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Reveal Everything in a White Paper??

By Michael Stelzner

Should you convey your expertise in white papers by revealing literally EVERYTHING you know about a topic?

Small rant: Lately, a LOT of people have come out of the woodwork making recommendations about white papers. Don’t get me wrong, I like this. But I want to warn you. Much of this advice is coming from folks who don’t really know much about white papers. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Richard Telofski says essentially “overwhelm them with your knowledge.”

Let me share my thoughts on this…

But first, let’s look at what Richard actually said:

Within these publications [white papers], made available for free download on your blog, you will provide clients and potential clients with every detail about performing a service that you provide.

Every detail. Don’t leave anything out.

If you were providing the service yourself, you would want to do a quality job. Rendering a quality job means attending to every detail.

So of course that is the level of information that you would want people to have, every detail.

Okay, first, Richard is wrong.

No one will read a document that includes EVERY detail. If your goal is to scare people away, then follow Richard’s advice.

Now, to his credit, Richard is attempting to do something desirable.

Here’s what else he said:

But here’s the “payoff.”

By providing every detail needed to perform your service correctly, you make the process seem arduous, time-consuming, and difficult for the layperson to carry out correctly for themselves.

By reviewing all the information that you provide, we expect that most people will decide that it is less difficult, and in the long-run less expensive, to have a professional perform the service. And, if the information you provide is highly detailed, the client will also doubt their own ability to do a quality job.

So here’s the deal.

If you want to convey to a prospect that the task is challenging, you can do it WITHOUT revealing EVERY detail.

The key manta here is “useful but incomplete.”

Make it useful to readers, but don’t overwhelm with details.

This will convey your expertise AND can still reveal the complexity of a project without boring readers with “every detail.”

Your thoughts??

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 5:07 am and is filed under Writing White Papers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • Yep,

    White papers should be informative but leave out other details that might compromise your service or product. Creating white papers, for me, are an invitation for trouble. What if you fail to deliver your own "created expectation" for your customer who decides to buy your product or avail your services?

    White papers out there are overwhelmingly "dense". If you have to make one, just spell out the important details and fineprint "gray areas".

    My two cents' on white papers c",
  • It's impossible to match every reader's needs and interests with one WP; once folks can accept that, it (hopefully) becomes more apparent that to address the needs and interests of the targeted reader, the WP then becomes a tool in a "scalable" tool box that is designed to eventually get the reader to say "yes" to your product or service. One print/radio/TV ad won't convince anyone to buy; neither will one brochure, WP, or bounce-back card. But all of them with their varying level of detail and promotional bent when used in a strategic campaign, work together like crumbs along a path to lead people where you want them to go.

    Regards,
    Donn LeVie, Jr.
  • /rant on/ "Overwhelm them with your knowledge" isn't reader-focused writing, it's grandstanding. If you're writing a white paper to show off, it's great advice. If you're trying to perfectly match the written information with the reader's wants and interests, then you're missing the mark. I've never started to read anything with the desire to be "overwhelmed" and I'm irritated when the writer goes off on some interesting (to the writer) tangent clearly inserted to prove how knowledgeable the writer is if the diversion ultimately gets in the way of learning what I want to know. /rant off/
  • I guess that's another challenge of making write paper. Make it "useful and incomplete".
  • Dear Michael:
    Another helpful and thought-provoking post--in this case, amplified by the great comments. I'm sharing it with my white paper clients. Thank you.

    Best wishes--

    Roger C. Parker
  • I have white papers on one of my websites (www.goodharbormusic.com) that explain various facets of that business to potential clients. No, they don't have ALL the details (I'm not giving away how I create my value propositions), because they don't need to know that level of minutiae. I want the white paper to induce an interest level that encourages them to take the next step: obtain more information or become a client.

    From my experience writing white papers for Motorola and Intel over the years, the white paper contains an oh-so-subtle promotional element about how some technology or product solves a problem. It can't be overt because that can easily be seen as a blatant attempt at advertising or promotion.

    Technology white papers can vary in their depth of detail, depending on how breadth of the topic, but the safest rule to follow is to provide just the level of detail to answer <> questions, but leads the reader to request additional information. White papers are a self-serving communication tool and should rarely--if ever--be written or distributed without a clearly defined purpose, such as requests for more info, a demo, or a personal contact.
  • jericho_ella
    The most important thing is simplicity and people will able to understand it on every point of view doesn't mean needed to be detailed but anyone should understand it. Just make it simple, useful and understandable.
  • It is very important not to ovewhelm the user with tiresome details. It will be better to omit them and sumarize the key things and that's it.
  • Another way to look at it is re-examine what the goals of the paper are - both overt (e.g. educate the reader) and covert (e.g. convert prospects) . Hopefully, if the writer is truly writing from an audience-centered point of view, the line between enough information and too much is easier to draw. From my experience, when I read a white paper that seems to overwhelm the reader with details, my conclusion is often that the writer's covert goal of getting new clients/seeming like THE expert, etc. has taken precedence over giving actual value to the reader. Which obviously then defeats the purpose of either the overt or covert goal.
  • I'd like to see a few examples of "too much' versus "just right" versus "too little."
  • Interesting rant. I have to agree. there is a lot of bad advice out there. A white paper is not a manual. It should be enough to whet the appetite, not a whole meal.
  • I try and sprinkle in enough so that it is known that I know my stuff so to speak. Once a dialog has begun with an individual who is interested than I am more willing to open up. I just don't like putting too much hard gained knowledge on the internet for whomever to read and emulate, especially when they do not know the topic.
  • Chris Gbekorbu
    Hey Michael,

    I've been reading some of the literature on intellectual property lately, and it makes a good case for being open with your ideas and sharing as much as possible since not only does it help to generate more ideas, it does help to expose those ideas to a larger audience. So from that point of view, sharing "everything" (in the form of ideas) is good. But as you point out, ALL of the details would overwhelm the reader--and with all of the other information competing for our attention, we need LESS (but still informative) details to make a decision. I agree that making things useful (which is likely also "simple") is the better strategy in terms of reaching the audience and that you can show how complicated something is without going into all of the painstaking details.
  • Rick
    One way to convey complexity without revealing everything: You can say there are 10 steps to do something, summarize them but omit the gruesome details.
  • Hi Michael,

    Always the eternal question. How much is enough or what is too much. Thanks for your thoughts.

    Richard Telofski
  • Hashim Warren
    It's a good idea to focus on the "what" and "why", but skimp on the "how". That's the formula that should be used.
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