“Give me what I want, not what I ask for.”

If you learn nothing else here about hiring a writer, keep this in mind: Projects live and die on how well you communicate to the writer what you want, and on how well the writer demonstrates that he understands you.

But what happens when you don’t know what you want, or when you ask for something that is different from what you want? The writer can’t look inside your brain and figure out what you want. In fact, if you confuse him enough, a smart writer will simply decline your project, and invite you to go confuse somebody else.

Frankly, I see this a lot with white papers.

Marketing managers think they need a white paper because it’s a magic carpet to more leads or industry recognition. You can do a lot with a white paper, but it’s not a panacea.

In March, I met a colleague in long-distance telecom company who offered from a form-fill page a white paper he had written. He was looking for a writer to create follow-on white papers and develop much more content for his site. In May, we exchanged e-mail on how the project was going.

I’m questioning the white paper project now. Take a look at my form-fill page: [link removed]

I’m only getting about 1 request per day for my current white paper. Am I doing something fatally wrong? If I’m going to invest the money in more white papers, I want to make sure they pay off quickly.

Thoughts?

I had a few thoughts:

1. He asked too many questions on the form, and it turned people off. You can’t start a conversation that way.
2. The existing white paper wasn’t interesting, and it didn’t tell people how to save money on their long-distance calling.
3. “One request per day” tells me that the white paper was a standalone effort, and that he had no other content or attention-getters driving people to the paper.
4. “White papers…pay off quickly” are two concepts that don’t really belong in the same sentence. Race track bets and slot machine expenditures pay off quickly; white papers do not.

This manager knew what he wanted – lead-generating content – but I think he was asking for the wrong thing – white papers. I prompted him to think more broadly about content that would serve his purpose: case studies, blog posts, how-to articles, Web pages, and so on.

If he hired a writer to do a white paper, he would end up with what he’d asked for, but not what he wanted, and he would become even more frustrated for having spent the money on a white (paper) elephant.

Writer Gordon Graham weighed in on this as well:

Caution: Many people say “white paper” when they really mean a customer story, a brochure, or even a press release. Perhaps your client REALLY means a white paper, perhaps not. Don’t be afraid to propose what a prospect really NEEDS, not what they say they want.

For-instance, I’m engaged with a prospect who asked me about doing 5 to 10 “white papers” for a new web site. I’m pretty sure they can achieve what they want to with shorter 2- to 3-page “articles” instead of full 5- to 8-page white papers. So I’m proposing that… meaning that they can get 10 or 12 shorter articles for the same budget as 5 longer white papers.

It’s important to listen carefully to what prospects are trying to accomplish, and then give them your best advice about how to achieve that… regardless of the preconceived ideas they may have in their minds.

Do you trust your writer enough to talk about your broader content plans with her? If you try it, and you don’t get useful feedback, find somebody with whom you can talk it over, until “what I want” equals “what I ask for.”

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