Creating A Blog Persona Vs Magazine Brand

[built]

So I have a question about branding, is it better to create an authority site with a persona or go the other route and create a magazine with multiple personas?

I ask this because I feel like having one persona might connect better with the audience vs a magazine which kind of feels "cold"

 

[Sutra]

One persona does have the connection thing going for it. But depending on how you go about things with the magazine you could still really connect with people too. If each of the individual writers/authors/personas have distinct personalities and talk about things within their specific niche, you could connect really well with multiple segments of your audience.

Even if you don't have distinct personas for the writers, you can still connect great if the overall content of your site digs deep at peoples desires/fears. There are many hard copy magazines that have die hard audiences because the content gives them exactly what they are looking for and need.

Oh, regarding the single persona thing, I'm pretty sure I've read a comment or two from Greg at Empire Flippers say that it can be harder to sell a site that has a strong single persona. Just fyi in case you plan to sell it down the line.

 

[turbin3]

It will really depend on the audience and niche. These days, I'd lean more towards multiple personas. Hell, I'd even A/B test my personas, and see what effect the readability and tone of content might have on conversion or UX. @Sutra is right on the money about that potentially helping target different audiences more effectively.

For example, check a few SERPs in your niche and run some readability scoring tests on the top 10 for each. Readable.io is quite nice for this. Pick a split of SERPs that are clearly biased towards each gender separately. Notice any correlation between gender analysis scores vs. the gender the SERP targets?

That said, I still see current examples of sites killing it, who handle their content authorship with either no author or a single persona. I just say that as a caveat, so no one reads the pro-multi author statement above to mean, "You must have multiple authors!"

As far as having several author personas, it's usually not necessary to go overboard with it either. In many cases, maybe even just start with two; a guy and a girl. Or whatever your 2 main audience types happen to be. I like to think of my personas as my own little special operations force. You may have just a few, but they are a force multiplier that can help bring the full power of your resources to bear on the problem at hand.

For those personas, I might also have their own separate, personal social profiles + activity. That can be a "rabbit hole" sometimes, so gotta watch for that. Though, when it works well, they can infiltrate enemy compounds (FB groups, subreddits, forums, etc.) and help you win hearts and minds! LOL

 

[Joe]

Something I've noticed from my "winner research" is that the guy considered the market leader takes most of the money.

For instance, Tony Robbins. Sure, the rest of the motivation guys fight over the remainder, some do OK. But he's the billionaire because he's "the guy".

Then Tim Ferris. Probably takes most of the money in the "work less books" niche with his one book.

So my vote would be: aim at being "the guy" in your niche & don't spray your efforts around.

Multiple personas sounds too close to reddit shit, where every nobody's got something to post, but no one cares.

 

[shaunm]

I have a personal blog where I blog as myself but on the domains in my moneysite network they are based as if it is other people posting. My main thinking behind this is that I don't really care who people think are the authors of my money site network domains. They are there to help someone searching a query for a very small time frame, on my personal blog its based more around getting a following.