Social Media Guide for Wattpad

Buyer Personae

Wait, I’m not selling anything! At least, not yet.

Not to worry. This is just a term of art.

What is a buyer persona?

A buyer persona is essentially the standard person(s) who enjoys your book(s). Think about this. Look at your commenters from Wattpad, and who has added your book to their library or otherwise shown love. Think about the genres, too. 

If your book is about a heroic cow named Maisie, and it’s geared for a YA audience, then your buyer persona is young and enjoys adventure stories. How young? Pre-kindergarten? Elementary school? Middle school? High school? Barely over eighteen? And as for adventure stories, are we talking only G-rated? With a sprinkling of romance? Mixed with horror? 

Dig into your stats, such as they are. Which chapters got the most reads and comments? Every book has drop off, and pretty much everyone’s first chapters are read far more often than their last ones. Compensate for that. Let’s say the Maisie story has ten chapters, and the fourth chapter has the most comments apart from Chapter One. What is it about that chapter? Is it where the protagonist takes a break from the action? Is it where the romance is introduced? Where the enemy arrives? 

Different books will have different buyer personae, but they may be similar. Sequels usually have similar buyer personae.

What’s the Buyer Persona for this guide?

Why, it’s Wattpad authors, interested in getting into social media. Possibly interested in being published. Probably over eighteen years of age. Likely to be female (that is a function of Wattpad’s own demographics). English-speaking. Probably within my network or the network of my direct connections (people I follow or who are following me).

Homework

Take a scratch pad and write down five characteristics of your buyer persona for your book. Age range and gender should be two of them. The others can be things like married or not, heterosexual or homosexual, American/Canadian/Filipino/British/etc., conservative or liberal, college-educated or not, etc. The guide’s buyer persona was knocked off in less than a minute. It’s got guesses in it. That’s okay. As we go along, all of this is refined. 

This exercise shouldn’t take you more than 20 minutes or so. Don’t dwell on it. If you make a mistake, you can always fix it later. 

The link is to a blog post, and the YouTube video accompanying it, are both from my own blog and my class. They aren’t perfectly on point but they are close. The Sample Sally image is more detailed than what I’m looking for, but it is pretty close. 

Did this chapter help you? Did it hold your interest? Do you want to see more? Then please vote! You know the puppy wants you to. ;) And don’t forget to click around my blog – there might be more that interests you! Who are your buyer personae? Share your ideas in the comments section.