Make Your Personas Work for a Living

If you're paying thousands of dollars for persona development and community management resources & tools but product decisions still lean on gut instinct—you're not getting your money's worth. You're engaging in user research theater.

The Problem: Assets That Don't Pull Their Weight

You've got:

• Personas gathering dust in a deck no one can remember, let alone find
• Lively user feedback in Slack, Discord, or customer forums that rarely reaches the product team
• A team still guessing "What do users really want?" in nearly every meeting

All that investment, and none of it actually works.

Personas Are Snapshots That Go Stale Fast

They're directionally accurate when built, not when used. Technology moves at a breakneck pace. Markets change. Products evolve. User needs shift. But personas? They stay fossilized in PowerPoint.

Meanwhile, your community is sharing real feedback daily, but it's buried in channels only one person monitors.

The Cost of Inaction

When insights aren't accessible:

• Every product decision becomes a guessing game: "I think users want..." or "If I were them..."
• Decisions follow HIPPOs—the highest-paid person's opinion
• Your community loses trust: Why contribute when nothing changes?

The Fix: Personas That Work

Working personas are:

Dynamic – Continuously learning from recent discussions, support logs, and usage patterns

Actionable – They answer real questions:

• "What do you think about our onboarding process?"
• "How much extra would you pay for the ability to do... X?"
• "What workaround are you using today?"

Credible – They cite sources: "Based on 12 community posts this week..."

Available – Ready during sprint planning, design reviews, and roadmap discussions. No appointment necessary.

Picture this: Instead of debating priorities in sprint planning, PMs can open Rooost and ask their persona:

"Would you prefer speed or customization? Why?"

And get an answer backed by the most up-to-date user research and recent community discussions, not last year's assumptions or stakeholder opinions.

The Evidence for Working Personas

According to ITSMA research, only 44% of marketers actually use their buyer personas, while high-performing companies map 90%+ of their customer base with actively-used personas and consistently outperform their peers.

If you're not updating and using personas, you're not just in the bottom 56%—you're invisible to your users' actual needs.

Your Next Steps

1. Audit Your Reality

Where do personas live? When were they last updated? How often are they referenced? What user insights influenced last month's backlog priorities?

2. Connect the Dots

Link community feedback to persona knowledge. Make personas aware of trending topics. Connect user quotes to persona responses.

3. Change Your Rituals

In every sprint planning session, ask Rooost: "What is your biggest frustration with our product?" Make checking with personas as normal as checking Jira.

4. Measure What Matters

Track how often user voice shapes decisions. Measure time from community insight to product action. See if debates get shorter when personas can provide the team with informed answers.

The Bottom Line

You don't need more research or bigger communities. You need to activate what you already have:

• Personas that stay current
• Community insights that flow into decisions
• Product choices informed by users, not opinions

Your personas have been freeloading long enough. Either make them work for a living, or watch competitors who are actually listening pull ahead of you.