Print the main character photos out and put them by your workspace. Put your persona photos somewhere where you’ll see them often.Are there any colors or design elements that you see across the board that represent or appeal to this character? Are there any other themes that will shape how you communicate with them? Once you’ve pinned 20 or more items to your board, take a step back and take a look at it. Revisit the Pinterest board often for inspiration.

Next, find photos to represent all of the activities, products, foods, colors and other things that would draw in or inspire your character. Start by pinning the photo that represents your character, along with a brief bio in the “description” section. I recommend setting up a separate board for each persona or character you create. Pinterest will let you create up to three secret boards so that your pins won’t be shared with those who follow you.

Create a private Pinterest board to build your characters.

We like to use stock photography sites like iStock and BigStock to find these photos. Ideally, you’ll also want to find a photo to represent each character. Give each person a name and write a biography about him or her. Use these findings to create characters to represent your core audiences. After you’ve gathered your research, sit down and pull out the major trends and notable findings about your key audience (or audiences). We then use this information to build out our personas. At my company, Loudpixel, we like to look at conversations taking place on social media platforms to understand what people care about around any given topic or category. Simply send out a survey or interview people who you think are in your target market. You have to do some research to understand who they really are. Again, you shouldn’t be creating your ideal customer persona based solely on your own feelings and opinions.

It’s time to step back and dig in to find out who your customers really are (and just as important - who they aren’t). Unfortunately, too many of us come up with product and marketing ideas that appeal to ourselves, rather than product and marketing ideas that appeal to our ideal customers. Any experienced business owner or marketer knows that you have to know your customers inside and out if you want to be successful at building and marketing products or services to them.

Pinterest boards to make