A tale of 2 testimonials — is one of them yours?

How much should you expect to pay a freelance writer to do a case study or testimonial?

Nothing brings more credibility to a B2B website than detailed case studies and testimonials from customers about how a product or service benefitted them.

Just about every  company I’ve done work for has asked me to interview a major client and craft a testimonial for marketing purposes. Before I start the work, they ask me what it’s going to cost. After six years of tackling these projects, I finally have an answer:

“Five hours of my time for a great case study or four hours of my time for no case study at all.”

What?

I can explain with — what else? — a case study of two testimonial projects.

Case Study #1: Company A and their client WidgetSoft

Company A’s project got off to a great start. Even before they contacted me, their VP of sales called the CEO of WidgetSoft and asked if we could get a testimonial from their head of IT. The WidgetSoft CEO agreed.

Company A’s VP sent me

    • background on their product
    • the history of the relationship between the two companies
    • phone numbers for the IT folks WidgetSoft.

I studied the materials, set up two phone interviews (mentioning the CEO’s agreement when I called), conducted the interviews, and wrote a draft. After Company A reviewed my draft, I sent a revised version over to WidgetSoft for review, along with a request for a photo of Company A’s product in use at WidgetSoft. When the draft came back, I incorporated their comments and changes and submitted the final version to Company A — along with a bill for 5 hours of my time.

Case Study #2: Company B and their client Gadgetron

Company B’s PR person called me to say that one of their salespeople had a buyer at Gadgetron who just loved Company B’s product. They wanted me to write a testimonial after talking with the exuberant salesperson and his customer.

I set about contacting the Company B salesperson, with repeated emails and phone messages. A week later, he got back to me with

    • links to background on their product
    • some numbers on how many units they’d sold to Gadgetron at various times over an unspecified period
    • a phone number for the IT buyer at Gadgetron.

Dead end on the roadI studied the materials and called the number. Sure enough, the IT folks at Gadgetron did indeed love  Company B’s  product. But the buyer’s numbers for how many products they’d purchased were considerably lower than the numbers from Company B. I also found out, at the end of the 30-minute interview, that Gadgetron’s PR department does not let employees endorse products, so I couldn’t quote any of the nice things the buyer told me. When I reported all this back to the Company B PR woman, she said “Well, can’t you write something?”

It was downhill from there. I  called the Gadgetron PR guy, who’d never heard of Company B. He said I needed to send him all of my interview questions and he’d see if he could get an executive to comment. Emails went back and forth, and eventually he sent a feeble quote to the effect that “Gadgetron believes that every company needs to buy products such as those made by Company B and other companies.” A photo? Get real.

By now, the PR person at Company B was impatient and exasperated. She sent me the original email from the salesperson, full of vague claims and what I now knew to be overstated numbers, and suggested that based on that I should be able to write some sort of case study. When I suggested that she ask the VP of sales at Company B to call one of the executives at Gadgetron, her response was that she couldn’t “bother” the VP of sales with “that sort of thing.” They’d hired me because I write testimonials, she noted, so why hadn’t I written one? With a sigh, I emailed her the name of her PR counterpart at Gadgetron — along with an invoice for the four hours of my time spent failing to write her testimonial.

The Bottom Line

If the second scenario above sounds familiar, it’s time to make some changes. If you’re the PR person, take a lesson from Company A (or, better yet, look for a job at Company A). If you’re the writer, take a firm stand. Say that you’ll be happy to conduct and write up an interview with an executive at their client company — as soon as they line one up for you.

A story about me

Austin author Rebecca Schwarz wrote a story about me for the Clarion West Write-a-thon (well, a story about the OTHER me).

Austin author Rebecca Schwarz wrote a story about me for the Clarion West Write-a-thon (well, a story about the other me). I supported her in the Write-a-thon, and, in the separate reality she writes about in the story, I’m sure the other me would have supported her as well! It’s a great story.

The Write-a-thon is drawing to a close. Huge thanks to the folks who have sponsored me. I pledged to write three short stories and submit one; as it turned out, I completed two stories and wrote 8,000 words of back story for a fiction project I’m outlining.

Three of my donors sent in hefty $100 donations, and I matched those  donations with $100 donations in support of three other Write-a-thon participants. At this point, the Write-a-thon has raised just over $20,000 for Clarion West. We’ll still be taking donations through the participants’ pages until mid August.

Thank you to everyone who wrote, who donated, and who otherwise supported the Clarion West Writers Workshop this summer.

All your friends belong to Facebook and LinkedIn

According to the new Pew Internet study, the relative likelihood of social network involvement is unrelated to gender, race/ethnicity, education level, household income, or urbanity.

Screen Shot 2014-09-10 at 2.00.16 PMRely on LinkedIn for professional networking? Have a Facebook account or use Google+?

Chances are most of the rest of your world is right there with you:

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been studying online adults’ social networking site use since 2005, and has seen substantial growth since then. Today, 72% of online adults use social networking sites. Although younger adults continue to be the most likely social media users, one of the more striking stories about the social networking population has been the growth among older internet users in recent years. Those ages 65 and older have roughly tripled their presence on social networking sites in the last four years—from 13% in the spring of 2009 to 43% now.

—Pew Internet

read the full report

The conclusion: If you’re online, you’re probably on a social networking site.

The Pew Internet report on use of social networks by online adults, based on fresh data from spring 2013,  is fascinating. It shows that the relative likelihood of social network involvement is unrelated to gender, race/ethnicity, education level, household income, or urbanity. According to this chart from the Pew study, about the only differentiating factor is age:

Image

However, the 65+ age group is currently the one in which social network involvement is increasing most rapidly.

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