An earlier post, “Need Input from IT Marketers Who’ve Hired Freelance Customer Success Story Writers ASAP“, introduced a project that fellow success story writer, Pamela DeLoatch (b2bstorytelling.com), were working on.

The idea was to create a series of video interviews for b2b marketers interested in how to get the best from a freelance B2B case study writer.

Today’s post is an update on that project.

Pamela and I got a list of questions together from responses kindly submitted by members of LinkedIn discussion groups, created a general interview script, and then took turns asking and answering the questions.

The videos were recorded on Skype using a $20 software tool from ecamm.com known as ‘Call Recorder‘.
Their product’s tag line is:

Transform your Skype audio and video calls into QuickTime movies. Completely automatic, easy to use Skype audio and video call recording for Mac user

And that’s exactly what it did!

Here’s a screenshot of  video 2 (of 6) that’s in my new ‘samuraiwriter99‘ YouTube channel.

The interview went just over the hour and covered the following topics:
(This is a screenshot from the case study videos landing page on my site.)

For a first attempt, and using nothing more than a laptop’s internal camera and a USB headset, I’m reasonably happy with the outcome; although some of my unintended ‘grimaces’ are painful to behold. And that wall-mounted wooden coat hanger apparently protruding from my right temple is difficult to forget…

Having added a ‘freelance-b2b-case-study-writer-video-series‘ landing page, the remaining steps are to:

• Edit the video transcripts into a PDF-based report as a lead generation tool for our case study writing businesses.
• Create some podcasts using the audio channels from the interview and distribute via iTunes, or similar.
• Extract useful snippets from the transcripts and retweet them with a link to the landing page.
• Create a press release for online distribution.

If you might be in the market for a freelance b2b case study writer in 2012, and want to get maximum value for your investment, this post’s for you…

Fellow b2b case study writer, Pamela DeLoatch, and I have started a project on the critical questions businesses want answers to before hiring freelance writers.

For example:

• What makes one writer stand out from all the others?
• How can you know if you’ve got a dud or a keeper?
• What weight do you assign to any working experience the writer has had in your industry?
• What are the ‘extra skills’ you look for in a b2b case study writer beyond the writing itself?

My focus is in hearing from IT marketers who use freelance writers (or are thinking about doing so), while Pamela’s is in the general business-to-business arena.

Please leave a comment below, tweet me at @samuraiwriter99 or send email using my contact page.
But if you’re pressed for time, then just answer this one question:

What would you definitely check before hiring a freelancer to work with your b2b customer on a story?

Pamela and I are collecting data now and plan to update interested readers in January 2012 or sooner.

Thank you in advance for any constructive feedback you can provide!

- Mark McClure

I received an interesting email from ConnectTV Asia, promoting their third annual conference about IPTV.
The event will be held in Beijing, China on Dec 6-7, 2011.

A quick look at their About page and the conference Agenda, reveals that “converged entertainment”, and converged TVs in particular, is a market that’s powering ahead in the Asia Pacific region.

What grabbed my attention were the case studies lined up as presentation items for the day one afternoon sessions:

I’d be very interested to learn how these case study presentations have been constructed. For instance, are they adapted from existing customer stories or created specifically for the conference presentation session?

It’s possible to take an existing case study and ‘re-purpose’ (today’s de rigeur marketing term for using your material in multiple formats, as appropriate) it as a series of blog posts, a feature article, as multiple tweets and, of course, as a presentation.

If you are planning to attend the case study sessions I’d like to know the plus and minus points of what was delivered.
At this stage I don’t know if the organizer plan to release any content once the event is finished.

- Mark ‘IT case study writer’ McClure

Here’s an interesting tweet via Pluggio (my aff. link) from @CiscoIT all about an award from @Computerworld for a video case study.

I was intrigued enough to click through and find out more.

Strike one for Cisco. (Get the click!)

Arriving at the landing page I find this headline giving a great summary of what awaits:

Business Video Case Study: How Business Video Transforms Cisco Business Processes

Strike two for Cisco. (The job of the headline is to entice the reader to stay on the page and see what’s on offer or of interest.)

Alas, when I click on the link to go read the case study I get redirected to a Cisco login link.

And wouldn’t you know it but I don’t have access to my password.
It’s probably at home on my main machine… grr!

A little frustrated with myself, I look beneath the fold and there’s a section titled “Associated Files” with three very relevant file names just waiting for a click!

There’s an ‘executive summary’, a ‘presentation’ and, to my amazement, an ‘IT Case Study’ file! All in pdf format, and with file sizes shown for convenience.

And not a login or registration form in sight!

Strike three for Cisco?

Well, maybe. Though in soccer terms, this is probably a yellow card event for time wasting or offside behavior.

Why?

You see I was all fired up to read the case study only to be confused at the final hurdle. Part of me is worrying about the login requirement while another brain processing time slice is wondering if the three pdf files are the same, or different, to what lies behind the authentication firewall.

Why should a b2b marketer be worried about that? For the simple reason that a confused mind is less likely to buy (in the long term) or to feel confident about spending more time on ambiguous web content (in the short term).

In this case I’d probably give Cisco the benefit of the doubt and assume that the three associated files and the protected case study are one and the same. Which makes the Cisco login requirement an anomaly.

However, if they are in fact different then I’d be much happier as a prospect if the web page clearly spelt that out. I could then make an informed decision about registering or not.

How about you?
Do you think case studies should be hidden behind firewalls?

- Mark ‘IT Case Study Writer‘ McClure