Recently received an email from someone needing help.  And frankly, these “types” of messages are not all that uncommon.

But this one grabbed me.  How would you respond to this?

Good day,

Thanks for your information on White Paper writing.  Please, I need your help. Am writing a white paper on Contract Growing but I don’t feel confident with what I have written so far.
Please, find attached the Contract Growing White Paper.

Kindly make/add the necessary corrections.

Thanks (name omitted)

How would you respond?

When I first saw this, I simply could not stop laughing.

This is the “perfect” satire on Twitter.

What do you think?

By the way, follow me here on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Mike_Stelzner

InformationWeek recently released a report titled, “Tech Marketing: Best Practices Research Series: White Papers: How to Maximize the Use of White Papers in Your B2B Marketing and Sales Process.” Yes, that is a mouthful, but so is the report. It full of great facts about the marketing power of white papers.

Here is my summary:

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Google just announced a new service called Google Voice (click here for Mashable’s story).  According to Mashable:

The service looks a lot like Gmail for voicemail, although you don’t have to be a Gmail user to use it. It lets you retrieve transcripts of your voicemail, archive and search all your sent and received SMS messages, and you can make calls directly from Google Voice’s interface. The calls are free in the US, and cost a small fee internationally.

Watch this video from Google:

So here’s the really cool part for us writers…

You can call Google Voice and leave yourself messages.  Google will automatically transcribe the messages into text and email them to you!

So, next time you’re in the car or you just don’t feel like typing, you can simply call Google Voice and you’ll get your words emailed back to you.  How cool is that!!

Now that the economy is in the dumps, a LOT of businesses are turning to educational marketing techniques (like white papers) as a primary marketing vehicle.  In fact, one of my Fortune 50 clients just told me, “We’ve decided to cut back on trade shows and focus more of our efforts on white papers because they work so well.”

So, that brings me to a question sent in by a reader.

Terry writes:

I have a buddy that I am helping and he is of the thought that the white paper should be sold as a way of giving real content at a real value.

I told him that yes, while you may sell 40 copies at $37 - $ 67 per copy you are limiting the number of potential customers and leads due to the fact that some are going to balk.  I am going through your book and the blog for insight, but would love for you to address the issue.

Here’s my response:

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I recently met with Jason Alba, author of I’m on LinkedIn, Now What?.

We talked about how to use LinkedIn as a marketing tool.

Have you used LinkedIn as a marketing tool? What are your thoughts?