Background Information For You To Think About!
Before you start creating your technical white paper document, you should understand what a white paper is and the purpose it serves. A white paper is written for a business audience which defines a problem and offers a solution. These type of papers don't pitch a particular product or company. Marketing messages are uncommon in white papers. It is expected to have at least six pages of text and to provide informative information that is useful about a business or technical issue. A white paper should have sources, facts and figures. The purpose of white papers are intended for the reader to review before making a purchase. Creating white papers involves hard work. lots of practice and strong writing skills. In this blog post, I will be writing how white papers are an incredible and credible source, at the end of this post you to figure out if white papers are for you!
Heading: What Does A Niche Have To Do With White Papers?
You need to know and identify the niche for your white paper. According to White Paper Blog they state how focusing on one specific niche will "help you gain a lot of knowledge on one subject and improve your general expertise, as you will be concentrating on that subject alone."
"If you want to learn about the disadvantages about focusing on one niche" take a look, here is the
URL: http://imittcopy.com/Thewhitepaperblog/should-you-focus-on-a-white-paper-writing-niche/
When targeting a niche, it helps formulate the overall white paper. It gives you an outline of what you need to write and gives you an idea of how you can target your optimal audience with this white paper. For example my niche would be to focus on the nine main steps for writing white papers,understanding how a white paper is formed with these nine steps will help you understand how this is a incredible and credible source. The nine steps are assess needs, plan, acquire information, organize content, design the look and feel, write, illustrate, review, revise, and approve and publish.
Heading: Pick A Title That Catches Your Attention
The first step you need to do is to create a catchy title. For example on yourwhitepaper.com they state how "an attention grabbing title will clearly communicate the problem you are solving and is appropriate for your target audience." For more information about the the title and outline for white papers take a look at this link
URL: http://www.yourwhitepaper.com/whitepaperstructure.htm
According from what they said about titles, it clearly reflects how important the title is for a white paper. Most importantly, white papers are credible because the title is never misleading. A title for a white paper represents the statement of purpose. It is a promise to the readers the title of your white paper will be the main underlying purpose of body of your paper. The tittle for my blog post is "An Incredible & Credible Source, Are White Papers For You?" Therefore my body will have an exploitation of what what papers are and how these topics are credible and at the end you can decide if white papers are meant for you.
A white paper is a incredible and credible source because it pays close attention to these nine steps
Subheading: You Need To Access Needs Having a clear vision of the goals is the first step. The goal for this blog would be to educate the public and draw attention from my tittle, content and overall look to develop my blogs reputation that white papers are for you, because its an incredible and credible source. From this, you need to understand the audience. What are there characteristics, identify different segments and behavior type. Deciding on what type of audience you want for your white paper will help you construct what your going to write.
Subheading: Planning Is Important Understanding the outcome after your paper is finished is important. Ask yourself how the paper will be integrated into the sales process and how to paper is going to be distributed. It requires a lot of hard work like research, writing, illustration, editing and review. Have a rough figure for the time and resources that will be needed to complete. Planning a white paper is hard work, although, the outcome is extraordinary. Because it turns out to be such a credible source with facts, figures and information that is reliable and trust worthy.
Subheading: Acquire Lots of Credible Information This is the main point to my blog post. The information in a white paper is credible because the knowledge is from gathering, reading, and researching secondary sources or expertise views from knowledgeable and credible people. Interviews can also be used to get relevant knowledge about a particular topic.
Subheading: Organize In a Way Which Attracts Your Viewers Now that you have figured out the optimal target audience, planned and acquired relevant credible information, you can now organize the content. You need to organize the information in a way that is visually appealing. Remember a white paper is six pages long, you want to keep the reader interested the whole time. Organizing and formatting is important, if you have poor organization the good credible sources you have accumulated wont matter because your paper lacks organized content. You can organize the paper with main headings, subheadings, and subgroups. Having a organized paper will help you and the readers and will make the information easier to comprehend.
Subheading: Design The Look and Feel To Make It A Trusted Source
Make it scan-able, most readers will not go word by word in a white paper. Since individuals like to scan over the text make sure there are headings, visual aids and short paragraphs. Even though white papers contain a lot of information they should still be visually appealing to the reader.
Stampede design shows how red circles in this figure below are related to other red circles and black circles are related to the other black circles due to the similarity in color. Therefore red and black circles are seen as dissimilar to each other even though they're all circles. This shows an example of how we see headings in a paper. Headings that have the same font size, text and formatting are similar to each other. An subheadings that have the same font size, text and formatting are similar to each other. Therefore, headings and subheadings are dissimilar to each other, although they all relate back to the main goal of the white paper. To learn more about "how people don't read, they scan" refer to this URL: http://www.stampede-design.com/blog/2014/07/people-dont-read-they-scan/#.Vz1KaPkrK70
Subheading: Write & Illustrate
Writing white papers are educational but there should also be technical elements combined with interesting content. To inspire increase brand image and positive reputation white papers have to talk beyond technical topics. You also want to be viewed as an authentic paper, not just a robot factual paper. Include some inspirational thoughts that encourage action and incite from the readers. Make sure the jargon is understood and simple, you want to make sure your audience understands the terminology you are taking about. Especially if there is secondary research involved, if you use information that a expert in a field was taking about make sure you explain what he/she is talking about. Keep it direct, and simple. Viewers will want the paper to be readable, scan-able, and flexible. Always illustrate complicated material, especially when there is secondary sources involved. Illustrate to point you are trying to explain using visuals, pictures and graphics to help support your information and keep the audience engaged. It will reflect how the white paper was well thought out and made with great detail and consideration to the audience needs.
Subheading: Review, Revise and Approve
Reviewing, revising and approving are important steps because this shows how your paper passed all these steps by the approval of experts in the field or people interviewed in your paper. This clearly shows how white papers are a credible source. This process encourages constructive criticism because reviewers can catch factual errors or correct imprecise explanations. This will help create improvements for the final draft.
Subheading: Publish Your White Paper To Educate People About Your Topic
When publishing the white paper, you will check the final output to ensure it matches the requirements. You can publish electronically or print version. When you publish your content will be open to the public of your target audience. You must be prepared and ready for any negative feedback and you should always stand by your content. Be open for criticism, therefore you can to better and bigger things on the next white paper you decide to create. Knowing that most of the white paper consists of facts and information from experts in a particular field, there will be people who disagree with the certain statements they make. You need to act promptly and learn how to measure the success with this white paper so you can make changes and improvements on the next one.
Heading: How Using White Papers Aligns With a Companies Marketing Purposes
The ultimate goal for a white paper is to draw attention and develop a company's reputation for thought leadership and use that expertise to generate leads and sales. A white paper should never be perceived as a marketing pitch. The white paper is a informational paper filled with credible and trust worthy information from experts. Since the information is credible, the audience builds trust with the company's brand, image and it builds a positive reputation. They will read these papers before they purchase or use your service, this paper will be a reassurance to them that this company is a credible source. They also have a high perceived value to the recipients, they need an email address or some type of information to access a white paper, therefore this will help generate leads. Overall, it aligns with marketing objectives because white papers are specific with the niche they are targeting, they find relevant content that matches their goals and to the target audiences.
Subheading: What Do You Think? Are White Papers For You?
After reading what white papers are, and the nine step formula for formulating a credible white paper what do you think? Are white papers a incredible, credible source? Or do you think articles and E-books are similar to white papers? Do you think six pages of credible information will loose the readers interest? Let me know what you think. Stay tuned for the next post!
