Ready for a white paper makeover? Pump some story into your white papers, turn them into e-books and separate them on your Website.

Complete this sentence:

When I hear “white paper,” I think:

1. “Oh, boy, I get to read another one!”
2. Wall of text with no pictures.
3. Crew cut, short-sleeved shirt, black tie, 1950s.
4. Skim, skim.
5. Shred, shred.
6. Dot mil.

Frankly, I don’t think any of these, because I enjoy writing them, in spite of the fact that it’s not a task for the faint of heart. But David Meerman Scott – here I go again – posted today on “Nerdy white papers vs. hip and stylish e-books,” and so I’ve paused the white paper I’m working on for a few minutes to mull this over.

David mentions several complaints about most white papers: they lack original design, they require registration, they don’t really go viral, they don’t contain much of a story. He juxtaposes them against e-books like his, which are more hip and easier to read. He cites a few examples of e-books that do the heavy lifting of white papers, without being a heavy read.

As a marketing manager, you need to put yourself in your readers’ shoes and think about how you can do the white paper, arguably the most valuable investment in your marketing communications arsenal, in a way that doesn’t bore the people you’re trying to impress.

So, how could you change your white paper strategy to tell the same kind of story in a more hip manner? I’m trying to figure out whether I could get away with it in the paper I’m working on, which is for a language technology client.

If you were your marketing communications writer, you would need to change a few things:

1. Template. If you’re working in a template that your colleagues require you to use for papers of this kind, you need to either adhere to that convention or tell them this is not a white paper. Choose the latter.
2. Tone. The minute you break out of the white paper mindset, you free yourself to write differently. You’re no longer persuasively arguing the merits of one business model against another; you’re telling the story of how this one works and giving your audience a good read.
3. Design. Here you can try something radical – it’s not a white paper anymore, remember? – and switch from portrait to landscape. Did your computer break? I thought not. See what kinds of things you can do on the page that you couldn’t do before. Don’t just fill it with wall-to-wall text; use the space creatively.
4. “Pitchurs.” Give your readers a break with more images. Not banal photos of happy people in meeting shaking hands, or mountain climbers scaling the highest peaks, but images that pull their weight in the story telling process.
5. Attitude. If you were proofreading an e-book you’d written instead of a white paper, and had to complete the sentence at the top of this post, you’d pick “none of the above,” because you’d be in a completely different frame of mind about the project. And so would your readers.

And then, the best part would be putting them on your Website: You’d create a different sub-page under Resources. Next to Case Studies and White Papers, you’d have e-Books.

Try that, and see which one gets more clicks after a few months.

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it. He also publishes a newsletter with more tips on working with your writers.

photo credit: NASA

Related posts:

1. Forget the White Paper – Focus on the Change
2. Good White Paper, Lousy Title – 3 Ways to Fix It
3. Castrating Your White Paper in 1 Easy Step

“White paper” covers a multitude of formats, and it’s rare to find two people who take it to mean the same thing. Poisoned white papers harm the publisher more than the reader, but there are antidotes.

I’ve looked at a half-dozen documents called “white papers” in the last few days and marveled at the variety among them. It’s a maligned term, really, and I think it has come to represent a type of marketing communications content that:

1. is long;
2. is different from a brochure, a case study or an advertisement.

That covers a lot of ground. I’ll leave it to folks like Jonathan Kantor to describe what a white paper is and isn’t, but whatever you or your marketing communications writers have produced, you should make sure that you don’t poison it – let alone your readers or your reputation – with it.

4 Ways to Poison Your White Paper…

1. Wall of text – This can more resemble a rant than a white paper. If you go on for more than a page or two with nothing but text, you’re probably poisoning your readers, no matter how engaging your content.
2. Aimlessness – This is more like a blog post (and a poor, long one at that) than a white paper. It is usually a sign that the author is enthusiastic about the product but does not know how to tell a story about it.
3. Leading the reader by the nose to your product – This is more like a brochure than a white paper, because the goal of a white paper is for readers to sense that they are drawing their own conclusions – at least, some of them. If you’re not leaving them with that feeling, then it’s a brochure.
4. Hiding it under a bushel – This is more like a diary entry. White papers are the main course at The Content Buffet, and they should be prominently posted, tweeted, Facebooked, excerpted and blogged about. If you’re not thinking “Write once, use many,” you’re missing most of the social media wave.

…and 3 Antidotes

1. Break up the text in your paper with diagrams, charts, callout boxes, photographs, quotations and anything else graphical that gives the reader’s eye a much deserved rest. It’s easy to go overboard on this, but if you can give your readers a vacation once per page, it will be easier for them to get through the entire paper, and they’ll remember you more fondly for it.
2. Maintain a balance among sections. For example:
   • 5% summary
   • 25% introduction and presentation of problem
   • 30% current approaches and why something new is needed
   • 30% details and advantages of new solution (ours)
   • 10% conclusion and follow-us.

   This is the antidote for aimlessness because it gives readers a mental pace to keep.

3. Focus on your ideal readers. If you really know them well enough to aim a white paper at them, you should be able to include miniature case studies that tie applications of your product back to real-world people and companies. This is a very powerful antidote because it introduces relevance.

So, whether you’ve produced a pure-land, bona fide white paper, or just something that is long and is not a brochure, take care to remove the poison from it before handing it on to your customers and prospects.

John White of venTAJA Marketing is a marketing communications writer for technology companies. He posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/-cavin-/ / CC BY 2.0

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Step 1: Cut off its graphics.

The writer was not happy.

“I put a lot of time, thought and effort into the graphics I used for that white paper, and the client pulled out every last one of them before publishing the piece. It’s an eight-page wall of text now. What a waste!”

She showed me her final draft to the client, and the version as published. She was right. They had castrated it by cutting out four informative graphics from a 10-page paper.

“They must think people read white papers as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls,” she continued. “They don’t read them, they skim them. I use the graphics as eye-hooks to give readers places to park their attention for a second. They’re a big part of the persuasive element in any white paper. Without graphics, people’s eyes glaze over.”

I started to go through the published version but had to stop because I could feel my eyes glazing over. It hurt.

The Why of Graphics in White Papers

In “Punch Up Your Writing with Graphics,” Kevin Gault quotes two prominent marketing communications writers on the topic:

“There’s a connection between visual appeal and comprehension. We’re attracted to visually appealing and pleasing design elements, and making a white paper more visually appealing helps readers grasp important messages about products.”   -Jonathan Kantor, The Appum Group

“Words have to be read, but visuals provide instant communication. Properly used, graphics let you add a visual element to your message. They can engage readers by visually telling a story.” Roger C. Parker, author of Design to Sell

Did the writer ask why the client had castrated the paper removed the graphics?

“The marketing manager said that none of the other pieces in this part of their content library uses graphics, and they wanted to maintain consistency.”

When Writers Care Too Much

A point of order: I deliberately avoid the term “copywriter,” because it sounds like “hired gun,” somebody with no skin in the game, who is merely writing to keep the wolf away from the door. In fact, most business writers I’ve worked with put a great deal of themselves into their work and take proverbial pride in ownership of their product. Occasionally, this pride goes unrequited – or altogether spurned – when the client shoots himself in the foot. But hey, the words belong ultimately to the client, and the marketing communications writer who learns to deal with such setbacks will last longer in the profession.

The Moral

Good marketing communications writers go beyond telling your story to telling your story in a way that people will want to read. Graphics are a big part of this, so don’t castrate your white paper by cutting them out.

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: Flynn Wynn

Related posts:

1. A White Paper Project That Went Well
2. White Paper Projects That Don’t Go Well – Part I

Writing for diagrams

Graphics and diagrams are at the heart of good marketing communications, but your writer can’t always make them work for a written piece.

The deadline loomed, and still I had no more than an outline from the writer. “What’s taking so long?” I asked.

“I think I have writer’s block,” replied the writer.

“You don’t believe in writer’s block,” I said. “Your Website says so.”

“I’m having trouble wrapping the business-benefits message and the graphical overviews and everything you want me to cover into a single package that somebody will bother to read,” she said. “There are several ideas you want me to describe, and the presentation diagrams from the engineers are not conceptual enough. They dive into platform repositories and toolsets without explaining overall workflow, let alone business advantages.”

I hate it when that happens.

“So, what is slowing you down?” I asked.

“The diagrams describe only the front of the elephant,” she answered. “This paper has to describe the front, back, top, bottom and middle of the elephant. I’m trying to do that with the diagrams I have, but it doesn’t work.”

“Do you know how you want the diagrams to look in order to fit with your text?” I asked.

“I need some time to flesh them out.”

The writer took about 4 hours to redesign the diagrams on pencil and paper, then met with the engineers who had designed the graphics. “I’m telling a different story from the one you told,” she explained to them, “but I need to make sure that I’m getting it right. It won’t match your story, but it needs to be consistent with it.”

The engineers dutifully looked at the drawings. “That’s not how we would explain the workflow,” they commented, “but it’s not wrong.”

While the writer modified the draft around the updated diagrams, we had a designer polish them up. The mixture of the two was a better fit for the ideal readers: technically advanced people to whom we were introducing mid-stream changes (and trying to convince them to get off the dime and adopt).

The moral: Hire a writer who is not afraid to pull out a pencil and paper and say, “I can’t explain it to fit your drawing. Let me show you how I can explain it.”

John White of venTAJA Marketing posts about technology writing from the perspective of the marketing manager. It’s dirty work, but somebody has to do it.

photo credit: gigile

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