When The College Network, an educational services and eLearning provider, ran their first StoryCapture campaign, they received 99 posts and generated 2,000 Facebook Likes, doubling their monthly blog traffic in the process. Here's how they got the A+.

The Preparation

With the help of Compendium's Account Management team, The College Network (TCN) ran a 12-day blogging contest that coincided with National Nurses Week. This contest invited current and prospective customers to share their story by asking a simple question: "Why Did You Become a Nurse?" The invitation was promoted through TCN's blog, email, Facebook and Twitter accounts. The captured stories were then published to TCN's Compendium-powered blog using Compendium's Web-to-Post tool. From there, they were pushed to Facebook, where friends and followers could vote on their favorite story by clicking the Facebook "Like" button. At the end of the contest, one story sharer won an iPad 2.

The purpose of the contest was two-fold. Firstly, TCN wanted to collect a large amount of user-generated content to power their blog. Secondly, they wanted to use that content to reach the friends and followers of their prospects and customers in order to create new, qualified leads in their CRM system.

The Payoff

By the end of the 12-day contest, The College Network had captured 99 stories, 2084 Facebook "Likes," and 58 additional Facebook fans. 25 percent of the stories they received came from prospective customers who showed a new or renewed interest in TCN's programs. The contest drove nearly 5000 visitors to TCN's blog and increased their blog-based search traffic by 26 percent. The winning story received 760 Facebook "Likes," meaning 760 of the winner's friends put links to The College Network blog on their Facebook pages. TCN now maintains an ongoing share-your-story page to continue to capture testimonials.

Lindsay Schmitt, the Director of Marketing and New Media at The College Network, said this after the StoryCapture campaign: "This is why blogging is such an important part of a social media strategy. The content isn't going away. It's not like Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, your comment is gone in 30 minutes. On Facebook, it could be gone in a day. Blogging should be the center of your social media strategy." See it for yourself at http://blog.collegenetwork.com.