Blog 7: SWOT Analysis and Lean Canvas

Now it's time to take your brand persona and identify how and where you are going to meet them on their favourite media networks. You also want to create two FURTHER brand personas, that represent your secondary and tertiary audience.

Your PRIMARY audience is the person who will be your instant fan and promoter the moment they meet you.

Your SECONDARY audience is the person who can help you grow after you have established brand presence and can help you expand beyond your core audience.

Your TERTIARY audience will join you after you have established yourself and experienced success in the market.

For EACH persona you must identify them by name, have a sketch or image of their face, and market segmentation data for each of the headings found on the Wikipedia page: geographic, demographic, psychographic, benefits, and cultural.

For EACH persona you must also identify the social network on which you are MOST LIKELY to meet them. There must be 3 different networks identified.

Now that you have 3 personas and 3 markets, perform a SWOT Analysis for each one. This analysis determines the strengths and weaknesses your brand has in meeting that persona on the market, and the opportunities and threats that market has for you as you connect with your target audience.

 This SWOT analysis for each market should not contain more than 1 or 2 key points for each letter. You want to flag for YOURSELF the key issues facing you in this medium, reaching this persona -- so just be sure to focus on the MOST IMPORTANT in each category.

FINALLY, the last thing to do is create a LEAN CANVAS that identifies your unique value proposition, and specifically identifies the problems that each of your personas has in trying to find whatever it is your brand offers.

Blog 6: Star, Mountains & Motivator

In order to define success you must first define the direction and aim of your efforts.

To define your mission statement, follow these series of steps.

First, pick a STAR. The STAR should be something that is very hard, almost impossible to reach but is still possible. For example, Coca Cola's is "to serve every ounce of consumable liquid."

Once you have picked your STAR, identify your CORE MOTIVATOR. This is a verb ending in -ing that best captures why you do what it is you do (your brand, not necessarily yourself but the two may be synonymous). If you have trouble identifying your CORE MOTIVATOR, write a one page history of your life and we will talk about it in class next day to look for clues as to your CORE MOTIVATOR.

With these two core pieces, the last step is to identify a series of MOUNTAINS that you will climb in your lifetime (or during the course of your strategy), each bringing you closer to your STAR. The best way to define these is to work backwards, starting with a long-term MOUNTAIN (10+ years in the future), then a mid-term MOUNTAIN (5 years) and finally one for the short-term (next year, after your initial strategy has been complete).

Finally, put all of these things into a single paragraph of 4-5 sentences and that is your mission statement.

Blog 5: Target Persona & User Story

Think of the ideal person that you want to be reading your blogs, interacting with your content, commenting on your posts and so on. What kind of person are they? How do they consume other forms of media? Where do they spend their time online and offline?

This is your brand persona, an idealized version of your target audience. It could be potential employers or consumers of your content. Most important they have to be someone. Not a group of people but a specific, imaginary individual that best represents your core audience.

Draw or find a photo of a person that represents your brand persona. Give them a name and be sure their face is visible. Post the face on your blog, and answer the following questions:

• What is their name?
• How old are they?
• What is their favourite (song/book/movie/magazine/food/clothing/etc)?
• How much money do they have to spend? What do they spend it on?
• What are their media consumption habits? How do they get their news every day? What sites do they frequent? What sort of conversations do they get into on facebook or twitter? What is their username on twitter, or other handles they use?
• Anything else that completes the picture of this person as a media minded net citizen interested in your brand

Now that you have this individual, write a user story from the perspective of this persona about how they met you, got excited about your stuff and ended up hiring you or buying your product or otherwise giving you a monetary advantage (showed you off to their network, showcased your stuff on their program, etc.).

Ensure that you have at least 5-7 points in your story that have a measurable outcome. In other words, if this person got your business card, you could measure how many cards you hand out. If they checked out your website, you can measure how many people do that. Each of the 5+ steps this person took to make your life better should be measurable.

Blog 4: Cross Network Gravatar & Banner Images

Take a look at the 2015 Social Media Image Sizes cheat sheet that contains the dimensions for various images across different networks.

Also read about creating your own gravatar and generate an image that will serve as your profile pic on different networks.

Think about your own brand and how you might portray it on these networks. Write a short statement (ie. no longer than a tweet) that encapsulates this brand.

Pick at least 2 networks that you wish to be on to engage with your target audience. For each create a banner and an avatar photo that reflects the brand you wish to portray.


Post the images to your blog, and if you wish, onto the networks themselves.