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!

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

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!

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

I was recently reading the latest B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends survey by MarketingProfs and Junta42. I like seeing where content marketing is headed, how budgets are being reshaped to support it, and what kinds of challenges still remain.

Seemed like your typical stuff. Larger companies were greater adopters of a broader content marketing strategy, spent more money, and did more in house. Smaller companies—less so. Then I came upon the survey question that asked, “What is your biggest content marketing challenge?” The answers also weren’t totally shocking. The largest response was, “Producing engaging content.”

However! What did surprise me most was one of the comments by a survey-taker. The comment said this,

“Our biggest challenge is finding things for our potential customers to get excited about. The products we sell are not easy to get excited about.”

Wow. Either you need to find another product at another company to market—or give up marketing all together.

I tried to think of some products this survey-taker might be referring to. Maybe it’s data center racks and shelving. No, that allows data centers to expand and companies to defer building new, expensive centers. Maybe it’s an automated payroll system. No, that reduces the time and staff needed to process payroll, while reducing errors. Maybe it’s the grey paint they use on manufacturing plant floors. Certainly customers won’t get excited about that? No, it can extend the life of the floor, prevent moisture wicking or cement dust particulates, and is easy to clean. Couldn’t possibly be that either.

My point is every product – EVERY PRODUCT – should either fill a need or create an opportunity. Granted, they aren’t always sexy, fun, slick, cool, or whatever. But, there should be a reason your potential customer should care – and care enough to consider you.

If you’re still wondering how to get your customers excited about your product, it’s time to go back and do some homework. Start here:

1. Create  a USP – unique selling proposition. It’s your value statement. It’s the reason why you do what you do and why it’s better than the rest (or doing nothing). What is the need or opportunity your product fulfills?

2. Make a list of all your features. Then next to each feature, write, “so that you can…” Complete the “so that you can” statements and make a list of benefits based on the answers.

3. Step into your prospects shoes and make a list of the challenges they face by doing nothing, or using a competitor’s product. Will there be increased costs (staffing, time, liability, asset lifespan)? Will there be missed opportunities (new revenue streams, new customer segment, first to market)? Maybe serious issues (regulatory fines, lawsuits, negative PR)?

If you just do these three simple things and still can’t figure out why your prospects would not be excited by your product, I want to hear about it! Drop me a line. Let’s figure this thing out.

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

I just finished reading this year’s latest marketing survey results over at the Junta42 site. It’s interesting to see the popularity of different marketing content pieces as part of the overall marketing strategy. You can download the report for yourself here.

Social media marketing (with the exception of blogs) is now in the number one spot. 72% of those polled have now incorporated social media into their marketing activities. What I’d be even more curious to know though, is have they seen and improvements? More hits to the website? More inquiries? Even more sales?

The next five things on the list are what I consider to be the new marketing sweet spot. They are the heart of content marketing. When done well, they cover the full spectrum of the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) marketing concept. Each piece can serve one or more AIDA goals, but the suite should include pieces that cover the complete AIDA spectrum.

From the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Research by Junta42

Each of these content terms mean different things to different marketers. Personally, I’ve seen each term over-used and under developed. Too many times, companies will label the content with a term below and not fully back it up with meaningful content. These are the way I see each piece

1. E-newsletters – Publish monthly and include product and company news, customer success stories, technical “how-to’s”, and business ideas. Combination of short (100 words or less) and longer (up to 1000 words) articles.
2. Blogs – Keep topics fresh, at least weekly, and relatively short (less than 500 words)
3. White Papers – Don’t fall for the short attention span, 2-pager. Do your topic justice by demonstrating a business problem and how it can be solved. Typically 6-10 pages.
4. Articles – These might be in your own publications or industry publications and are probably best as a deep dive on a topic at between 1000 and 2000 words.
5. Case Studies – These can be as short as two pages, but make sure you provide concrete information about the customer’s initial challenge, how it was solved, and lessons learned.

Effective marketers take the time to do it right. It’s not an area you want to hand off to your already busy product managers or the new marketing coordinator you just hired. Make sure the topics are well researched, the “story” told is coherent and professional, and that you accomplish your goal of what you want them to think and do after they’ve read it.

Content marketing is not an easy task and not every company has the resources in house to get the job done well. This is probably why the Junta42 survey also shows that smaller companies are spending twice the amount (as a percentage) on content marketing as their larger counterparts. Find yourself a content marketing professional you can trust and start building your content library, making sure you get the marketing assets you need to be successful.

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

They say content is king. But anyone with a good Internet connection can publish content. In fact, the Internet allows anyone to market themselves as an expert. This funny video mocks just how easy it is. Warning: there are a few cuss words tossed in.

So, how do you separate the “wanna-be” experts from the real thing?

Do your homework. Get to know the person or the company. Read their content and understand their motivation.
Here are a few areas that experts tend to excel in:

• Blogs – Does the expert post content regularly—at least weekly? Is it full of buzzwords or does it actually say something that provokes your thinking? Jim Harris’s OCDQ Blog does just that, as does Ted Cuzillo with his Datadoodle blog.
• Websites – Does the expert offer helpful, educational content? Teradata has one of the largest resource libraries available on their site.
• Twitter – Does the expert stay top of mind with meaningful tweets? Kognitio, Initiate, Tableau, and Composite Software have discovered the power of Twitter.

Finally, you can feel pretty certain that you’re listening to an expert if they’ve published a book. Yes, anyone can self publish, but it takes quite a bit of discipline to produce a couple hundred pages of content. Some of my favorite experts who’ve published books are:

Jill Dyche (@jilldyche) “Customer Data Integration” “CRM Handbook” and a few others!
Phil Simon (@philsimon) “Why New Systems Fail” and “The Next Wave of Technologies”
Mike Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) “Writing White Papers”
Casey Hibbard (@casey_hibbard) “Stories that Sell”

Of course, anyone who does all of these things has raised their credibility as an expert—as all of the book authors do.

As a person or company that would like to be perceived as an expert, are you publishing content (big or small) on a regular basis? Is it quality content? Do you provide supporting facts to back up your opinion? Are you committed?

Love to hear who you think are good examples of experts who know how to use the Internet as a publishing medium to share their knowledge.

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

White papers are still one of the most popular marketing tools for BI and high tech companies, among others. Proof positive is that I just finished my fifth white paper in almost as many weeks.

I find some long held beliefs about white papers very interesting. Like many opinions, some are held long past their expiration dates. For some, they want things a certain way because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

I particularly find strong opinions around whether or not to include a table of contents and executive summary, and how long the white paper should be. Here are some considerations I think should help make an objective decision:

Table of contents – Personally, I’m not a big fan of using a ToC in white papers, unless they are very long (12 or more pages). Your goal is to get your reader reading right away and keep them reading. The ToC is yet one more distraction. Having said that, I think they are very helpful in longer papers. Readers can use them to quickly find sections they want to read again. Skimmers will use them to review the flow to get a quick understanding of where the topic is going. Because of that, it’s important to use headers and subheads that alone, in the ToC, can tell the story.

Exec summary – Again, executive summaries are nice on longer papers. It can satisfy the skimmers who don’t need the full details but want to stay current with the topic. But the main reason you might want to include one is if you are hosting your paper with a syndicator or you have a number of white papers in the resources section of your website. If users find your title appealing, they can validate whether they should take the time reading the whole thing by reading the executive summary first. It’s a way of self-targeting and self-selecting.

Executive summaries should be written in a compelling way to entice your readers to want to learn more. Spend the most time on describing the problem (business or technical) that you will be addressing. Add interesting statistics and maybe throw in a small visual.

Length – There seems to be a trend toward shorter white papers. Whereas, it used to be standard that white papers were 10-12 pages. Now we’re seeing more papers in the 4-6 page range. I understand it. Busy executives have less time to read through a longer paper. But I also feel shorter papers may not do the topic justice and may not give the reader the information they need to help build their business case.

So, for thought leadership papers that describe new trends, strategies, and approaches, short papers are fine. But for solution papers, a longer format is generally required in order to thoroughly describe the problem, market drivers, high level, and detailed solution.

Curious what has worked for you, either as a reader or a marketer. What thoughts (and opinions) do you have?

…back to work, got more white papers to write!

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

I came across some research done by IDG spread across two different posts that was pretty interesting. They interviewed over 100 information technology buyers about their content preferences from vendors. IDG noted there has been a 60% increase in content assets over the past five years. The rush is on to get in the content game and offer information prospective and current customers will find valuable and that will ultimately drive sales.

Only 39% of those interviewed said they find relevance in links offered to vendor content (though their expectation is only 50%). These same buyers say that if they find relevant content, it increases that vendor’s success rate.

The trouble may come when, in their haste, vendors don’t make the shift from promotional to educational content. Buyers want content that is relevant to their needs, and supports their decision making process. This means the content must have “meat” behind it and not just be considered marketing hype.

IDG asked IT buyers a series of questions about their content preferences from various social conversation channels. Here’s a brief recap of the top preferences by channels:

•             Blog – case studies, ads, tutorials, seminar material
•             Forums – tutorials, free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Live Chat – free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Microblog – ads, technical knowledge base, free event registration, white
•             Social networks – free event registration, ads, ROI calculator, white papers
•             Wikis – tutorials, white papers, case studies, knowledge base

To me, these seem more like expectations than preferences, and the study is really quite small. What I did like was their takeaway message.

Winners will be vendors that build a “relevant” content bridge to draw the conversation towards their own hosted platforms and insight.

This will motivate engagement, and build a sense of interest and reliance and credibility with buyers. The wrong content will damage vendor consideration within the ongoing conversation and beyond.

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