Last week I introduced what I call the Persona Strategy as a way to fully exploit the power of social media marketing as part of a broader marketing plan.

Here are a couple of examples of Persona marketing in action:

For comedian Marc Maron (@marcmaron 8,990 Twitter followers), his WTF podcast and website have driven significant attendance to his shows, re-invigorating his career by allowing people who “get” his often angry and self-centered sensibility to learn more and more about his life and influences.  And now Maron fans from around the world know where he will be performing.  The only downside with bigger audiences is that Marc may become less unhappy!!

For Bill Simmons (@billsimmons, 33 1,198,486 Twitter followers) ESPN’s Sports Guy, his regular tweets on sports and pop culture topics drive continued growth for his personal brand that include ESPN’s Sports Guy’s World, his BS Report Podcast and his books.

My friend Amanda Gravel (@amandagravel 5,253  Twitter followers) is building her own brand around shopping for women’s fashions.  Like Marc and Bill, she’s developed a lot of followers.  Unlike them, the only thing she has to sell is her “Let’s go Shopping”  blog — which includes great photos and information about items that Amanda likes.  She also shows ads on her site so she’s probably making a little money from that.  Amanda is also positioning herself and her fashion sense for future success and I wish her well in business and congratulations on her recent engagement.

And today I got followed on Twitter (and returned the follow) by “Jennifer Wainscot” (@WainscotSol, 152 Twitter followers).  “Jennifer” is, I think, a made up name for the marketing team at Wainscot Solutions, a company founded and owned by Michael Yedowitz that builds custom wainscoting wall treatments for homeowners in their factory in Litchfield County CT.   I’m guessing that Michael spends his days knee deep in sawdust, so the team at Wainscot must have created the Jennifer Persona to represent the brand, including a cute picture of a mom and baby with a wainscoting wall behind them…If you read her tweets, “Jennifer” does a good job of  carrying the brand value. 

When I started working with the Westport Public Library in 2009, Library director Maxine Bleiweis described a challenge:   make sure the Library remains on the cutting edge, leverage web techniques including social media in a way that cuts through the clutter.  I devised the idea of creating a Facebook presence for libary founder Morris Jesup, a banker and Westport businessman who happened to have died in the early 1900’s.  Morris is now an active library patron, with hundreds of Facebook fans, who get Morris’s updates on a regular basis through their Facebook stream.  Morris’s Persona is able to deliver content in places where a Facebook fan page or website would never be seen.  Feel free to “friend” Morris at:  http://www.facebook.com/morris.jesup. 

I’m collecting other great implementations of Persona Marketing — please leave me a comment with your favorite, remembering the basic criteria:

• Regular content
• In the Persona’s consistant voice
• Either submitted by the “name” persona themselves, or with advice and consent from the “name.”

Thanks in advance for your help.