Daily Archives: May 20, 2014

1 How to Design Your Avatar

I find avatar design really difficult. Indeed, as I contemplate this post, I wonder what I can possibly say that would help the reader, other than “Go and read something by someone who does know how to do it.”  However, before you do wonder off, perhaps there is something I can usefully say about how to design your avatar.

If you are serious about working online you have to make a start and keep going. This applies to just about everything. I’ve been struggling with my avatar(s) for several months now. I know how difficult it is.

One reason it is difficult is if you do find an avatar it needs to be tested. You need to work out how to use it. If you don’t know how to use it, how can you tell whether your latest avatar is an improvement on the last?

So, designing your avatar is part of a marketing campaign that goes something like this:

You may find you need more than one avatar to cover your market and more possibilities may come to light as you market to an earlier avatar.

There are three characteristics you need to think about when designing your avatars.

1. Their primary need or pain, that is the reason they are going to respond to your website. Let’s say your site encourages visitors to write to their MPs about a particular issue. Why might someone do that? Are they concerned about the issue? Or are they motivated by politics, for or against their MP’s political party? You may prefer the former to the latter (or vice versa!).
2. Their secondary perspective. They may share a concern about the issue and support your letter writing concern. But what will really motivate them to sit down and write the letter? Concern about the issue may not be enough. Some people might use an outline letter, so they have less work to do. Others might make a social occasion and write with a group of friends. Some may have a distinctive view, that builds on (or undermines) yours. Clearly, you want someone who agrees with the issue but once you look at what will get them to write a letter, you may find you have a number of distinct groups of people.  They share the primary need but will respond to different approaches to getting them to write a letter.
3. The third characteristic is: what makes your avatar a distinct human being? This covers things like age, sex, nationality, religion, sexuality, health, family … These help in two ways. First, they humanise the avatar. You will in time name them and have an image of them in your mind as you write for them. So, even a fairly arbitrary characteristic might help the avatar become real for you, so that your writing has more life in it. Also some of these characteristics have consequences. So, a younger person might write via social media and be less willing to write a letter on paper, find a stamp, etc. A few young people might enjoy an afternoon with a group of older people, writing letters and eating cake! Your question is whether such a person is typical. Such younger people do exist, but do enough of them exist to make a dedicated avatar worthwhile?

My first avatar is in the pipeline, not quite ready to go public yet but I will keep you informed. In the meantime, do you have one or more avatars? How did you build up a picture of them? How do you use them?