Create a Persona

There are countless ways someone can come to know Christ, but many tend to follow similar paths in their journey to Christ.

A persona is a fictional, generalized representation of your ideal contact. It is the person your are thinking of as you create your content, design your call-to-actions, run ads, and develop your filters.

Think through the following questions as you brainstorm personas of people you want to interact with.

• Who is my audience?
  • Are they employed?
  • What is their age?
  • What kind of relationships do they have with family, friends, and coworkers?
  • How educated are they?
  • What is their socioeconomic status?
  • What do they think of Christians?
  • Where do they live? In a city? In a village?
• Where is the audience when they use media?
  • Are they alone? Are they with others?
  • Are they at home with family?
  • Is it in the evening after the kids go to bed?
  • Are they riding the metro between work and school?
  • Are they primarily consuming media through their phone, computer, television, or tablet?
  • Why are they using media?
• What do you want them to do?
  • Private message you on your social media page?
  • Share your content with others?
  • Debate to increase engagement with audience?
  • Read articles on your website?
  • Call you?

A pathway that is often fruitful is “disillusionment with [the dominant religion in your context]”. People who often see hypocrisy and emptiness in religion start searching for truth. Could this be a pathway for you as well?

Another way to look at persona is to consider your own journey to Christ. Can God use your story to connect seekers to Him?

Maybe you are brand new in a country and can only meet with English speakers. Your target people could be English speakers who are disillusioned with Islam, Catholicism, etc.

If you find it helpful, here is a persona template you can download to help you get started: