Audiences and Personas

Audiences

There are a lot of different entities for which we write content. These organizations represent both public and private sectors and a number of industries that include finance, healthcare, retail, energy, manufacturing, and hospitality, among others. When these different audience segments are boiled down to a finite number, the below is a good representation:

Large and Midsize Enterprises. Typically, with global operations and thousands of employees, these businesses have dedicated cybersecurity teams that are charged with overseeing cybersecurity strategy and execution.

Small Businesses. These companies range from a few employees to those with several hundred. Depending on the company size, a dedicated cybersecurity headcount may not exist. Cybersecurity is either outsourced or under the charge of the person responsible for IT.

Partners. Fortinet’s partner network consists of thousands of distributors, channel partners, resellers, and solution resellers. It also includes over 60 Fabric-Ready Partners.

Employees. Last but not least are Fortinet’s employees who, depending on the circumstances, need to be kept informed, assured, and sometimes challenged.

Personas

These different audiences have disparate personas to whom we write content. Individual personas matter. Thus, Fortinet aspires to create content specific to individual personas and their unique attributes, interests, and challenges. Since our content is primarily focused on technical aspects of the solutions we offer, we primarily focus on personas with a technical background. While it is impossible to delve into the details on all of the personas here, the following are some of our key customer personas:

  • Security Architect
  • Network Architect
  • DevOps Engineer

We could add many others to the list such as security administrator, network engineer, security operations center (SOC) staff, network operations center (NOC) staff, etc. The same can be said about channel partners, with key personas that include everyone from the owner of a small VAR to the channel engineers of a solutions provider.

Writing for International Audiences

While not all Fortinet content is used by international teams and translated into local languages, a measurable portion is used and translated by non-U.S. teams. Content with complex sentences and U.S.-centric idioms and metaphors are problematic. Additionally, when possible, solution examples and other references should be applicable across regions.

  1. Monitor sentence length. Avoid complex sentence structures and lengthy sentences. These are difficult to translate and add internationalization costs. As a rule, sentences should be 20 words or less (with those over 20 words being a rate exception).
  2. Avoid idioms, metaphors, colloquialisms. While these add color for native readers of the English text, they often are lost on non-native readers. Further, these rarely translate— meaning is completely lost and often the wrong meaning is conveyed!
    A few examples to avoid:
    • “The product addresses business issues where the rubber meets the road.”
    • “The company was ready to step up to the plate.”
    • “This architectural model is a paradigm shift.”
    • “Centralized management provides one throat to choke.”
    • “We are willing to go the extra mile.”
    • “The product provides over the top features.”
  3. Avoid unnecessary words and modifiers. Some adjectival and adverbial modifiers add color and detail that improves the quality of the writing and make the content more engaging. In other instances, they elongate sentences and make it more complex to unpack for translation.
  4. Employ terminology consistently. Use the same word to describe the same action unless repetition or redundancy is a concern.
  5. Avoid negative constructions. Use positive-action constructions.
    No: He was unable to avoid using the new features.
    Yes: He began using the new features.
  6. Watch pronouns. While it is important to avoid redundancy through repetitious use of nouns, watch for overuse of pronouns (as the subject connection can become unclear in translation for certain languages).
  7. Spell out abbreviations. You should not use abbreviations without spelling out the first instance (see Appendix X).