The two most important words in blogging are “You” and “Because” according to CopyBlogger Brian Clark and I would agree.

However, do you understand the fundamentals of delivering a message designed to create action for your readers?

Why is this important? Because understanding these principles will mean your words penetrate and drive results.

What follows is a guide to producing compelling persuasive content.� It comes from Russell Kern in an article he wrote called B-to-B Insights: A Perfect ‘10’ for Target Marketing magazine.

The fundamentals of getting the attention of readers:

Arresting: How eye-catching is your message? What have you done to make it impressive, noticeable or striking?

Compelling: Have you connected with your readers’ hopes, dreams and/or fears? How have you persuaded your readers that they really need to find out more?

Clear: Is it instantly obvious what you’re offering? Why a reader should care? Are the benefits readily apparent? Is it easy to see how to respond?

Credible: Consumers are skeptical of advertisers, to put it mildly. Are you delivering a message that is honest, realistic, sincere and believable?

The fundamentals of getting readers involved:

Emotional: Does your message move your readers to laugh, smile, cry, agree, yell? What have you done to arouse the spirit of your readers?

Insightful: Have you demonstrated your understanding of your target audience’s problems, needs, desires, hopes, dreams or aspirations? Have you made your audience aware of a new solution or product usage?

Informative: How educational is your message? In exchange for your readers’ consideration are you revealing new, important or little-known information and using it to build your case for action on their part? If they don’t respond this time around, is your message still helpful to them in some way?

The fundamentals of conveying “What’s in it for me?”:

Relevant: What have you done to make both the message and offer germane to your reader? (And not just germane, but important.) How applicable is your offer to the problems your readers are facing?

Valuable: Do you have an offer that’s important, priceless or, failing that, just downright useful? How well have you persuaded your readers that your offer is worthy of their time and indispensable to the improvement of their daily lives?

The fundamental principle of telling readers what to do:

Motivating: How moving is your message? How immediate? Have you employed proven response words and motivational phrases (e.g., “discover,” “learn,” “gain,” “reveal,” “take away,” “go now,” “find out,” “visit,” “call today,” “don’t wait,” “avoid missing out”) to drive response behavior? Does your message have urgency built into it?

Special thanks to David Garfinkel for first writing about this.

How have you applied these principles and with what success?

With all this talk about white papers and their amazing power, I thought it would be instructional to talk about when NOT to use white papers.

That might seem odd coming from a blog that is full dedicated to the topic of writing and marketing white papers.

Why would I do such a thing?

Well, you may have heard this phrase. Don’t place a round peg in a square hole.

The fact is that a white paper is not the perfect solution all the time.

What follows are four situations/reasons to not do a white paper:

1. When selling simple or commodity products: If you are selling products such as nuts and bolts or envelopes, a white paper most likely is not a smart idea. These commodity products tend to be bought on price and the sales process is very basic. White papers are typically used in more complex sales cycles.
2. If consumers are your target: Generally consumers will not look to a white paper to help them with the buying process. This applies to consumer electronics, soft goods and so on. However, there are a few exceptions where white papers WILL work with consumers (think mortgage or financial services).
3. If prospects have ultra short attention spans: Lets face it, the white paper is the wordiest tool in your marketing quiver. If your readers cannot allocate 10 to 20 minutes to reading the paper, why do it?
4. If you cannot allocate 50+ hours to the project: WhitePaperSource recently interviewed 600 white paper writers and found that those who are not freelance writers spend 50 or more hours on average crafting a white paper. If you don’t have the time, then think about something else (or outsource).

Can you think of any other reasons NOT to do a white paper?

Can 12-year olds writing white papers?

You bet!

Amyra Smerecky, a teacher for gifted students at Tefft Middle School in Streamwood, Illinois decided her students should learn the art of persuasive writing.

I sent the class a bunch of copies of the book Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.

I was surprised by what these 12-year old kids came back with.

First, I want to congratulate Sal, Peter, Danny, Matt, Nick, Jose, Lloyd, Zach, Dan, Ravin, Cody and Irving for putting an excellent effort into producing their first white paper (interesting that these are all boys).

The two white papers are entitled:

• How to Survive Valentines Day
• Play Your Cards Right: A Guide to the Best in Cards

To read the papers these guys produced, click here (note: PDF file).

Here is the opening paragraph to one of the papers:

Have you ever felt lonely on Valentine’s Day? Or not knowing what it is you wanted to get your someone special? Perhaps you just want to get your mom something. Well if that’s the case we can help you. Here are some tips to help you survive Valentine’s Day.

You will need to read the paper to see what the students are selling…

What would you tell the next generation of white paper writers? Do you think more kids should learn to write white papers?

Do you generate leads using the Internet?

If you do, then you should have white papers and webinars as part of your marketing mix.

At least that is what the summary of an article entitled “Internet Lead Generation Tops Marketing Initiatives in 2007” by TMCnet.

Here are some snippets from the article:

Two of the strongest leaders in achieving success in online branding and lead generation are Webinars and white papers. Both establish a company as an authority of industry while capturing pertinent information for follow-up prospecting.

White paper lead generation is growing in popularity for several reasons. Capturing valuable information from visitors who are looking for information and are willing to subscribe to read it, can only mean that they have serious interest in this product. Customers coming to your company for information are the strongest leads obtainable.

“Fifty solid white paper leads versus 1,000 pay-per-clicks for example have a greater value for the money. White papers not only generates absolute results but gives the company a better perception to the potential buyers as being an authority to turn to for solutions instead of merely being seen as a sales pitch,” stated Kevin Noonan, vice president of TMC.

What are your thoughts about the power of white papers for lead generation? Do you or your clients use them to draw in qualified leads?

Do you manage your time well? Are the minutes flying by while you are idle?

Some great stuff has been written about time management. Even in the last 24 hours!

Ponder this:

Here’s an interesting thought: Rich people have 24 hours in each day, and poor people have 24 hours each day! The reason that some people are successful and wealthy, while others struggle through, is not time, but what people do with their time. Source.

Here is a very common mistake many of us make:

Most people, including myself earlier in my career make a big mistake: they keep an action list without setting priorities. It typically contains entries from top to bottom about calling people, filing documents, sending faxes, setting appointments. And at the end of the day, most of the actions have been done and people feel good about it. Source.

What follows are some amazing pointers to help you manage your time.

This comes from earn-ez.com:

Plan your time - Jim Rohn says that you should never start the day, until you have finished it on paper. If you plan the tasks ahead of you, you can easily see what needs doing and what order would be most productive.

Eat that frog! - Brian Tracy’s book of the same name suggests that we are most productive if we do our biggest task, the one we are most likely to procrastinate on first.

Make a to do list - Three simple steps to success: Each night write a list of tasks for the following day, when you wake up start at the top of the list, don’t go to bed until you reach the end!

Make sure to prioritize that to do list!

So folks, I have a few questions.

Do you have problems managing your time? What are some tips to better handle our time?

Mark from Washington DC asks, “How should I write to engineers?”

This very question is well addressed in an article by Roger Slavens entitled, “Connecting With Engineers.” It was recently published in BtoB Magazine.Here are some excerpts:

“Engineers often take a wait-and-see approach and sometimes view anything new with a skeptical eye.”

“This audience thrives on deep data and solid proof points.”

“They want marketing information to sound like it came from their peers—fellow engineers rather than traditional marketers.”

“It’s important to speak to engineers in their own language, they use jargon and labels that nobody else does.”

What has been your experience communicating with engineers?

Are they indeed a unique and challenging audience to write to?

Do you have a problem? I have a solution.

That’s how the conversation often goes between businesses and customers.

However, has the word “solution” been overused? It is now meaningless?

Mike Stefaniak recently wrote a piece called, “Solve this: No more solutions, please.” for B2B Magazine.

He explained:

Ten or 15 years ago, you could still make the case for starting your company’s brand conversation with the word “solution.” Back then, “solution” was a fresh way of saying you recognized the fluidity of customers’ needs and were equipped to help.

By 2000, the term was quickly becoming devalued from overuse. Today, it’s dead—void of any capacity to differentiate a company’s brand.

What do you think?

Is the word solution dead on the operating table? Should we bury it?

How can you generate quality leads with a white paper?

This is an important question–and one I recently spoke about at length while teaching a class last week called, “Creating White Papers That Generate Leads.”

Here is one of the secrets I shared in the class.

To generate a lead, ALL you need is a good title and a great first page.

That’s right, the rest of the paper can suck and you can still generate quality leads.

Why? Because to capture the all important lead, all you need to do is provide enough relevant and valuable content to persuade a reader to make a trade.

That trade is contact information for access. A name, email address, number and you gain entry to the rest of the great paper, Mr. Reader.

What does this mean?

It means taking the first page and title of your white paper and formatting it like an article on a web page.

As the reader scrolls down and is engaged by the “article,” he/she finally gets to a point where a cliffhanger comes up–a place where something must be done to keep reading.

That required user action is completing a registration form, so you capture that lead.

The trick is to present enough quality content that the little registration form is hidden from sight.

IF readers complete the registration form, they are highly qualified because they:

• Did not abandon the page
• Read the article
• Found it of interest
• Actually went to the effort to make the trade of contact information for access

So, all that matters is a very compelling title and very relevant and well written opening content.

The hard part is writing that excellent title and highly relevant content.

The rest of your paper should follow through on the quality of the first page if you hope to have the paper sell for you.

If you want to learn more about this strategy, be sure to check out this link.

What are your thoughts about this topic?

MarketingSherpa recently posted a case study from Arbor Networks.

It examined the power of podcasts and many other forms of lead generation, along with white papers.

They did tie ins with white papers and podcasts, along with traditional syndication of educational white papers.

Here are some the results:

The team tracked the percent of sales leads they received across all advertising media through the year. (Please bear in mind that all media buys were not equally large, nor is brand awareness measured, so these numbers are not apples to apples, but rather general indicators.)

49% White paper offers
25% Banner ads
21% Email newsletter sponsorships
2% Text links
2% Glued-in inserts in print magazines
1% Print ads

Summary: The white paper is still the strongest lead generation tool.

What is more important, the case study or the white paper?

This is the essence of a new article called “Write a Case Study Fit for Hollywood” posted on TechLinks.com.

Here is the scene…

Imagine you’re whiling away your time in the doctor’s office waiting room. You decide to catch up on some business reading. Out of your briefcase, you pull two pieces of marketing collateral from two different companies. Assuming that your interest in both companies is equal, which will you read first - the 2-page case study or the 12-page white paper?

The author, Mary McCauley-Stiff, goes on to claim:

Ding-ding-ding! The case study wins again! (For those who prefer the white paper - sorry, you’re outnumbered. The informal “Google vote” shows 246 million search results for “case study” and 143 million search results for “white paper.”)

The essence of her claim is that people like a good story and will go for the shorter case study.

MY QUESTION: Is Mary right? What say you?