Define your personas

Definition Elements

What is a persona? 🤔

Personas are fictional projections of the audiences you want to reach with your media. They are the users/customers of your project. They take the form of typical user profiles that outline certain characteristics such as age, gender, place of residence, socioprofessional situation, preferred times and formats for consuming information, currently consumed media, etc.

Above all, personas are defined by their needs and usage patterns: the problems they encounter, whether personal or professional; the platforms and media they use daily to stay informed, be entertained, communicate, or work, whether online or offline.

Why define personas?

No persona, no business model 💸

Defining your personas with precision and care is a fundamental element in building a media project. Indeed, personas allow you to clearly identify who you are addressing. Each persona is defined to represent a typical segment of the audiences you wish to reach, with their specific characteristics, needs, usage patterns, and financial means.

By identifying the target segments and audiences you define and study, you can reorient your media project, evolve its editorial content, economic model, pricing, or even its formats and distribution channels. Properly identifying your audiences' needs through personas means clearly defining the editorial and commercial proposition you're making to them.

Finally, personae must be at the heart of communication and marketing strategies since they are the basis from which these strategies can be established, refined, precisely determine their distribution channel, the appropriate tone, and the levers enabling audience engagement, conversion, and retention in the long term.

Trying to appeal to everyone means appealing to no one ⛔️

If some media outlets seem to address everyone and be "mainstream," it's only because they reach multiple personas, meet multiple needs, and cover different topics/verticals. A persona thus represents a segment of these audiences, one with its own specific characteristics.

It's therefore not entirely fair to assume that you need to reach 'everyone' and that your media should appeal to the broadest audience. Instead, start by identifying the core of your target audience—one or two personas, to begin with. Growth and any eventual expansion of your audience range will happen gradually, in parallel with the development of your media and its offerings.

Confront your personas with reality 🔮

Once your targets are identified and personas are created, it's essential to validate them against real-world conditions and your actual experience: qualitative interviews, quantitative data, audience research. Personas serve as the foundation for your strategy but work hand in hand with direct engagement with your community. To help refine these audience definitions, it's recommended to conduct an annual audience study.

Moreover, these typical audience personas are useful throughout your project and should be updated regularly (once a year) to verify the relevance of your editorial proposition and your communication and marketing strategies in relation to your audiences, their usage patterns, and their needs.

Finally, work on personas complements work on the canvas, which is a vision of your project as a whole, and in particular your business model. The two work together.

Start with real audiences 🔎

To identify your personas and build their profiles, you need to be observant and pragmatic, but also conduct research and study existing practices, usage patterns, and sociological profiles. Indeed, your personas will be based on both:

1. About reproducing people from your circle whom you would imagine using your media.

Indeed, around you, among people who are more or less close to you, you will be able to identify some who match different aspects of your target audience. You can therefore draw inspiration from the personality, practices or needs of the people you know and associate with the audiences targeted by your project to enrich your personas and make them realistic.

2. Stereotypes and exaggerated personality traits and/or consumption patterns.

A persona is not meant to create a detailed and unique psychological portrait but rather to define marketing segments based on different measurable criteria. In this sense, personas are archetypal portraits that border on stereotype in some respects.

3. From elements derived from sociology.

From reception studies to the sociology of media, uses and public behaviors, sociology is full of illuminating studies and analyses that can guide you and inform the definition of your personas.

🔗 A key source is the Digital News Report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. A study worth consulting and reviewing every year, whether on specific formats (newsletters, podcasts, social media) or across regions (France, US, etc.)

We've supported many projects through this stage, so rest assured: it's normal if you find this step difficult! Especially if you don't have a marketing background, developing personas is often a complex process.

How to define your personas?

Ask yourself what problem you want to solve 🕵️

This step will help you define who you want to target and why (what value you're bringing to them). What problems? What needs? What benefits?

You must be able to define an essential need. If you're not essential to your audience, someone else will be in your place. The need you're addressing must align with your vision, the mission you're pursuing, the overall

Start from identified or identifiable profiles and uses 👯‍♀️

Once you've identified the problems of your potential targets, you'll be able to conduct some preliminary research. Start by examining your own beliefs, what you've been able to observe around you and in the ecosystem.

Next, it will be crucial to delve into audience, usage, and sociological studies related to your topics, media, themes, and business models.

Define your core target audience—the people for whom you are indispensable 🫀

When considering the people you want to reach, think about the differences in customs, needs, and practices that may exist so that you can get an idea of the different categories that might exist within your target audience.

From there, focus your selection on the core of your audiences—the people you’d like to reach first. You can identify one to three different profiles of people who make up your priority audiences.

The primary persona represents your core target audience—the first 100 or 1,000 fans of your project, the people who truly need what your project has to offer. Don’t see a third persona yet? It’s better to have a single, well-defined target audience than a scattered one.

Create a composite sketch of your targets 🤖

Take the time to reflect, look around you, read, and do your research to gain a clear understanding of what these people need, how they operate, their budget, and their preferred formats and media.

• Age — the average age you estimate for him, and the age group to which he belongs;
• Gender — the gender (female, male, non-binary) that will be predominantly represented;
• Place of residence — a village? In a big city? A house? An apartment? A shared apartment? ;
• Socio-occupational status — socio-occupational category, occupation, employed or unemployed;
• Financial resources — average income, average amount spent on culture and information, and whether or not online payment is easily accessible;
• Preferred times and frequencies for consuming information—Do they tend to consume information in the morning before breakfast? On Sunday mornings over coffee? On Tuesday evenings on the subway? On Thursday at lunchtime while biking? For 15 minutes? For 1 hour? ;
• Devices through which a person consumes information (smartphone, tablet, radio, television, magazine, etc.), which may or may not align with their needs and habits;
• Competitive environment/media consumed — examples of media or services that the person consumes or uses, and that are currently beneficial to them;
• Social media and offline networks—where is this target audience spending its time right now? Whether online or offline. (Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.; nonprofit organizations, sports clubs, etc.);
• Problems Encountered and Needs Identified — What problem(s) does your target audience face on a daily basis? What need(s) have you identified? Whether professional or personal. This step is key; it is this answer that makes you indispensable and will determine your target audience’s ability to pay for your project, either directly or indirectly.

I create my characters

✏️ The Médianes team has put together a handy guide to help you apply what you’ve learned from this sheet to your own project. To access it, please click the button below and follow the instructions.

To go further

💡Find inspiration

• Our book, “Creating a Media Outlet,” is a practical guide for anyone who wants to launch an independent and socially conscious media outlet.
• All our how-to guides are here.

Before leaving

🛠 Finished reading and filling out this form? We'd love your feedback! Have a question or comment? Send us a message at [email protected]. Thank you for your help, the Médianes team.