Why Aren’t You Blogging Your Customer Stories?

Customer stories are one of the most valuable pieces of marketing content you can create. It’s the actual voice and tale of a satisfied customer.

Yet once created, most organizations don’t leverage their customer stories nearly as much as they could. Why not leverage them across all your various communications touch points?

SAP Germany is an exception. The company recently wrapped up a cool blogging project, “100 Success Stories from Small to Mid-Size Businesses.” (Published in German. Use your Google translate button.)

For 100 days, the company blogged a fresh story about how a customer has achieved success by using SAP. What a powerful way to build momentum and tell the bigger SAP story through lots of mini success stories.

Why else blog about your customer stories?

Stories engage
Stories grab readers in ways that product announcements and other content don’t. Kimberly Turner, cofounder of Regator.com, says…

“…the straight facts aren’t always your best bet. Telling a story in a more narrative form adds emotional impact, suspense, interest, and imagery. (Check out her blog post on storytelling in blogs.)

And when it comes to stories, true customer accounts interest your prospects and customers most.

SEO
Typically rich in keywords, success stories pull their weight for your site’s or blog’s search engine optimization. Just make sure that you include words and phrases in your customer stories, and hence blog posts, that are similar to what your audience might use to search online.

Longevity
Your blog content stays online and in the vast “library” of content that is the Web. While newsletters are also great places for success stories, they don’t have the same longevity that blogs do. And web site content tends to switch out every couple of years.

Educate prospects AND customers
Customer stories are useful well beyond the sales process. Current customers can learn from their peers new ideas and ways for solving challenges. So don’t think that a blog post only educates your prospect audience.

How do you blog your stories?

Don’t tell the whole story on your blog.
The full version of the story should live somewhere on your website. Then create a summarized version of the customer’s success on your blog, touching on the customer’s need/challenge, the solution applied (very briefly) and then the outcome.

Title it something like, “How a small design firm cut costs by 20%” or whatever your results are.

Drive traffic with social media
Once your post goes live, let people know through social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, getting traffic to the blog. With their interest piqued, they’ll click through to read the full story and spend more time on your site.

Few things educate and inspire confidence more than true, powerful customer success stories. Don’t miss out on the exposure and traffic possible with blogging your best stories.