“There’s an industry analyst who knows our company and competitors very well,” said the marketing manager. “He’s pretty accessible, and he has the reputation for calling b.s. whenever we put it in front of him. Shall we show him the white paper you’re writing?”

Uhh…maybe not so much.

Early on, I wasn’t in favor of that. “We’re not writing the paper for analysts,” I countered. “We’re writing it for prospects. It might be valuable to brief him on the paper and make sure we’re not leaving anything out, but it wouldn’t be like testing the paper on an ideal reader.”

Then we went through two months of edits, rewrites, reviews, put-this-in, take-that-out, back, forth and sideways. The marketing manager brought up the topic of the analyst again. I had begun to come around.

The analyst’s perspective

Why show your white paper to an analyst? After all, they’re known for writing, but they’re not know for writing very interesting stuff.

Don’t expect an analyst to say, “You need better transitions from this section to the next one,” or “I think you need a catchier introduction.” Those things are important to ensure you engage your readers and leave them wanting more, but analysts aren’t looking at it that way.

In the short run, you want the analyst to say, “Mommy bloggers are increasing in clout, and you should broaden this first section to include them,” or “Don’t put the words ‘cloud computing‘ in the title. It’s worn out.”

In the long run, you want the analyst to tell her other clients about you. “Why are you doing this in software?” you want her to say. “Tchotchke Technologies wrote a paper on how they do it in hardware that’s ten times faster. You could triple your sales.” Or, “Take a look at Tchotchke. They’ve just put out a paper on what they’re doing, but they’re not in Europe yet. I think you could find ways to complement each other.”

Don’t show your white paper to analysts because of how they write. Show it to them because of the people they talk to.

Does it affect your content?

Should your marketing communications writer create the paper any differently, knowing that you’re going to show it to an analyst?

Yes.

He should write it better.

The analyst becomes the ideal reader. The message has to be crisp, well delivered and memorable. You were going to have your writer do that anyway, but now that you can describe your ideal reader and the conversation you want her to have, you can double-down on clarity and message.

And whatever you do, don’t give an analyst a brochure disguised as a white paper. It wastes your time and annoys the analyst.

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. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: San Jose Library

Related posts:

1. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Educational White Paper
2. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Revolutionary White Paper
3. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Innovation White Paper

It’s easy to confuse “we need to write a white paper” with “we need to tell more people about us.”

Wise marketing managers are able to discriminate between these needs and keep the chest-pounding out of the white paper. Cooler heads keep in mind that people don’t buy features; they buy benefits.

Eventually, wise marketers can convince those who want to fill white papers with the company’s fabulous technical advances that that kind of material belongs in a brochure or advertisement. That works for a given audience in a given context, but expectations are higher for something you want to call a white paper, so you need to be more subtle.

Still, that only tells you what shouldn’t go into your white paper. What should go into it?

What should and shouldn’t go into a white paper

First, consider a few simple guidelines:

1. It should be easy for me to learn something useful from your white paper.
2. I should be able to see my problem, or my customers’ problem, properly described in your white paper.
3. The structure of your white paper should be obvious to me, so that I can skip any uninteresting part and resume at the next meaty bit.
4. I should feel that I’m drawing my own conclusions from your white paper, instead of drinking your Kool-Aid.
5. When I finish the white paper, I should feel that I could probably trust – or at least not distrust – your organization to help me with my problem.

In general, then, here are some should’s and shouldn’ts about what goes into a white paper:

White papers should contain:

• industry data from reputable sources
• quantifiable trends
• a credible explanation of a real-world problem
• broad strokes about your category of technology or approach to the problem (but don’t describe it as your technology)
• sensible arguments in favor of this technology, weighted heavily toward solving the real-world problem explained earlier

White papers should not contain:

• your opinions about where the industry is headed (call that an industry overview instead)
• details about which competing products have which features across your category (call that a buyer’s guide instead)
• a list of feature-benefit pairs, even if they are customer-oriented  (call that a brochure instead)
• details of a customer engagement or use case (call that a case study instead)
• customer quotations about your company or technology (call that a testimonial instead)

“Am I ready to write now?”

Well, not really. You also need to know what motivates the ideal reader of your white paper. I’ve posted on that in the past and shall surely do so again in the future. The more information about your audience that you can give to your marketing communications writer, the better the resulting white paper.

Keep in mind this post from Jonathan Farrington on negotiating with the four personality types. Marketing managers need to understand these types – drivers, expressives, amiables and analyticals – as much as salespeople do, and publish content that floats everybody’s boat.

It may take more than a single white paper to do that.

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. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: swanksalot

Related posts:

1. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Educational White Paper
2. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Innovation White Paper
3. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Revolutionary White Paper

When people look at a column of your tweets, can they tell who the intended audience is?

When they land on your Facebook page, can they scan your posts and figure out whether you’re talking to them or to the other half-billion people in the Face-sphere?

We expect that our followers in social media know something about us and our brand, and will be receptive to our tweets. If you’re Souplantation, you can assume that visitors know you’re making offers to hungry people, most of whom have hungry families to feed.

Addressing the envelope

But suppose you’ve been developing and writing to buyer personas, as Michele Linn and David Meerman Scott have enjoined you to do all these years. You put in place a content marketing campaign aimed at your ideal readers, then use tweets and posts to point them to it.

Are you making it drop-dead easy for them to know that you’re talking to them?

Are you addressing the envelope?

Sacrifice a few precious characters in the name of targeting. For example:

• Sysadmins: Security holes in Windows 7; plug ‘em now http://… #hashtag
• MobileAppDevelopers: Still time to register for devconf at http://…
• Mktgmgrs: You tweetin’ to me? Huh? http://… #hashtag1 #hashtag2
• AngryBirders: Two new cheats revealed http://…
• navyseals: Thanks, good job. Don’t tell us – we don’t want to know how you did it

What happens when you don’t address the envelope like this? People assume you’re talking to your “following” – whatever that is – but what about those of us who don’t yet know whether we’re in your following?

Explicitly addressing your tweets and posts is an easy way of qualifying the members of your audience and letting them know whom you’re trying to attract to your following. If I’m not a mktgmgr, sysadmin or navyseal, then I know your message doesn’t apply to me.

And we all appreciate anything you can do to help us cut through the clutter.

*(With apologies to Robert DeNiro as Travis in “Taxi Driver”)

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. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: sludgegulper

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Here’s a new challenge for your marketing communications writer:

Come up with a teaser as good as “Did I ever tell you about the time we…”

The ultimate hook…

Last week I sent e-mail to an old friend, Eric, with whom I’ve only recently re-connected (thanks to LinkedIn).

I asked him to recount an anecdote he’d told me when we were in college about a veterinary mishap with a parakeet. He replied with a number of details I’d long forgotten that made the story even more amusing (“more engaging content,” in marketing terms).

He ended his note with a question so disarmingly simple -

Did I ever tell you about the time we set fire to a Samoyed?

- that it took me a moment to realize that it was how every marketing communications writer would love to finish every piece of content.

With the ultimate hook to the next piece of content.

This was better than all of the chestnuts we trot out to tempt readers to the next bit of content. War horses like:

• “Call us for more details.”
• “Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.”
• “If you liked this post, you’ll probably enjoy…”
• “Let us know what you think in the comments below.”
• “But no, wait – there’s more. If you act now, we’ll send you…”

…and the ideal response

So, of course, I had the responses I want the ideal reader of all my content to have:

“No, you didn’t.”

“Please.”

“Tell me.”

Even if I already know the story about the flaming Samoyed or don’t care about it, it’s an achingly good teaser from one piece of good content to another. It’s another way of saying,

I’ve got more stories like this, and I want you to read them.

For Eric and me this is just a conversation. Don’t forget, though, that you and your followers (customers, prospects, influencers, investors) are in just a conversation as well. How can you get a hook like this into your content and elicit this kind of response, the response that asks for more stories, more information, more relationship?

Eventually, of course, you need a call to action that will result in money for your product or service, but this is a good way to keep readers following you through the sales funnel.

So, two questions for you:

1. Did you ever set fire to a Samoyed? (translation: Do you have the next piece of content ready for your followers?)
2. Can you get your marketing writer to turn it into the next hit?

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. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: Let Ideas Compete

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My new client’s CTO is bright and busy, and he talks fast. I was on time for my appointment in his office to interview him on server virtualization, and before I’d gotten to my second question, I saw his eyes dart to the clock on the wall behind me.

“You’d better let him do the talking,” my brain told my mouth. Mouth agreed, and we let the CTO tell his story.

“I want this piece to do two things,” he said. “I want it to differentiate us from our competitors in the areas of availability, failover and load balancing, and I want it to describe the benefits of each of those.”

Then he took off like a street fighter on global deployments, payloads and server utilization levels. I had no trouble understanding it, but my brain started nagging me again after a few minutes.

“Whom does he want to read this?” it asked.

“He hasn’t yet told us,” replied my mouth. “Shall I find out?”

“I think you’d better.”

“Excuse me,” I asked the CTO, “Who is the audience for this piece?”

The question seemed to catch him off guard. “Oh, well, I would guess that it would be…well, I suppose the people who would be interested in this are…I’m trying to couch it in terms that would matter to…IT managers and people who need to make equipment work properly in a data center.”

He paused for a moment as I jotted notes. “Yes, that’s right: IT managers.” I think he replayed most of the interview through his head to see whether he had indeed said things that would be meaningful to that audience, then recalibrated himself slightly and continued.

I still find it odd that people find that question odd. It almost always catches my interviewee off balance, but when I get a proper answer, it’s miraculous how much easier it is to write.

I’ve tried posing the question in e-mail ahead of time, but it has no effect on how people talk about the subject. Even when I raise it at the start of the discussion, the interviewee rarely sticks with it.

It is up to the marketing communications writer or content marketer to keep the interviewee focused on the ideal reader. Most people in an interview are simply too absorbed in telling their story to focus on the audience.

How do you keep an interviewee on track with the audience’s needs?

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. Download his eBook, “10 Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Marketing Communications Writer.”

photo credit: US Information Agency

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What do you think about scaring your prospects and customers a little bit?

How do you feel about getting them off the dime to buy your products by prodding them or making them feel uneasy? Can your marketing communications writer pull that off in a white paper?

There are subtle ways in which to do that, and the innovation white paper outline shows you how to nudge readers out of their comfort zone and into action.

You just need to put a little Buckshot in the Air.

Title

Use a title that conveys urgency:

• Don’t Look Now… – Engineering Managers and the Coming Wave of Environmental Compliance
• What’s Spam Got to Do with It? Network Administrators Fight This Year’s Threats with Last Year’s Technology

The paper will embody some tension and conflict (see David Meerman Scott on conflict-driven business writing), and the title has to set the stage for it.

Summary

You’re probably going to describe your own innovative remedy for the problem, so do the right thing and prepare readers for that in your summary.

Being honest about it is better than pretending that it’s an independent, authoritative resource, and then stealthily injecting advertorial late in the game. Readers don’t like that.

Introduction

Keep your goals modest as you introduce the body of the paper.

• Your product will not overcome global warming; it will improve scrubber technology.
• It will not make malware evaporate; it will strengthen security at e-mail gateways.
• Your service will not fix the Great Recession; it will help cautious employers screen middle-manager candidates.

Don’t bother discussing the overarching topics of global warming or malware or the economic crisis, because your readers already know about them. Devote a couple of precious, introductory paragraphs to the subset of the problem that your product addresses.

The Buckshot in the Air

Your readers are comfortable with their understanding of the problem and their approach to it, so you need to describe the danger they face in relying on that old-think.

Two uncontrollable forces make up the Buckshot in the Air (as in, “something or somebody pursuing and shooting at you”): competitors and changes in the industry.

Your readers are afraid of these forces because they cannot predict them. You cannot predict them, either, but you have a new way of staying one step ahead of them. That is why people are willing to read your white paper.

Consider a personalization technology that helps people discover interesting mobile content without hours of fruitless searching on the phone. The ideal readers are wireless carriers, who already enjoy a tight billing relationship with users. The Buckshot in the Air might look like this:

1. You don’t own all the data on your users. There are intermediate parties providing good content to your users, and they own very valuable information about your users’ preferences.
2. A new category of competitor is arising, populated by last year’s strategic partners.
3. You can try to direct your users to interesting content, but if they don’t find it relevant, you’re doing them – and yourself – more harm than good.

Does that feel as through you’re pushing the envelope? Are you afraid that your readers will think you’re bawling them out? Are you wary of sticking your nose into their business?

You are pushing it, you may be bawling them out and your nose is in their business.

This is what it looks like when you stop croaking about your products and start focusing on the problems you solve for your customers.

The Innovation

Here you describe the innovation toward which you’ve scared your readers:

• how it differs from other approaches
• how it will give readers a leg up on the competition and help them stay ahead of industry developments
• why it is important to find out more about the innovation as soon as possible

Of course, most companies want the paper to describe their own innovation, and this is where they begin naming their own name. If you prefer, you can keep this section anonymous, then drop your name in the last paragraph of the conclusion.

(In the pure sense of a white paper, they should refrain from naming their products, using the paper instead to build their own authority quietly. In practice, though, few can justify the time and expense involved in producing a good paper without talking about themselves and their products. Good marketing communications writers can balance the tasks of naming names and focusing on the customer’s problems.)

List a few technical details  in a subsection (e.g., “How Does [the Innovation] Work?) – just enough to add some depth to the paper and to whet the reader’s appetite for more.

Conclusion and Follow Us

Recap the threats and the new-think for dealing with them. If you’ve left your innovation nameless up to now, mention it in passing in the conclusion.

Be sure to invite readers to follow your blog, newsletter, podcasts and webinars. If they like the way you look at their business problems in the paper, they’ll want to keep an eye on you for more insight.

The result is a first-pass white paper outline you can circulate. Your reviewers will be able to see where you’re taking the readers of your innovation white paper. Once you have their feedback, you can start on the draft.

Next, the Why-We-Did-This White Paper: Customers-Industry-Us Outline

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: Major Nelson (CC 2.0)

Related posts:

1. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Seven Myths White Paper
2. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Educational White Paper
3. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Revolutionary White Paper

Part 2 in a continuing series of white paper outlines, each with a different structure and focus. Here, an outline for white papers that guide readers through revolutionary change.

This white paper outline is about The Revolution that your new ideas and technologies ignite in your customers’ organization.

Suppose you want your prospects to:

• replace a zillion spreadsheets with a customer relationship management (CRM) package
• move from a central headquarters to a virtual structure
• switch from Microsoft Office to Google Docs
• change from a traditional phone system to one based on the Internet (VoIP)

When your product or service causes a seismic shift in how your buyers do something as business-integral as place a phone call, you should create a story around it that tells them what they’re in for. A revolutionary change is going to affect People, Process and Technology, and this is the structure on which you’ll base your white paper.

Title

Summary

The same things that apply to the white paper outline for the educational white paper apply here. Establish the people-process-technology theme in the summary and maintain it in your structure throughout the paper.

IMPORTANT: Avoid talking about your product or service by name. This white paper outline is about The Revolution that you occasion, but it’s not specifically about your features and functionality. Leave those for your brochures.

Then dive in. Assume your readers already know what has their hair on fire, are familiar with The Revolution, and want to know how it is going to affect their…

People

First talk about people. Describe how to sell the revolution to different groups in the organization, because if this doesn’t happen smoothly, then process and technology won’t matter very much.

Use a series of quotations – real and imagined – to give a voice to objections, warnings, praises, recommendations and water-cooler talk about The Revolution:

• “We don’t need agile development because our release cycles are so long.”
• “Our QA staff is stretched too thin as it is. The added workload of migration would break us.”
• “We want to spend less on trade shows but aren’t sure that social media is where we should put those dollars.”
• “We’ve already switched to authoring in DITA/XML tools, but our team is still doing things pretty much the same as before, only more slowly.”
• “We need to get our overseas offices on board with buying postage off the Web.”

You’ll build the People section around these quotations, ending with a brief segue into…

Process

The Revolution will introduce new vocabulary and new workflow to your readers’ organization. In this section, define that vocabulary in your own terms (this is stealth branding) and outline that workflow as you’ve seen it play out with your other customers.

For example, client Service-now.com reinforces the message that the most successful implementations of its IT service management platform rely on putting processes in place first. Outline these processes in this section as a series of easy-to-read steps.

Technology

Assuming The Revolution has a technology component, it comes last in the white paper outline. Now that you’ve addressed the People’s fears and the novelty of Processes, describe the software, hardware, machinery, materials and capital expansion required:

• cooling towers
• data center equipment
• earth-moving equipment
• gas turbines
• rubber bands and staplers
• Linux servers

If The Revolution is a service, explain the steps for implementing it:

• 30-minute interviews with executive staff
• recorded depositions
• subterranean termite inspections

This isn’t the place for the bill of materials, but you should list anything required to get The Revolution going successfully in terms that make both business and technical sense.

What Can We Expect from The Revolution?

List some of the business and technical benefits customers have experienced. Use pull-quotes. Refer and hyperlink to case studies and success stories, but soft-pedal mention of your product or service, because the essence of the paper is still The Revolution. Don’t worry: your readers know where to find you.

Conclusion and Follow Us

Use these sections to briefly tie up the white paper outline and invite readers to follow you. Your “Follow Us” section should be boilerplate, with the usual pointers: social media, phone, Web, e-mail.

Again, let other marketing pieces specifically describe your product or service. The goal of this white paper is to convince readers that nobody knows more about The Revolution than you do.

How about that? The result is a white paper outline you can circulate. Your reviewers will be able to see the path down which you intend to take the readers of your revolutionary white paper. Once you have their feedback, you can start on the draft.

Next: The Vindication White Paper: Seven Myths Outline

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.

Related posts:

1. The White Paper Outline Buffet: The Educational White Paper
2. Steal This White Paper Outline!
3. 4 Elements of a White Paper Outline

If you’re writing a white paper for yourself, you can get away without writing an outline first, but if other people will approve the paper, you need a white paper outline. Period.

In other posts about white paper outlines, I’ve explained this. The outline is to your white paper project what blueprints are to a construction project: they demonstrate how you understand the objective of the project, and they act like a skeleton that you flesh out with content.

‘Nuff said.

It’s All in the Structure

Readers crave structure. It’s how they follow along. If they can’t figure out the structure in your paper, they think you’re rambling. Literary authors (and some sportswriters) can get away without structure, but don’t try it in marketing communications.

Also, focus on the structure that makes the most sense to your ideal readers – depending on what they’ve come to expect in a white paper – more so than on the structure that appeals most to you.

• You want to inform and persuade, so your structure needs to support those goals.
• Your readers want you to solve their business problem, not tell them how smart you are, so show them how you can solve it.

The structure in your white paper outline is an important part of this.

A White Paper for Educating

Suppose your product or service does something completely new (or does something old in a completely new way). The kind of thing that causes your prospects to ask, for example,

You mean I can make phone calls anywhere for free?

You mean I can have my DNA mapped?

You mean I can double the capacity of my hard drive?

You’ve got some educating to do, and your first white papers should follow the Background-Trends-Emerging outline:

Title

Your title answers the reader’s first question: “Is this worth my attention?” Don’t spoil a good white paper with a lousy title; this kind of paper needs a title that grabs attention without straining credibility. Reinforce it with a good subtitle as well:

The Doctor is In…Your Phone – Testing and Transmitting Blood-Sugar Levels over Wireless

Starting the entire project with your title is not a bad idea, but don’t weld yourself to it, because the paper may evolve in a different direction.

Summary

Start with a couple of paragraphs on what the paper covers, to answer the reader’s second question: “What am I going to get out of this?”

Many marketing communications writers wait until the end of the project to do the summary, but I suggest sending a tentative one with the outline. It helps avoid misunderstandings about message and direction.

If you plan to discuss your own products in the paper – not the ideal course in an educational white paper – mention that in the summary instead of springing it on the reader on page 8.

Background and Problem

Sketch out a few bullets on how the business problem came to be. Write only about things you’ll need later in the paper, not about every conceivable market condition.

By the way, if you’re not careful, you’ll lose your readers in this section. They’re scanning to avoid things they already know and don’t care about, so sketch the background in a way that makes it easy for them.

Finally, phrase the problem in a way that meshes with your title:

IT managers are stuck in an Optimization Triangle, spreading scarce improvement-resources among business process, infrastructure and users.

If that’s the problem you want to emphasize, and if it doesn’t support your title, then change your title.

The problem statement, a pivotal point in the paper, is where you move toward conflict-driven business writing and depart from brochure copy.

Existing Products and Market Trends

Next, list 3-4 ways the industry usually deals with the problem, and the relative dis-/advantages of each:

• More deep-water drilling
• Cap-and-trade
• Tax-based conservation incentives

Then, mention market trends that threaten to make these existing solutions obsolete in the long run:

• Sooner or later, oil will run out.

This puts your readers on notice that they cannot afford to stand still. It’s another pivotal point in the paper.

Emerging Technology

Something new is on the landscape, though, and here you describe the technology behind your product.

Educating readers about a new category is not the same thing as telling readers about your products, so stay away from self-promotion. Outline a few bullets that describe how the new technology addresses the old problems better than the existing products do, while accommodating market trends.

If you really need to mention your product, couch it in terms that suggest, “We’ve seen this coming and here’s what we’re putting in place. It may not be ideal for every organization, but this is how we think the market is evolving.”

For More Information, Follow Us

Invite readers who have made it this far to follow you. That says, “We know that you may not buy from us (yet), but keep an eye on us for the day when you do.” The marketing writer who understands “following” is your biggest asset here.

Emphasize social ways for your readers to keep tabs on you: blog, Facebook, Twitter, discussion groups. Add your phone and URL for good measure, but remember that few people use an 800-number or a Website for serious following.

The result of this process is a white paper outline you can circulate. Your reviewers will be able to see the path down which you intend to take the readers of your educational white paper. Once you have their feedback, you can start on the draft.

Next: The Revolution White Paper: People-Process-Technology Outline

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: justiNYC

Related posts:

1. 4 Elements of a White Paper Outline
2. Steal This White Paper Outline!
3. “It’s a Good Outline, But I Hate It.” – Making Outlines Work

Don’t you wish you could be inside your reader’s head as he reads your content? What text could you throw away? What text could you monetize?

Active listening is difficult. In fact, it’s exhausting, especially if you’re new to it.

Do you know people who practice active listening? You’d know if you did. They begin their sentences with clauses like:

• “If I understand what you’re saying, you want me to…”
• “What you’re telling me is…”
• “You’re saying that you…”

Relationship counselors recommend active listening techniques because the most important question in interpersonal communications is:

Do you understand this the way I intend for you to understand it?

But What Are You Thinking About?

There is a similar question, which skeptical people like me wonder about, and which shy people like me rarely pose:

What are you thinking about while I’m talking to you?

Probably not about what I’m saying.

Now think about that dynamic and your content. Don’t you want to ask your prospects:

What are you thinking about while you’re reading my white paper/case study/Web page/collateral?

Maybe your marketing communications writer did a perfect job creating valuable content, and your ideal reader understands your message and your products exactly the way you’d intended. But that still doesn’t guarantee that the reader’s mind isn’t wandering as he reads your paper, does it?

Magical Window in Your Content

What if you could embed some kind of magical, interactive window on page 6 of your document that would connect you to the reader in real time? Your reader turns from page 5 to page 6, and your head pops out of a small frame in the middle of the page.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” you say, “but would you mind telling me what you’re thinking about right now?”

If your marketing writer has really done her job, of course, the reader will look quizzically back at you, surprised you would even pose the question. If it’s a white paper on solar power technology he’d say, “Why, I’m thinking about the solar panels installed on the roof of my company’s parking structure.” If it were the letter to the shareholders in your annual report, he might say, “I’m trying to figure out why your sales were off last year when you spent so much on upgrading your CRM system.”

Most of the time, however, that is not the answer that would come back. Instead, you’d likely hear, “I’m thinking about my daughter’s broken finger,” or “I’m thinking that I forgot to take out the steaks to thaw for dinner tonight.”

You Lose Money When the Reader’s Mind Wanders

Face it: Can you get through one of your own white papers without your mind wandering? What do you think about when you read your company’s Web copy?

This is your new test for readability in your content: Can you get every paragraph to contribute to revenue generation? Are you willing to throw away the paragraphs that don’t contribute?

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: D Sharon Pruitt

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“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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