SEO Copywriting and The Power of Persona - Part One

Here's a bit of a philosophical question for an SEO copywriting blog.

Are we always the same person?

After all, don't we adapt to different environments, different circumstances altering our behaviour, our speech and even our thinking depending on where we are, who we're with and what we are doing? People are inconsistent. Certainly superficially. Is the nightclub you, the football match you? Is the boardroom you the intensive care unit you? Probably not. That would be a bit weird. What do we do? We all draw on the various constituent aspects of ourselves and deploy them in ways that feel natural or comfortable.

In spite of these tactical adjustments to the immediate world around us, experts seem to be of the opinion that, fundamentally, we have core cognitive styles. The consensus seems to be that there are 4 basic personality types:


Competitive


Spontaneous


Methodical


Humanistic

Interesting, huh?

SEO copywriters understand this clearly. That when David Ogilvy taught that all good marketing requires empathy, he wasn't just right. He was as right as right can be.

In the scramble to meet deadlines and the rush to get campaigns up and running it's often the case that copy content is left until the ipsus lorem last minute. Sure, in-depth keyword analysis has revealed a list of relevant keywords and expressions as long as Maradonna's left arm. Keywords that you will use as the SEO cornerstones of your online campaign.

Does this keyword research really tell your story in a way that your audience will identify with? What about the actual copy you should have already thought about? The stuff in between your keywords, the stuff that ignores your keywords or is just informed by them? The stuff that really, truly talks to your target audience in ways that they can genuinely relate to? The copy that will keep them reading, will move them and end up converting them from mere observers into customers?

As Copyblogger put so well - not all soccer moms are created equal. And neither are CEOs, students, Belgians, computer experts, pet lovers or even UK copywriters. Who then are you talking with?

How can you be confident that you stand a realistic chance of getting your messages across persuasively and ultimately profitably? And how can you be sure that your copy slams the What's In It For Me buttons for your target audience?

It's a question of persona.

In the second part of this four part introduction to copywriting personas we'll define personas and take a closer look at how to craft them.