Page 54 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

broader trends, your consumers, and conversations about your industry and
potentially your company, too.
Google Images also searches professionally produced and published images,
not just user-generated ones, so you might not get an accurate picture of
what people are talking about.

FIGURE 2-8:
AOL Video.

Identifying Personas

After you understand what your customers do online, you can begin to define
them more clearly. To do this, you can create what are known as personas. Personas
are customer profiles that represent your actual buyers. Alan Cooper first wrote
about personas in his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (Sams Publishing).
He wrote, “We don’t so much make up our personas as discover them as a
byproduct of the investigation process.” That is exactly what you need to do.

Some marketers swear by personas; others find it difficult to wrap their heads
around the concept. We recommend the creation of personas because they help
you stay focused on the buying strategies that matter. For example, suppose you
identify your customer as a 45-year-old male who has an annual income of more

38 PART 1 Getting Started with Social Media Marketing