Writing User Stories to Improve Your Brand Image
You started a business. You launched a great product that competes well with the offer of your competition. It’s solving an important problem your audience has. It comes at a cost-effective price.
That’s not enough.
Even if you have the perfect product and you come up with a nice campaign to launch it, there’s something missing: a brand image. People are more likely to buy the products or services from a brand they trust. If they see a competitive product at a better price, many would still choose the one from the brand they know.
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If you want to boost the sales and attract a base of loyal customers, you have to develop a strong brand image. How? One way to do that is by promoting user stories. They create social proof. Let’s say you want to hire a writer or editor online and you see this new website you’ve never used before. What do you do? You search for writing services reviews. The positive experience of other people shows you can trust the brand.
How do you create social proof? We’ll give you five tips for writing user stories that will improve your brand image.
1. Identify the Target Persona
Every attempt to come up with successful user stories for your brand starts by identifying the target persona.
Who is your average user? This is the main secret to creating successful user stories: an average user should share an experience with other average users.
If you were considering hiring celebrities for the promotion of your brand, you can do that. However, they have to share the story in a way that presents them as usual users. You have to make a difference between a commercial and a user story. In Chanel’s perfume advertising campaigns, we see Keira Knightley and other celebrities looking like super humans.
Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash
In commercials, everything is exaggerated. User stories should bring these exaggerations down to reality. In the user story, Knightley shares her experience with the perfume. Although this is a celebrity sharing the story, a potential customer sees a real experience from an average user.
Identify your target persona. That’s who you should be getting user stories from.
2. They Have to Be Honest
This is not plain marketing material. The user story is not an ad. It’s not something you make up just to trick more people to buy your product or service. Fake user stories are obvious. In fact, you’re not writing user stories. You’re getting user stories.
As the name suggests, it’s a user’s story. It should describe how a particular customer used your product and what benefits they got. These stories are great for capturing a specific functionality of your product; something that shows how it’s better than the competition.
How do you get honest user stories? – By asking for them.
- Whenever someone buys your product, send them a brief questionnaire to answer
- Let your followers leave reviews on Facebook
- Get recommendations from your LinkedIn connections
- Contact influencers
3. Ask Simple Questions
When you’re asking users to share their experience, make the questions simple, so you’ll get simple stories. Each user story is consisted of three elements:
- Problem
- Solution
- Success
How do you get these elements? By asking three questions:
- What made you consider our product?
- How did you use our product?
- Did you get what you expected?
Stephanie A, Marketing Manager at Daily Posts, an SEO Copywriting Service in the UK, says “short but powerful user stories are an effective tool for every marketing campaign”. The result is an evergreen testimonial that will immediately resonate with all cadres of prospective clients. Get your user stories in video where possible, we have seen it work wonders!”
4. Reach Out to Influencers
If hiring a celebrity like Keira Knightley is out of your range, there’s nothing to be worried about. You can downsize a bit: reach out to social media influencers. They are celebrities, too. Instagram, in particular, is great for promoting user stories.
- Identify the influencers in your niche. If, for example, you’re selling natural juices, you can contact people who lead a healthy lifestyle and share their journey on Instagram.
- Make sure they have tons of followers and get reactions on every single post.
- Make an offer: you’ll send a package of your products or provide the service for free. In return, you’ll get their honest testimonial.
5. Feature the Best Testimonials
When someone is interested in getting your product, they will check out your social media pages to see the reactions of your users. They can find testimonials and rankings on your Facebook page.
If you offer a product or service of great quality and you’re providing a great customer service, you’re all good. You don’t have to worry about negative reviews. If you do get them, make sure to fix the damage by offering a new product or a refund. Respond to those comments; that’s how the audience sees you’re doing your best to make your customers happy.
Photo by Crew on Unsplash
On the same note, read more about the benefits of testimonials.
When you get great reviews, you should make them known. Feature them at your website. If the user who wrote the review gives you permission, add an image to accompany the story. This will add personality and credibility to it.
User stories are great for improving your brand’s image because people believe them. Before getting any product or service, they want to see what others think of it. They want to make sure your products are not a waste of money. Start getting user stories and promote them the right way! The above-listed tips should help you do that.