Monday, July 02, 2012

Use of personas in communication (Professional Development Workshop)

"Personas" are used in marketing and product design to represents a group of customers so that the company can better focus its efforts. In companies such as Ford Motor Company, Microsoft and Reuters, personas are used to help better understanding of customers . A persona has a name, face, motivations, and goals - yet it is fictitious.

We in eTwinning also use personas to help our 27 National Support Services (NSS) better segment their "market" and focus their efforts. This time (June  27, NSS PDW) we worked on communication strategies. First all the six eTwinning personas were introduced (see the slides below). Then we set up groupwork to think of strategies; first of all,  how the NSS can identify eTwinners who belong to different personas?  and then, what are the strategies to communicate with them?

Identifying an active eTwinner like Maria or Peter (slides, page 8 and 10) can be rather straight forward for the NSS. They can use the "NSS desktop tools" that allow monitoring eTwinners' activities in their own country. Especially Marias are someone that the NSS staff already knows rather well and is most likely already in continuous communication with (they are often times also "eTwinning Ambassadors").

However, the most interesting and "potential" eTwinners for NSS are Marcus, Lucia, Shaun and Nina (slides, pages 12, 14, 16, 18) . They already are aware of eTwinning and have most likely established an account, but for a reason or another, are inactive or dormant users. In the workshop, we brainstormed better and more efficient communication strategies for these personas.