"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows." -Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

I've blogged about the importance of personas as they generally relate to the development process (see "How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects, Part 1", "How to Create Effective Personas for Your Projects, Part 2", and "How to Use Personas in Your Projects, Part 3").

Personas are created to help shape the system requirements, prioritize features, inform SEO, and test QA. But even with the best personas, the most bug-free code, and kickass design our site doesn't stand a ghost of a chance if the content sucks. And herein lies another use for our personas: guiding us in the realm of content strategy.

How Personas Guide Content Strategy

The most systematic way for your personas to guide content strategy is simply to add another column in your content matrix. For each content line item list the personas for whom the cotent is written. If there are multiple personas for a content items ask yourself if there's a way of determining the primary persona. Put the primary at the top of the list or in bold text so it stands out.

The next thing you'll need to do is review the content with the primary persona in mind. It sounds silly, but you may even want to read the content outloud to the persona's picture. If you find yourself reading text like, "The central threaded recess accepts a metric M3 threaded bolt. The recess is approximately 4 mm deep. The following drawings show examples of geometries for mounting hardware in case you wish to deisgn your own custom mount," and your persona is a 65 year old retired secretary, you may think twice about what's been written.

Guidelines for Quality Content

What you're ultimately trying to achieve is to write content that is appropriate, useful, and comprehensible for your audience. Here's a list of questions to consider when creating your content:

Useful

Will the content satisfy the persona's goals? Those goals (aka "user journeys" or "user stories") should already be documented. Does the content the user will experience along one of those journeys help him or her reach his goal?

Is the content accurate and up-to-date? While your content may have been recently written does it reference anything that may have changed (like a current event, technology, etc.)?

Is the content available in other formats that the pesona may need? It's important to understand the context in which the user will be consuming the content. A do-it-yourself article about car maintenance will be more useful if the article can be printed so the user can keep it near his car. A product promotion site will go viral if you provide links and embed codes.

Appropriate

Does the content include enough information about the topic? It's important to anticipate questions the user may have and proactively answer them in the content. This is the cornerstone of persuasion architecture

Does the content include too much or too little information about a topic for the context? For example, a user looking at a simple recipe doesn't need the history of mangos or your mango farm. It's appropriate to link to that kind of information, but at the user's discretion.

Comprehensible

Does the content use a voice and style appropriate to the age of the persona? If your site caters to disparate age groups then consider coming up with a vocabulary that is understood by the lowest common denominator. Remember that your content is really only a vehicle for the information, concepts, and ideas you want to communicate. Don't let words get in the way.

Does the content use words or acronyms that may be foreign to the reader? If you're in an industry that relies on acronyms then make sure you define the terms as they're used- either parenthetically or via mouse-over tool tip.

Can the persona easily scan the content? Are your keywords easily findable? Is the most important information at the top, as it is in newspaper stories?

Is the content well-formatted? Does it use headings, bulleted lists, and tables for better organization and reabability? The way in which you format and present information should support the content and not disable it. If this idea is new to you, read Edward Tufte (Gregory blogged about what he learned at a Tufte Workshop earlier this year).

Can the persona find the content when searching using relevant keywords? Are they keywords you think are important the same keywords that are important to your users? If you sell insulated beer can holders do you call it a beer cozy? Beer koozie? Or a stubby koozie (as they do down under)?

Make Your Personas Work

The personas you created are a representation of your users, visitors, and buyers. We can't afford to keep those people around for when we have questions, so our personas are the next best thing. Use them. Make them work for you. You'll be surprised how much information you can extract from them. And the more learning you put into your site the better your site will meet the needs of those real people. From requirements, to SEO, to content strategy your personas are there to work for you.