take a look at your buyer persona and segment off your notes into where they fit in a typical marketing funnel. For this exercise, let's use the Awareness, Consideration and Decision segments. When looking at your notes from your interviews, ask yourself, “When they were doing X, what part of the funnel would that be?” You can use the following as an outline:

Awareness        

·         Recognized there was a problem they needed to fix

·         How they came to that decision

·         First thing they did after they realized they wanted to fix the problem

Consideration 

·         Values they found important in the product or service (price, functionality)

·         Places they looked to solve the problem

Decision            

·         Factors that lead to a purchasing decision

·         How they purchased

·         What they did after purchasing

This allows you to understand how your buyers behave at each step of the process. The next step if figuring out how you get them to come to you.

3. Brainstorm Ways to Reach Them at Each Stage

Now that you've segmented their actions into your marketing funnel, you can start brainstorming in a more targeted manner because you know what they're doing in each phase. Look at the actions in each phase, and start thinking about what you could do to reach them or sway them as they move through the funnel.

For example, in the Consideration phase, if you find that your buyers are comparing a couple of different companies or types of products, create a comparison chart so they can find all the information in one place instead of hunting around manually. This also will show you the key things they find important, which helps you in your messaging of why someone should go with your company over a competitor.

The first couple runs at this content strategy process will take longer, but all in all, the entire process shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours for each persona. Start with your most important personas first, and then work your way back until you have content pieces that will reach each person you're targeting when they need it most.

Info presented by Rankwinz

How Wearable Tech Could Improve Your Mental Health 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Smart wristbands have become increasingly popular tools among people interested in tracking data about themselves, from their heart rate to their movement during daily activities. In the future, these devices could also help people understand the symptoms of conditions such as autism and depression, researchers say.

In a series of studies over the past decade, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have analyzed data from wristbands to see how people's heart rate, temperature, movement and skin conductance correlate with symptoms of an array of physical and developmental conditions.

These researchers have recently focused their work on children with autism, and have found that these children's expression of their emotions often does not correlate with their internal arousal state as indicated by wristband data. For instance, a child with autism might appear to be experiencing a high-energy episode when, in fact, wristband data indicates that their internal state is calm.

"[Teachers] will see someone jumping up and down, and say, 'Maybe someone should calm that kid down,' but we read out his internal state, and see his state is so low that this kid needs 20 minutes on a trampoline before he gets to a normal level," Rosalind Picard, director of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT, said during a lecture here at Harvard University on March 12.

Picard said she considers the whole suite of body data during her analyses, but uses skin conductance as the main way to determine a child's internal state. Skin conductance is the ability of skin to conduct an electrical current, and increases with moisture, for example, when someone sweats.

Skin conductance generally increases when the body's fight-or-flight response is triggered, and also during periods of positive excitement. Even when a person does not feel particularly sweaty, changes in their emotional state can cause small changes in their sweat glands that raise their skin conductance.

Pairing skin conductance data with written logs about a child's behavior throughout a given day could help researchers determine which types of activities and therapy work well for a child, and which are disruptive to the child, Picard said. This could be particularly helpful for people unable to describe their emotions in words, which is the case for some people with autism, Picard said.

Beyond their autism research, Picard's team also recently launched a long-term study to assess how skin-conductance data may help people with depression understand what triggers bouts of stress and anxiety. Therapists who treat people with depression often use questionnaires to understand their patients' triggers, but these questionnaires can be subjective. Wristband data, on the other hand, can help pinpoint the moments when stress levels become elevated throughout the day, such as the arrival of a spouse home from work, or an interaction with a friend.

"That's the stuff the questionnaires just don't [tell] you," Picard told Live Science. "We think we are going to get complementary information. We don't know yet what we are going to get, but we will mine the data and see."

People without mental health conditions may also find that wristbands are useful during difficult times, such as short bouts of depression or sleep problems."Everybody goes through highs and lows and good times and bad," Picard said. Some may want a tool to help them understand those times.

However, wristbands alone will not provide the information required to improve therapy, because both positive and negative emotions can increase skin conductance. Rather, contextual information about a person's day will always be necessary to make use of the wristband data.

"Skin conductance without context is pretty meaningless," Elliot Hedman, a graduate student in Picard's lab, told Live Science. "The context is what helps make it so we can interpret the data."

The results generated by the devices will differ among people, because conditions such as autism and depression vary widely across people. But as more and more people use the devices and more data is compiled, broader discoveries about these conditions and how they can be treated may arise, Hedman said.

7 Things You Should Stop Expecting from Others

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ―Bruce Lee

The biggest disappointments in our lives are often the result of misplaced expectations.  This is especially true when it comes to our relationships and interactions with others.

Tempering your expectations of other people will greatly reduce unnecessary frustration and suffering, in both your life and theirs, and help you refocus on the things that truly matter.

Which means it’s time to…

1.  Stop expecting them to agree with you.

You deserve to be happy.  You deserve to live a life you are excited about.  Don’t let the opinions of others make you forget that.  You are not in this world to live up to the expectations of others, nor should you feel that others are here to live up to yours.  In fact, the more you approve of your own decisions in life, the less approval you need from everyone else.

You have to dare to be yourself, and follow you own intuition, however frightening or strange that may feel or prove to be.  Don’t compare yourself to others.  Don’t get discouraged by their progress or success.  Follow your own path and stay true to your own purpose.  Success is ultimately about spending your life happily in your own way.

2.  Stop expecting them to respect you more than you respect yourself.

True strength is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles.  It’s about having faith and trust in who you are, and a willingness to act upon it.  Decide this minute to never again beg anyone for the love, respect, and attention that you should be showing yourself.

Today, look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I love you, and from now on I’m going to act like it.”  It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself.  When you practice self-love and self-respect, you give yourself the opportunity to be happy.  When you are happy, you become a better friend, a better family member, and a better YOU.  

3.  Stop expecting (and needing) them to like you.

You might feel unwanted and unworthy to one person, but you are priceless to another.  Don’t ever forget your worth.  Spend time with those who value you.  No matter how good you are to people, there will always be one negative person who criticizes you.  Smile, ignore them, and carry on.

In this crazy world that’s trying to make you like everyone else, the toughest battle you’ll ever have to fight is the battle to be yourself.  And as you’re fighting back, not everyone will like you.  Sometimes people will call you names because you’re “different.”  But that’s perfectly OK.  The things that make you different are the things that make YOU, and the right people will love you for it.

4.  Stop expecting them to fit your idea of who they are.

Loving and respecting others means allowing them to be themselves.  When you stop expecting people to be a certain way, you can begin to appreciate THEM.

Pay close attention, and respect people for who they are and not for who you want them to be.  We don’t know most people half as well as we believe we do; and truly knowing someone is a big part of what makes them wonderful.  Every human being is remarkable and beautiful; it just takes a patient set of eyes to see it.  The more you get to know someone, the more you will be able to look beyond their appearance and see the beauty of who they truly are.  

5.  Stop expecting them to know what you’re thinking.

People can’t read minds.  They will never know how you feel unless you tell them.  Your boss?  Yeah, he doesn’t know you’re hoping for a promotion because you haven’t told him yet.  That cute guy you haven’t talked to because you’re too shy?  Yeah, you guessed it, he hasn’t given you the time of day simply because you haven’t given him the time of day either.

In life, you have to communicate with others regularly and effectively.  And often, you have to open your vocal cords and speak the first words.  You have to tell people what you’re thinking.  It’s as simple as that.

6.  Stop expecting them to suddenly change.

If there’s a specific behavior someone you care about has that you’re hoping disappears over time, it probably won’t.  If you really need them to change something, be honest and put all the cards on the table so this person knows how you feel and what you need them to do.

For the most part though, you can’t change people and you shouldn’t try.  Either you accept who they are or you choose to live without them.  It’s might sound harsh, but it’s not.  When you try to change people, they often remain the same, but when you don’t try to change them – when you support them and allow them the freedom to be as they are – they gradually change in the most beautiful way.  Because what really changes is the way you see them.  

7.  Stop expecting them to be “OK.”

Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle, just like you.  Every smile or sign of strength hides an inner struggle every bit as complex and extraordinary as your own.

Remember that embracing your light doesn’t mean ignoring your dark.  We are measured by our ability to overcome adversities and insecurities, not avoid them.  Supporting, sharing and making contributions to other people is one of life’s greatest rewards.  This happens naturally if we allow it, because we all share very similar dreams, needs and struggles.  Once we accept this, the world then is a place where we can look someone else in the eye and say, “I’m lost and struggling at the moment,” and they can nod and say, “Me too,” and that’s OK.  Because not being “OK” all the time, is perfectly OK.

Afterthoughts

People rarely behave exactly the way you want them to.  Hope for the best, but expect less.  And remember, the magnitude of your happiness will be directly proportional to your thoughts and how you choose to think about things.  Even if a situation or relationship doesn’t work out at all, it’s still worth it if it made you feel something new, and if it taught you something new.

10 Simple Ways to Beat Impulse Buying

The enemy of frugality and simplicity and your monthly budget is the impulse buy.

We’ve all done it, of course, and it can be incredibly difficult to stop the urge to buy once it’s in us. There’s an incredibly cool gadget that we have to have, a great pair of shoes or jeans, a book or magazine or dessert that won’t cost much.

If you’re in the store, or at an online site, the forces of advertising and marketing are sometimes too powerful to overcome. And yet, they can be beat, with some simple strategies.

The trick, of course, is to think about it. It’s when the impulse urge is subconscious that it’s most dangerous. If you give it some thought, and realize that you have the urge, you can apply these strategies to beat it.

If impulse buying has been secretly undermining your monthly budget, here are 10 simple strategies for beating the urge. Choose the method that works best for you, or use them in combination.

1. Create a 30-day list.

Make a new rule: you can’t buy anything (except necessities) until a 30-day waiting period has passed. Put a 30-day list on your refrigerator, and when you have the urge to buy something, put it on the list with today’s date. After a month has passed, you can buy the item. Many times the urge will have passed and you can just cross the item off the list. This works if you stick to your rule. The only exceptions would be groceries and other similar necessities.

2. Don’t go to the mall. 

You only get the urge to buy on impulse if you’re in a shopping area (or if you’re watching TV). So, prevent the urge from happening in the first place by not going shopping. Don’t go to the mall or Walmart or other shopping areas. Only go to a store if you have a specific necessity to purchase, and go with a list. Don’t buy anything not on that list. Now get out as soon as possible. Don’t just walk around window shopping for entertainment, or you will be sorely tempted. Find other ways to have fun.

3. Don’t go to online retail sites. 

Just as the mall will create the urge to buy, so will online sites such as Amazon. They make it too easy to buy something. Instead, stay away from these sites.

4. Monitor your urges. 

Make it a point to monitor your urges, if it’s a big problem. Keep a little piece of paper, and put a tally mark on it every time you get the urge. This helps you to become more conscious of the urge, which is usually something we don’t even notice. Different symptoms can appear, such as faster breathing or a faster heart rate, when we have the urge. By becoming more aware of the changes in our body, we can begin to get the urges under control.

5. Take a deep breath. 

When you do get the urge, there are ways to calm it down. Deep breathing, self massage, walking around, and drinking water can all help control the urge. Take 10 deep breaths, and the urge will often be diminished enough to resist.

6. Calculate the value in life energy. 

If you’ve been a reader of The Simple Dollar for long, you know about how to calculate your true hourly wage. Keep that number handy, and the next time you want to buy something, divide the price of the item by your true hourly wage … this will tell you how many hours of your life you had to give up to buy that item. Sometimes the number of hours can be eye-opening, especially for more expensive items. Consider whether you really want to give up that much of your life for that item.

7. Plan your purchases. 

Making a list before you go shopping is important. If you can make it a habit to stick to that list, you’ll eliminate a lot of little impulse buys. For other purchases, make it a habit to plan them, save for them, shop around, and even see if you can get it for free. Going through this process ensures that your purchases are more deliberate, and less on impulse. Plan ahead for birthday and Christmas gifts, and other large purchases that you know are coming up in the month ahead.

8. Freeze your credit card. 

If using your credit card is a problem, consider giving it up completely (I did). If that’s not a good option for you, try literally freezing your card. Put it in a Ziploc baggie with water, seal it good, and put it in the freezer. Don’t write the credit card number anywhere. Now, if you want to make a purchase with the card, you’ll have to unfreeze it. That little wait of a couple of hours can be enough to stop you from making many purchases.

9. Ask questions. 

Before you buy anything, ask yourself a series of questions. Is the purchase going to improve your life in some important way? Is the purchase supposed to make you feel better? Does it help you meet one of your life goals? Will it simplify your life? These are useful questions to help you evaluate the value of a purchase, and why you’re making it. Be honest with yourself — don’t try to sell yourself!

10. Keep the end in mind. 

It’s useful to have clear goals in mind at all times. What do you want to do with your life? Do you have financial goals that you’re trying to accomplish, in the long-term and medium-term? Keep your savings goals in mind, and know when you’re about to make a purchase how the purchase will affect your goals.

Is Your Social Media Content Quality-Controlled?

If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? To put it another way, if you post something on social media and (you think) no one is around to read it, does it still make an impact? A former PR executive in New York, the well-known operator of a popular online job bank in Cleveland and a host of politicians and celebrities will be the first to tell you that every piece of social media content makes a sound – and often a really loud one.

That being the case, it seems odd that even the most experienced marketers sometimes fail to realize that everything, and I mean everything, we say or post to social networks has the potential to impact the public’s perception of our brand – be it personal or professional. Whether you are a big brand or a small business, all of your social media content leaves you open to scrutiny, and the meaning of your messages are always subject to interpretation. What sounds funny to you might be offensive to someone else, and what is intended as a tongue in cheek comment may come off as blatant arrogance.

Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that brands are far too often relying on inexperienced staff to make the determination as to what is appropriate to post on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere. Celebrities may build their brand with raunchy, crude content – but your business won’t. Years of hard work devoted to building a stellar reputation can all come crashing down with a simple click of the “Post” button.

So what steps can your business take to ensure that posts are vetted, content is appropriate, and the tone reflects the true meaning of the message?

Here are a few key things to keep in mind in order to protect the integrity of your business by making sure your social posts are designed with the utmost consideration when it comes to customer relations and safeguarding your reputation.

Chain of Command for Sharing Social Media Content

Every business needs a clear chain of command when it comes to social posting. Who creates the guidelines for posting? Who develops the content to be posted? Who verifies the posts before public distribution? In a small business these tasks might all fall to the same person. For large brands, there might be a team of people responsible for developing and approving posts. But social media moves so fast that best practices can easily be cast aside in the name expediency.

In situations that demand a real time response, knowing who is responsible for making the decision as to content or format will mitigate the risk of posting something that can lead to an unnecessary crisis.

Best Practices and Team Training

In keeping with the theme of strategies and contingencies, your social posting should be guided by a series of best practices covering everything from what to post to how to respond to customers. Your social media team needs to be trained in these areas to ensure they clearly understand their roles and responsibilities when it comes to sharing your corporate message and representing your brand. Simply hiring social media “experts” does not guarantee that they understand your business philosophy when it comes to client interaction.

While there are some universal best practices to abide by (see ‘Don’t Respond Angry’ below), every brand will have its own approach to social engagement. Once you have determined your social voice, draft and edit your content accordingly. What’s more, you should also consider refresher sessions with your team every so often to maintain the integrity of your brand on social media.

Consider Your Response

The comments you and your team post on social channels are out there for everyone to see. While we want to respond to posts, positive or negative, in a reasonable timeframe, it is imperative to consider what you are saying and how it people will react to your post.

Granted, we generally don’t have the time to spend hours every day mulling over each post that we write. That said, it is still advisable to set aside some time to make sure that your responses to business sensitive comments are well thought out.

For smaller businesses, make sure you take the time to craft your response carefully and read it over several times just to be sure it can’t be misinterpreted. For larger organizations, you need to have a social media posting structure in place that establishes who determines when a post should be elevated to a higher decision maker for review, who is assigned the responsibility of responding to these posts, and who vets the replies along the chain of command?

Don’t Respond Angry

For small business owners who manage their own social media, it’s easy to take comments personally. The temptation to “teach that customer a lesson” can easily cloud judgment when it comes to posting a reply on social channels. When that happens – and we’ve all seen it happen – things quickly spiral out of control. On the same note, for big businesses who assign social media responsibilities to junior staff, agencies or third parties, it is important to remember that these parties do not necessarily identify with or have a connection to your brand, and they may not fully consider the repercussions of tactless comments.

For these reasons, it is imperative that you consider what you are saying and how it will be perceived by recipients and those with whom they share your comments. While I noted above that real-time interaction is sometimes necessary, you’re better off stepping away and regrouping before you post an emotionally-charged response.

Make Sure Your Agency Knows the Rules

If you do choose to go with an outside party for social media management, best to make it clear early on that you need to have a big say in the best practices outlined at the beginning of your relationship.

In November of last year, a tweet was sent out from the Home Depot account which was chastised for being racist. While the company immediately took ownership of the event and fired the employee and agency responsible, incidents like this raise questions with regards to who is watching over those responsible for your social media content.

As a business owner, you have the right, in fact, the obligation, to know who is posting on your behalf. For example: what are their qualifications, how have they been trained and who is watching over them?

You will be ultimately responsible for the content posted on your social channels, so make sure that your third-party partners clearly understand their responsibilities as they relate to your brand.

In today’s online social world where the lines are blurred between what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, outsourced social media management can be an effective method, but must be guided by a clear set of rules. There is one simple rule that should be followed by anyone involved in social media posting on behalf of a business: If you think it might offend people, it probably will. So err on the side of caution.

Conclusion

When introducing your brand to the social media world, you need to realize it is considerably more vulnerable than ever before. Every word you share, every response you give and, essentially, every move you make is open to scrutiny by forces both large and small. 

Ensuring your social content is high-quality and implementing best practices to keep it that way are an important element to the success of your overall social strategy.

Info presented by Rankwinz

Japan raises sales tax for first time in 17 years

Japan has raised its consumption tax for the first time in 17 years in an attempt to rein in public debt.

 From Tuesday, sales tax will increase from 5% to 8%. It will rise again, to 10%, in October 2015. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would continue to take "necessary action" to address livelihood issues and keep Japan's economy on track.

The stepped tax increases are aimed at covering rising social welfare costs linked to Japan's ageing population. Japan currently has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. It also has the world's highest ratio of elderly to young people, raising serious concerns about future economic growth. The last hike in 1997 saw Japan's consumption tax - the equivalent of VAT (value-added tax) or sales tax - rise to 5% from 3%.

Almost immediately afterwards, Japan plunged into a deep recession with a lasting impact: the country has struggled to escape the trap of deflation, or decreasing prices, almost yearly every since.

«Widely accepted»

A tax increase has been discussed in Japan for several years, but it has always been perceived as highly unpopular with the electorate. The current rise is expected to present a challenge to Mr Abe's aim of forcing Japan's economy out of deflation and serial recession.

Separate data on Tuesday indicated that those concerns are shared by the business community. The results of the Tankan survey, which polls more than 10,500 Japanese companies about their business outlook, indicated that Japanese firms were not optimistic about the rest of the year. However, analysts say Japan's economy will have a better chance of surviving the tax rise this time round.

"Everybody was extremely worried because of the bad impact of the last hike, but this time it seems to be widely accepted," Martin Schulz, an analyst at Fujitsu Research Institute, told the BBC. "Demand is strong and it will not drop that much as many have been fearing."