Archive for March, 2007

Creating Personas - the representation of an audience

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
March 29, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Meetings and Planning. 10 Comments

The planning group had its second meeting on this past Tuesday. This time we held the meeting at our web consulting agency Webupdate(website only in Swedish I’m afraid).
I think it’s good for the group to meet at new places and this way we all get to see each others offices. And it’s more fun!

What is Personas?

We focused heavily on creating suitable personas for the online community. So what is personas? You might not know and I don’t blame you.
Here’s a good, although somewhat lengthy, explanation from wikipedia:

Personas silhouette

“Personas or personae are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are given characteristics and are assumed to be in particular environments based on known users’ requirements so that these elements can be taken into consideration when creating scenarios for conceptualizing a site. Cooper (1999) outlined the general characteristics and uses of personas for product design and development.

In the context of software requirements gathering, a user persona is a representation of a real audience group. A persona description includes a user’s context, goals, pain points, and major questions that need answers. Personas are a common tool in Interaction Design.”

Common tool in Interaction Design indeed. Good thing then we’ve got an expert in the area - Daniel Ilic.

Daniel Ilic
Daniel Ilic about to start the Personas group exercise.
Basically we had a group exercise where we tried to imagine who the typical users would be, and how we could represent them in a couple of personas.

Our Personas

The result of this amazing almost five hour long meeting was five personas. Briefly described they represent:

  • DINKS - Double Income couples with No Kids
  • Active Family - Family with kids that enjoy active holidays
  • WHOPS - Wealthy Healthy Older People
  • Swedes, domestic
  • Swedes, expatriates - Swedes that live abroad

We’re working on refining these now and fleshing out their “personalities”.
I’ll likely try to get some feedback from all you readers later. It would be great to see that most of you fit into one of these personas and if not, modify them accordingly.

Next meeting will be about brainstorming all the amazing services for these personas.
I can’t wait! :)

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“I Love Sweden”

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
March 28, 2007 in Meetings and Planning. 0 Comments

Yeasterday the planning group had it’s second meeting.
It was an almost five hour long amazing meeting. I will write more about it later this week but for now I want to tell you about a brief encounter afterwards that made me happy. :)

It was a beautiful spring day yeasterday and I decided to take a long walk on my way home after the meeting had ended. Knowing myself and my stomach as well as I do I realised the need for a quick bite in order to quiet the rumbleing bellybeast and to enjoy the walk properly. So I stopped at a little street grill and there I encountered this very nice guy.


i_love_sweden_grill_guy
Check out the t-shirt. How perfect was this?
Click for a bigger picture.

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Press release: VisitSweden to let private individuals promote Sweden

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
March 22, 2007 in About, Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, News, PR and Press Release. 2 Comments

In launching an online community, VisitSweden will use social media as a tool for promoting an entire country – a highly innovative approach that only a handful of countries have tested. Previous and potential visitors, as well as Swedes, will be able to discuss Sweden as a tourist destination – for instance sharing travel experiences, giving useful tips and learning about the country – in an online community to be launched this autumn. The community will be at a location linked to VisitSweden’s official tourism website, and will be the first one to focus on an entire country.

Sweden has a strong international brand, with diverse themes for travel, including design and culture, mountains and archipelagoes, food and children’s activities. However information on these themes must be more accessible and always up to date. VisitSweden, with the objective of promoting Sweden, Swedish destinations and experiences to an international audience, is always looking for efficient ways to reach the selected group of people who are most likely to travel to the country.

The trend towards interactivity and user-generated content on the internet, also known as web 2.0, is growing exponentially. Internet users are keen to tell others about their travel experiences and share information about their favourite places. An online community at www.visitsweden.com will be the link between the people who know and love Sweden, and those who are curious to learn more. The virtual meeting place will enjoy a high degree of credibility, since the users themselves will be able to present ”their” Sweden.

”We hope that the foreign visitors, together with residents of Sweden, will become a natural part of the international marketing of Sweden, by inspiring one another”, says Maria Ziv, marketing communications director at VisitSweden, and adds: ”There is a huge potential for a Sweden-related community, and we want it to complement and strengthen our other marketing activities, such as consumer marketing”.

In particular, VisitSweden aims to reach young childless couples, who are an important group for travel to Sweden and regular internet users.

”An online community can make Sweden’s vast range of experiences accessible to anyone, regardless of time and place. Today there are communities for almost every area of interest, but not a single one with the aim of marketing a particular country”, says Hans Leijström, community expert at Trive, which together with VisitSweden is developing a concept and platform for an official Sweden community.

Trive will base the community on StarCommunity, a product from Netstar.

The development of VisitSweden’s community will take place in a completely open environment. Future users and potential partners in the Swedish tourism industry will be able to follow and influence its development by way of a newly started blog, http://devblog.visitsweden.com. The blog will be an important part of the community’s development, and communication with the blog’s readers will inform many strategic decisions.

For more information on VisitSweden | www.visitsweden.com

Blog on the development of the Sweden community | http://devblog.visitsweden.com

For more information on Trive | www.trive.se

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Why an online community?

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
March 15, 2007 in About, PR and Planning. 10 Comments

That’s a good and perfectly natural question to ask.
Why build a new online community in a time when they seem to be around every corner and under every stone?
Personally I could just answer; because it’s fun! It’s the best thing since sliced bread.
But of course like anything else worth doing there are good reasons behind it.

Here’s our marketing communications director, Maria Ziv, explaining how it all began:

 

Maria Ziv talks about how the idea of an online community was born. The idea to create a community for people interested in Sweden as a destination was initially born more out of necessity than out of desire.

VisitSweden needed to solve the intricate problem of how to communicate with a large amount of people on a very limited budget. The situation did not become easier by the multifaceted and fluid product that a tourist destination like Sweden represents.

When marketing Sweden there are always vast amounts of beautiful things to share with your audience and a multitude of activities to present. In addition, the information is not static – it changes with every season.

When I sat down to formulate the strategy for the website as a whole I spent a lot of time looking at the information needs of our target audience as well as trends in the on-line community. Our target audience places a high emphasis on up to date and trust worthy information. It is also clear that information coming from their peers – people like themselves – is the information they trust.

Seeing that user generated content and social media is the most protruding trend in the on-line community at the moment, it seemed natural to fuse it with the needs of our target audience.

I couldn’t agree more. We’re hoping to create a place where potential visitors to Sweden can talk to swedes and others who have already visited Sweden. In this meeting of peers the decision process of going to Sweden will hopefully become easier and more fun!
But more of this and much more in future posts :)

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