Lily Canter is an experienced freelance money, health and lifestyle journalist, and a senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University. She is also the co-author of Freelancing for Journalists and co-host of the podcast of the same name.

Whether it's a woman who bought a divorce horse or a parent homeschooling five children, finding a case study can sometimes feel like more of an art than a science.

Yet human experience is at the heart of journalism and it is a vital skill to be able to track down individuals with compelling stories.

There are a number of methods that can be deployed to find the right person to illustrate a story, no matter how obscure the request may seem.

It goes without saying that social media is the number one platform for finding case studies but it is not as simple as putting out a post on your Instagram, X or Facebook feed.

Your request needs to reach beyond your own inner circle particularly if you want diverse representation.

Although X has far less engagement than when it was once called Twitter, it is still worth using the hashtag #journorequest on X when trying to find a relevant case study. This hashtag will put your request in front of people keen to share their story or PRs with relevant clients. Keep your DMs open and you can quickly filter through any responses or even better add your email address in case they can’t send you a DM.

Using this approach helped me to secure a fairly niche case study for a Mail on Sunday story about homeowners struggling to find an approved Green Home Grant installer.

And sometimes just a general call out will work. More recently I posted on X to find GPs with concerns over schools........

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