--- title: "How to Find User Stories for PR, and Vet Them Before Pitching" description: "How to find real user stories for crypto PR: where to source them, a five-gate test to vet each one, and how to pitch them so reporters trust them." author: "Shilika Jain" date: "2026-10-28T00:56:50.255+00:00" tags: ["crypto pr", "case studies", "web3 pr", "storytelling"] canonical: "https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/real-user-stories-crypto-pr-case-studies" --- # How to Find User Stories for PR, and Vet Them Before Pitching By [Shilika Jain](https://www.shilikajain.com/authors/shilika-jain) - 10/28/2026 How to find real user stories for crypto PR: where to source them, a five-gate test to vet each one, and how to pitch them so reporters trust them. --- # How to Find User Stories for PR, and Vet Them Before Pitching To find user stories for PR, look where people already explain your product without being paid to: support tickets, developer forums, partner integrations and unprompted posts. Then vet each candidate against a short test (is it verifiable, consented, specific, unpaid and newsworthy) before it goes anywhere near a reporter. One checked story about a real person beats a headline number that a journalist can disprove on a block explorer. ## Why are user stories the antidote to farmed metrics? Because a journalist can't do much with "500,000 wallets". They've seen that sentence from a dozen projects, and they know how often it means a quest campaign. A person, though, gives them a scene, a quote and a reason the product matters. It's the difference between a claim and evidence. > if your brand lacks story, it lacks everything! > > [Shilika Jain on X, 28 Nov 2022](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1597152061950689280) A user story also forces honesty inside the team. If you can't find one person who uses the product for its stated purpose, your metrics were telling you something your dashboard wasn't. The sibling post on [farmed metrics and press honesty](/blog/farmed-metrics-crypto-press-honesty) covers what happens when teams pitch the inflated version instead. ## Where do you find real user stories in a crypto project? Most teams already have stories. They're scattered across tools nobody in marketing reads. Here's where I go looking first, and what each source tends to produce. | Source | What you'll find | Typical story type | Watch out for | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Support tickets and help-desk logs | People explaining what they were trying to do | Problem solved, workflow changed | Privacy; never use without permission | | Developer forum, GitHub issues, SDK Discord channel | Builders shipping on top of you | "We built X on this in two weeks" | Developers often can't speak for their employer | | Partner and integration teams | Businesses using you in production | B2B case study, cost or time saved | Partner legal review takes weeks | | Unprompted posts on X and Farcaster | People recommending you to others | Personal use, cultural angle | Check they aren't in an ambassador or reward programme | | Community calls and AMAs | Repeat attendees with specific questions | Power user, regional use case | Heavy users aren't always typical users | | Regional communities and events | Use in a specific country or context | Local angle for regional media | Translation and consent across languages | Two rules for the search. Read the raw messages yourself rather than asking the community team for "good testimonials", because the best stories rarely look polished at first. And look for repeat behaviour over weeks, since anyone can have one good experience during a promotion. ## How do you vet a user story before pitching it? I put every candidate through a **five-gate test**. If it fails one gate, it doesn't go out. No exceptions for stories the founder loves. 1. **Verifiable.** A reporter must be able to confirm the person exists and uses the product: an on-chain address they're willing to share, a public profile with a history, a company website. Anonymous handles with new accounts fail here. 2. **Consented.** The person has agreed in writing to be named or described, and understands it may appear in media. Consent for a tweet reshare isn't consent for a Cointelegraph feature. 3. **Specific.** The story has a concrete before and after. "It's great" isn't a story. "I used to wait three days for a cross-border payment to my family and now it's minutes" is. 4. **Unpaid.** Check whether this person received rewards, tokens, grants or ambassador fees from you. If they did, disclose it or drop the story. A reporter who finds out later will assume everything else was arranged too. 5. **Newsworthy.** The story connects to something the outlet already covers: a trend, a region, a regulation. A lovely story with no hook stays on your blog, which is fine, but it isn't a pitch. Gate four is where many crypto stories fall over, because so many active users are also incentive participants. That isn't disqualifying, but it has to be said up front. There's also a compliance line. Avoid stories built around how much money someone made. Profit testimonials read as promotion, and in many markets they bring disclosure obligations. The same logic applies as with creators, which I cover in [KOL disclosure rules across the FTC, SEC and MiCA](/blog/crypto-kol-disclosure-rules-ftc-sec-mica-2026). Stories about what a person could do, not what they earned, are safer and usually more interesting. ## How do you pitch a user story to journalists? Remember who the reporter works for. > the journos are not on the project's payroll but rather media's payroll! > > [Shilika Jain on X, 20 Sep 2023](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/1704482702299394125) That means the story has to serve their readers, not your launch. A few practical rules: - **Offer the person, not the quote.** Reporters want to speak to the user directly. Have them ready and briefed on logistics, never on what to say. - **Pair the story with one number.** A person illustrates, data generalises. Combine one strong user with one honest metric, and the piece has both a face and a reason to run. - **Pick the outlet by the story's angle.** A remittance story suits a regional business outlet more than a DeFi newsletter. A developer story might suit a trade publication covering infrastructure. - **Give exclusivity when it's strong.** A single good user story is often best offered to one reporter first. - **Don't pitch three at once.** Several thin stories look like a campaign. One deep one looks like journalism material. Pairing a person with data is something I've seen work from the data side too. For Tangem, a self-custody survey with a clear headline stat (two-thirds of crypto users supporting self-custody) travelled across English, Korean, Japanese and Dutch editions without a separate pitch per market. For Elastos, commissioned research on how many Nigerians trust Bitcoin for life savings earned a standalone headline. Data gives a reporter the frame. A user story gives them the scene inside it. ## How can you build user stories into the product, not just find them? The best sources are designed in. When I wrote a marketing teardown of Tangem on X, one of the ideas was a campaign built around users telling their own stories. > Launch the Great Exchange Exit: Incentivize users to move assets into self-custody and share their stories. > > [Shilika Jain on X, 4 Jun 2026](https://x.com/Shilika_jain/status/2062437697978008001) That was a proposal, not a campaign I ran, and it carries the gate-four risk: if you incentivise stories, you have to disclose it. Ways to make stories easier to find without paying for them: - Add a "what are you using this for" field in onboarding, optional and short. - Ask in support follow-ups whether the person would be open to a conversation. - Run small, regular user calls and keep notes. - Track partners in production and check in with them every quarter. None of this is a marketing trick. It's paying attention to why people use what you built, and writing it down before it gets lost. ## What does a good user story look like vs a weak one? | Element | Weak version | Strong version | | --- | --- | --- | | Who | "A user in Asia" | A named freelancer in a named city, with a public profile | | Problem | "Fees were high" | A specific cost or delay they faced every month | | Change | "Now it's better" | What they do differently now, and since when | | Proof | A screenshot of a tweet | A shareable address, an invoice, an interview | | Incentives | Unmentioned | Disclosed, or none | | Hook | "Our users love us" | Tied to a trend the outlet covers | If you write case studies for your own site as well, the [B2B case study template](/blog/b2b-case-study-template) has a structure that adapts well. For campaigns where user stories carry the narrative, this is a core part of my [Web3 PR campaigns](/services/web3-pr-campaigns) work. ## When don't user stories work for PR? They're slow. Finding, consenting and preparing one person can take weeks, and a partner's legal team can stretch that to a quarter. If you need coverage next week, a story won't be ready. They also fit some products better than others. Consumer apps, payments and wallets generate human stories easily. Deep infrastructure, like a data availability layer, usually has developers and businesses as users, so the "story" is a team and an integration rather than a person. That's still valid, just different. And some users simply don't want attention, especially in crypto where privacy is part of why they're here. Respect that. A pseudonymous story with on-chain proof can work for crypto-native outlets, but most mainstream reporters will need a real name. ## FAQ ### How many user stories should a project have ready before a launch? One that's fully vetted and available for interviews is enough to start. Two or three across different use cases gives you options for different outlets. More than that is usually a sign you're collecting quotes rather than stories. ### Can we use pseudonymous users in press stories? Some crypto-native outlets will accept it if there's verifiable on-chain activity and the reporter can speak to the person. Mainstream and business press usually won't. Ask the outlet's norms before you offer one. ### Should we pay users for their time in interviews? A small thank-you after the fact is common, but anything given before or in exchange for the story must be disclosed to the reporter. Paying for positive testimony undermines the whole point. When in doubt, don't. ### What if our only active users are incentive participants? Then that's your story to fix in the product, not in PR. Look for the few who kept using it after rewards ended, and talk to them. If there are none, pitch something else, such as research or founder commentary, while you work on retention. *Sitting on a product people use but no stories to show for it? [Book 30 minutes](https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/) and we'll go looking for them together.* --- **Book a 30-min story-mining session with Shilika** - https://calendly.com/shilikajain/30min/ Canonical: https://www.shilikajain.com/blog/real-user-stories-crypto-pr-case-studies