Reading a post the other day by Carol Bentley reminded me of how I was taught to write case studies, many years ago. I know that many of you write your own case studies, either because you don’t use a PR company, or because you find customers are more likely to talk to you directly than they are to external journalists. In Testimonials: are they working for or against you? the often awkward job of extracting the relevant information from customers is broken down into five questions to ask them:
– What were you looking for?
– Why did you choose us?
– What was your experience?
– What was the greatest benefit?
– What advantages have you noticed since?

This might seem unremarkable, but very few people know where to start when putting together a case study, and unless you ask customers the right questions, you run the risk of them clamming up and giving you no information of real interest. When that happens, the piece becomes a dry statement of how you saw the project as a supplier, and nobody wants to read that.