Content Strategy - Step 4 - Telling your Story (continued)

Now that you've got your interview done, transcribe it in its entirety.  Do this manually, at least on the first go-around.  This will force you to listen carefully to exactly what your customer said, and to start your own thought process on how to tell the story.

Having completed that, you should conduct an internal interview to get some comments from somebody who can give your company's viewpoint on the story.  Your source(s) should be either your senior executives, or employees who have worked directly with your customer.  Use this internal interview to fill in some of the factual gaps that your customer interview may have left out.  In the customer interview, you may not have picked up details on the preparation your company did, or a comparison between this and other engagements.  It's also great if your internal person can serve as a cheerleader for your customer, pointing out how well they moved forward.  People love to read about success of peers they can identify with.

Next, select a good sample to use as a model, even if you're a professional writer.  (Remember, you aren't going to be using one of those marketing case study templates.) A good place to look is in magazines and publications that your customers are frequenting.  The main idea is to put your story in a format that you know is suitable for your customers and people like them.  I find that in many cases, a news story format is most familiar to readers, and therefore most effective.

Here are some tips for writing your story:

• Start with a lead that captures the essence of the story in a single paragraph.  Your opening sentence often determines whether your reader will go further.

• In your narrative, tell the story about how the customer identified and solved a problem using your company's products / services.

• Use your customer's language to describe what was done.  This is what readers will understand.

• Include direct quotes in your story - this helps give the story a conversational feel, and makes readers feel that they are "there".  Use quotes like illustrations to emphasize points you have made in the narrative.

• Make sure that your customer is the hero, and your company is the supporting cast. This is what readers will identify with.

• When possible, show results, such as financial savings, quality improvements, better morale, etc. 

• End your story with a conclusion that points to the future.  Real improvement is an ongoing process, and nobody "lives happily ever after".  Leave your audience hoping for a sequel.

In our next post on this subject, we'll offer some tips on publication.