I’m very pleased to have my white paper chosen as the winner of the 2011 Apex Marketing and PR Publications Award. I have written several Verizon white papers for my client Pivot Communications (who is terrific to work with by the way).

The winning white paper is Verizon’s “The Identity and Access Management Imperative.”  The paper speaks to enterprise security issues as organizations expand their boundaries globally, move data and applications outside company walls to the “cloud,” and extend access beyond employees to vendors, partners, and even customers.

APEX 2011 is the 23rd annual awards program put on by Communications Concepts recognizing excellence in publications work by professional communicators. There were over 3300 submissions in 11 categories. Apex handed out both Awards of Excellence and Grand Awards.

You can view the entire award list here. If you want to see the award I won, look under Pivot Communications, page 27, category 124.

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So there you have it—a nicely-written, neatly-formatted, white paper. You learned how to choose a topic and create an outline in part one, how to research and write the content in part two, and how to dress it up with graphs, quotes, and images in part three. Now, it’s sitting there, all shiny, just begging to be read. Now it’s time to make it available and get the word out.

The first thought is to add it to the resources section of our company website. But, how about adding a small blurb and link on the relevant product page? Even so, the “post it and they will come” method doesn’t work very well. We need to do more. Assuming you have a company blog, write up a blog post. You could format in an executive summary style—but don’t give away the ending! Keep the reader intrigued enough to want to read more.

Now it’s time to use your social media channels. Push your blog post, or at least a link to your white paper, to your company’s Facebook page. Tweet about it. Talk about it in a YouTube video. Write about it in your company newsletter. These are the low-cost/no-cost ways to get the word out, but they only reach the community you’ve created. What about the larger community?

This is where online content aggregators come in. For a fee, they will host your white paper on their site, get the word out to their larger community, provide optimized search methods so that your paper will more likely be found, and collect leads from prospects that download. These aggregators used to be specific sites like Bitpipe and ITtoolbox. However, more industry content providers and online magazines are offering similar services. Be sure to check the pricing and reach for each one.

Bonus Section

Here are some other ways to increase the value and usefulness of your white paper:

Online lead generation – One of the main reasons you may have chosen to write the paper in the first place is to collect leads. To reduce the risk that your prospects will choose not to download when needing to leave personal data, use a simple form to collect a minimal amount of information.

Sales meetings – White papers are great tools to leave behind after a sales demo or meeting. Research shows that most white papers get passed around and are read by more than one person. It’s a perfect way to keep your company and product top of mind.

Trade shows – Another great way to capture leads is by taking contact info in return for handing the prospect your white paper. These days, most attendees will let you scan their badge in return for “swag,” but when you have a more serious prospect, give them your white paper to take home.

Sales training – You’d be surprised what your sales team can learn by reading your white papers. They will gain a clearer understanding of the customer issues and the paper will help them articulate the solution and its value. Having been in IT and been pitched by sales folks, I’ve seen many who understand their product but have no clue how it would be used in the real world.

Repurposing – To get the most out of your white paper efforts, find ways to repurpose the content. Explore the issue in more depth in a blog post. Write more about the solution in a newsletter article. Submit a scaled-down version to your industry trade publications. Any time you can reuse content, you’ve just increased your ROI on that content significantly.

I hope you enjoyed the How to Bake a White Paper from Scratch series. It’s not easy to sum it up in just a few blog posts – just as it’s not easy to write a white paper! Many white paper ideas sit on the shelf waiting for someone who has the time to write them. If you have great ideas and no time, or want the benefit of a white paper and still don’t feel it’s something you can tackle, drop me a line. I’d be happy to help. In just a couple weeks, you can have your very own, shiny new white paper!

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We’re now half way through the white paper creation process. In part one, you defined your purpose and determined your topic. In part two, you got down to business, starting with the outline and then putting the meat on the bones. Now you have a fully drafted first version of your new white paper. Although you’ve done the bulk of the hard work, you’re not done yet!

Unfortunately, you might have written the greatest white paper, but your readers will not be compelled to read pages of plain text. It just won’t happen. Decision makers today are very busy and now have a much shorter attention span. They are much more likely to read and stay with a paper that has shorter paragraphs that are broken up with visual interest. Personally, I try to add something visual to each page.

Let’s get started.

Formatting your paper – Begin with the easy part – the margins. Because we will use the margins to include additional, interesting content, set you margins at 1” top and bottom, 2.5” on the left side and 1.25” on the right side. Change the line spacing to 1.5 to open up the text even further. I like using arial font type with about 11 for the body and 14 for the subheads. Subheads may be colored to match your company brand, provided they still stand out.

Because white papers are more often read online, I prefer to use a single-column, left justified style to prevent scrolling up and down. Finish off with headers and footers. Add your company logo, white paper title, and the words “white paper” to your header. The footer might include page numbers, publication date, copyright, and web address.

Charts and graphs – In your research and writing, you may have come across data that would help make your point visually. Charts (tables) and graphs are a quick way to display a large amount of information. Make sure they have proper axis labels, they are assigned a number, and are located before they are mentioned in the text. Be sure you do refer to them and quickly describe the point the chart or graph is making.

Pull quotes – Your reader will read your paper in your voice. Additional (credible) voices will make your paper stronger and help validate the points you are making. Look for opportunities to add quotes from other credible sources. These should be just a sentence or two and added to the sidebar of your paper. Highlight the quotes using color, lines, italics and other methods.

Images and diagrams – Pictures are a great way to break up long text areas. You may already have diagrams that show how your product works or pictures of your product in use. Conceptual images can also be used, provided they add value and are not just space fillers.

I think that’s enough to keep you busy till next time where we’ll talk about cover pages, executive summaries, and getting your paper into your reader’s hands.

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In Part One, we talked about planning for your white paper. You need to understand your purpose. White papers require a fair amount of effort, so you should be clear on what you expect to achieve. You also need a well-defined topic. Did you do your homework from last week? Great, let’s get started.

I find it’s easiest to begin with an outline. The outline I like best is the one I learned from white paper guru—Mike Stelzner, author of the book “Writing White Papers.” It goes like this:

Introduction – Open with a compelling fact, statistic or story that draws the reader in. You want the reader to be quickly interested. This is probably 100-200 words.

Problem statement – Here’s where you get into the meat of the paper and it’s the basis for your topic. You want to delve down into a clearly-defined problem—one that your product or service will solve. Describe it in detail and include examples. Include the impact of the problem, meaning the financial costs, extra resources needed, time wasted, other inefficiencies, harmed reputation, etc. This section will likely be one to two written pages.

Market drivers – Are there changes in the market that have created a new problem. These might be new technologies, social changes, economic changes, or even new regulations. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley created many new challenges for companies when they were introduced. This section is probably about a half page or 200 words.

History – This section is interesting as it gives you a chance to educate the reader on what led up to this problem. Using the same Sarbanes-Oxley example, you might talk about the events that led up to this regulation being introduced. This section can also be about 200 words.

High-level solution – This is the turning point in your paper. You finally get to talk about solving this problem. The only catch is, you’re not going to say a word about your own product just yet. Educate the reader using a generic and high-level solution to the problem. For example, if your paper is targeted towards the supply chain management area, talk about how detailed reporting from supply chain software would help address Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. Include a list of benefits that would result, such as reduced risk, improved accuracy in management reporting, and less manual time needed to pull and format data. This section is also probably two to three written pages.

Your solution – Now it’s time to introduce your company and your product. Do not insert your brochure content here! It’s important that you continue in your educational tone and explain how your product specifically solves the issue. Talk about features only briefly. You just want to whet the appetite and get the reader to take the next step. This may be as short as a half page, but not more than a whole written page.

Conclusion – This is the time to wrap things up. Briefly remind the reader about the problem, perhaps one of the major impacts, and the solution. Again, mention your solution. And, finish with your call to action – which might be reading a case study on your website, downloading an e-book, or even contacting a sales rep for more info.

Gather up your content for each of these areas and we’ll talk next about “shaping the dough.”

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Welcome to part one of the “bake a white paper from scratch” series. Here you sit, ready to start your new white paper. You might be a product manager who needs supporting collateral for sales, a marketing team member who’s been given the assignment, or perhaps you have a small or mid-size business, without the luxury of a marketing team, writing it yourself. Either way, you’re facing what might seem like a daunting project ahead. So, let’s take the mystery out of it and work through this together.

The first thing you need to do is determine just why you need a white paper. If you’re going to spend the time to create one, and believe me it will take much time and effort (remember your college final essay?), you better have a plan for its use. For example, will you offer it as a lead generator through a give-away in return for sign up?  Will you leave it behind after a sales call? Hand it out at trade shows? Or, will it just sit on your Resource page in your website hoping someone might discover it and find it worthwhile?

Assuming you have big plans or its use, let’s talk about some tips that will make your white paper a compelling read and successful medium. First off, white papers have been averaging 6-10 pages, and lately, as small as 4-6 pages (though I don’t think you can do a topic justice in such a short format). Expect your paper to be about 2500-3000 words. The tone of the paper should be in third-person (no using “you” or “we”). You want the paper to come across as unbiased as possible. Think of this as more of an educational tool than a sales pitch.

Now you need a topic your readers will relate to. You might brainstorm with your team or your sales rep to identify specific pain points your product solves—or perhaps you already know. Choose just one business or technical problem! If you solve more than one problem, or address vastly different industries, consider writing a second white paper.

Perhaps you offer a learning management solution that tracks employee training compliance and growth goals. Your white paper topic may be how to solve the tough job of assigning specific training courses to employees, sending reminders, and tracking successful completion. Imagine the pain in trying to do that manually with spreadsheets! Your white paper might not get distracted with assisting in employee growth through training (though may mention that as an additional benefit near the end).

Your first assignment till next time is to come up with a specific business or technical problem that your product or service can solve. In the next post, we’ll talk more about the specific details in the paper.

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If you were to ask me which marketing content product I’ve been asked to create most often, it’s hands-down the white paper. One white paper can serve many purposes and plays a very important role in the sales cycle process. However, there can be a bit of mystery about what exactly a white paper is.

For the past four years, I’ve taught the class “Writing White Papers” at Bellevue College. It’s become a required course in their Technical Communication Certification program. Students come in wide-eyed and confused, but leave the class fully understanding what it takes to create a strong, compelling white paper.

Watching that transformation has been rewarding, which got me thinking I should share it with a broader audience. Over the next 4 posts, I will take you through the steps you need to do to create your first white paper. At a high level, they go look like this:

Plan – It’s not enough to decide to write a white paper because you don’t have one yet. You need to plan upfront to determine the need, both internal and external, which will drive out the topic as well as how it will be used.

Create – While one post is not near enough, this is by far the longest, hardest part. Understanding which sections to include, what tone to use, and how it flows is key to a good, educational read.

Decorate – So, you’ve got the cake but it will be pretty unappetizing unless you decorate it. We’ll talk about adding items to help tell the story and how to best design and format the document to add punch and appeal.

Consume – Once a draft is complete, it needs to be edited. And, once it’s final, you need to get it in front of eyeballs that matter. You’ll learn tips for finalizing and distributing your new white paper.

Preheat the oven, get out your mixing bowl, and prepare to create your first white paper!

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Is it just me or is most marketing content for B2B pretty dry? So much of our content says, “This is our software. It enables you to do this, so that you can do that.”

I’ve been thinking about the “dry and boring” problem for a long time. Longer than I’ve been a marcom writer and even going way back to the days when I was a marcom consumer, as an IT Director. I just keep thinking there has to be a better way.

The emergence of social media has helped changed the face of B2B marketing, an improvement in my opinion. It has a way of personalizing the relationship between vendor and customer. But something still seems to be missing. So, what if we could market using more storytelling?

Don’t you love a good story? Isn’t it more fun to listen to someone tell of an event and make the story come to life? Case studies are the closest we come to incorporating stories into our marketing content and I think even these could be improved. What I’m talking about is taking case studies and other marketing content to higher levels of storytelling. I’m talking more about creative non-fiction.

Creative non-fiction takes something that is true and writes it in a way that touches our senses. It creates a visual image and stirs up emotions using dramatic openings, realistic details, and expressive dialogue. These are just three ways to make a dry story compelling.

Dramatic openings – Capture your readers from the start. Use visual and exciting openings to compel them to read further.

Old: “Company ABC was spending 8 hours backing up their servers and when backups were running, everyone else had to be off the system.”

New: “The ringing phone interrupted the silence in the data room. On the other end was the CEO, hot that he was locked out of the system as he tried to get some last minute information for the board meeting in 30 minutes.”

Realistic details - Help the story come alive by providing details that touch the one or more of the five senses with detailed descriptions of the scene.

Old: “The vendor held a kickoff meeting to get everyone familiar with the project plan.”

New: “The blue dry marker squeaked across the white board as Joe, the project manager, highlighted the details of the project plan to the VP of Marketing, IT Director, and the project team.”

Expressive dialogue - I find customer quotes within case studies to be quite helpful. They offer a change in voice from the writer to the customer. However, most quotes end with the words “says” or states” such as “states Mr. Smith” which are really expressionless. What if we used more expressive dialogue tags?

Old: “We achieved a 50% improvement on our processing time,” says Mr. Smith, Operations Manager.

New: “We achieved a 50% improvement in our processing time,” the Operations Manager Mr. Smith boasted with a smile.

These are just a few tricks taken from the creative non-fiction world and I’m no fiction author. I’m sure every one of you could come up with even better examples.

It still may be a stretch to incorporate this style into our traditional marketing content and I’m probably treading on new ground here, but I throw it out there as a new, more personal direction for B2B marketing.  What do you think?

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Last Tuesday was the second week of my five week class on Writing White Papers at the local community college. These adult students are working toward a certification in Technical Communication and come from a variety of backgrounds.

After three hours of fully explaining what a white paper is, what purpose it serves, who’s the likely reader, and how it fits into the sales cycle, each student was to come to the second class with a product chosen as the basis for a white paper they are to write.

As we discussed the products they chose, it appears they didn’t quite grasp the message I was teaching and had chosen products for which it would be unlikely for a prospect to read a white paper about.

“I covered that well. Why did they not get it?” I thought. I spent the next day trying to understand how I my teaching message could have been more effective.

The conclusion I came to is all about adjusting the message to meet the person where they are at. These students did not have the business experience I have and didn’t understand B2B product marketing and sales—not even at a basic level.

That got me thinking about how much or how little time we spend understanding where our marcom readers (prospects and customers) are at. Have we done enough research to know the level of knowledge and experience our readers have? Are we imposing or assuming our own knowledge?

Everyone interprets what they see and hear through their own life filters – and though they may be similar, they are not the same as our own filters.

Do you create personas or profiles of your ideal reader? And then do you make sure you write appropriately?

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I saw a blurb on the news this morning about a mortgage banker wearing a sandwich board sign that said, “Hire me!” He was standing on a NYC street corner wearing a suit and tie holding an envelope of resumes. Certainly proactive and I suppose it is more attention getting than sending out a blast mailing, but there’s one big problem.

ME!

As marketers we know but it’s all too easy to forget, it’s not about you (or the company you’re writing for)! It’s about your reader, your prospect, your customer, and in this case, the prospective employer.

Marcom writers produce a ton of content. It’s easy to fall back into our comfort zone and pump out piece after piece. We find ways to communicate messages that work. We promote products and services. And, if we’re hired by the company we’re promoting, it’s natural to want to promote the company too.

I’m not going to give you a lecture on the importance of benefits over features. You’ve all heard that before. What I will remind you to do is to watch your point of view. Stand back and step into your reader’s shoes. Ask yourself, “Why should I care?”

If you can’t answer that, go back and try again.

As for the guy on the NY street corner, he’d have better luck not only targeting his “campaign” but also addressing what he can do for you.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI