Lumping People Together Into Small Groups - Page 7

Who am I? In part a persona supplied by culture and in part one crafted by myself. My persona is the image I have of myself and what I want to project to others, how I connect to others, a set of self-concepts. — Robert Weber, The Created Self

Niches are a compromise. By identifying a particular segment of the audience, you can help figure out particular topics that will interest that group, develop a tone that establishes your attitude toward them, and signal the relationship that you hope to have with those people. But grouping people into a niche like this may overlook the unique character of individuals, the very specific facts you learn when you talk to people directly.

Traditionally, when creating a large document like a manual, book, or CD, we throw together topics that appeal to many different subgroups in the audience. We may create certain sections for absolute novices, offer troubleshooting for the competent performers, provide information on what's new in this edition for the old-timers, and show specs and behind-the-scenes data for the truly expert. All of that goes into a single document on the theory that different groups can find what they want in different places. But on the Web, we have the opportunity to create separate paths for each group we write for, displaying only the content appropriate for that group so the beginners don't bump into the 20 levels of hardware specs by accident, and the experts are never insulted with a home page featuring a marketing overview. (Each group can find the other material; but if we customize content by niche, we show each group what interests them first).

Based on your research and talks with actual consumers, you can probably figure out a half dozen niche audiences. For instance, when researchers tried clustering regular Web users, they found:

• Upscale, sophisticated, urban-fringe or ex-urban families use the Web to gather news and information, make travel reservations, buy stuff, and handle finances and stocks. For them, the Internet is a convenience.
• Small-town, middle-class families and working-class farm families prefer entertainment and sweepstakes sites, viewing the Internet as a replacement for TV.
• Men spend more time than women buying stocks, comparing and buying products, bidding at auctions, and going to government Web sites, whereas women prefer e-mail, games, coupons, and info on health, jobs, and religion. (Michael Weiss, 2001)

Niches form around income, age, gender, geographic location, occupation, and outlook, as advertising researchers have demonstrated over the last 30 years. Generally, people behave on the Web as they do in the rest of their life, favoring certain brands, attitudes, ideas, and activities, so demographic information developed over the years may help you flesh out what a particular niche wants from your text. On the other hand, the Web also allows upper-income folks to visit stores they wouldn't go into at the mall, and the Web shifts shopping times into the evening, and dampens seasonal variations in purchasing, so you need to define your own niches, based on your own research, supplementing it with the generic stuff. Nowadays, the customer relationship management folks think this way, developing clusters of people around their shopping habits, interests, and industries. But so far most of this data is being used to determine which ads to display to which visitors. Today, only the most advanced sites customize content for more than three or four niche audiences.

The smaller the niche you define, the better, because the focus helps you figure out exactly what topics they care about, what moves them, what examples might make sense to them, what ideas they resonate with. Imagine writing in five different voices for five distinct groups. As you become more attuned to the little groups within your audience, you become a ventriloquist or a character actor playing a series of roles.

This chameleon-like ability to take on the tone and attitude of a niche audience is not as insincere as it sounds. People do this all the time, to earn their way into a particular community, adopting that group's way of talking. More subtly, you can prove that you should be considered a member of the community. Here's how:

• Show you recognize the divisions within the community.
• Indicate that you agree on the boundaries of the community (who is in, who is not).
• Accept the latest definition of what is hip and not hip.
• Stress the values and attitudes that are widely and deeply shared by the community.
• Follow the general agreement on what topics are important today.
• Take sides in the arguments that go on continuously within the community.
• Contribute new ideas, comments, and support to the ongoing conversation (taking part, caring enough to hold up your end of the conversation).
• Position yourself in relation to the rest of the community (as a leader, follower, troublemaker, what not).
• Use key slogans, totem ideas, and jargon in the right way (not like a school principal trying to talk to kids in their own slang).
• Refer regularly to activities that people in this community take for granted (and do not mention) activities they disdain, can't afford, or never heard of).

To succeed in writing for a niche, you must really join the niche, wading right into the conversation. For writers a community has more to do with their discourse than their purchasing habits. Despite working for a particular site, and taking its direction, you are adopting the group's style, adding to its stock of ideas, and becoming a member.

Tie Consumer Profiles To Business Rules, Events, And Objects - Page 6
Hot Text: Web Writing that Works
Create Personas To Represent The People You Are Writing To - Page 8