If your objective is to help businesses capture a lead, close a sale or establish themselves as kings in a crowded market, here’s some things to avoid:
1. Don’t lead with the product pitch: In today’s economy nobody likes to be sold to. Rather they prefer engagement. That typically means start by building affinity with readers. You can do this by talking about things they care about, such as problems and trends. This draws people into your work and allows you to eventually make the pitch.
2. Avoid verbose writing: Pacify the skimmer. Use short sentences rather than long prose. Try bolding key items and make sure your work is like butter melting on warm toast. This takes time but ensures that the skimmer is engaged.
3. Don’t assume they’re just like you: Too often writers assume that readers understand the terms and “inside the beltway” talk that goes around. However, there’s no bigger turn off to readers than terms and phrases that are are foreign. Always ask yourself, “is this phrase something the reader will understand?” If not, kill it.
What are your thoughts? What would you add? Please comment below…
The blank page is a big obstacle almost every writer faces when sitting down to write a white paper.
Marketing managers can play an important role in helping writers over this hump, and get better writing in the bargain.
How does every white paper start out? As a cursor blinking on a completely empty screen.
Whether your writer had an idea of what he was going to write or not, he stared at the blank page for a while - the blank page usually stares back as well - and tried to come up with an opening, a title or an outline that would impress you and show that he understood what you were trying to convey. (And, just to help you read the cards your writer is holding, he tried to figure out the best way to start so that the rest of the writing would be easy.)
I don’t mean he was gripped by writer’s block or any other writer’s disease. It’s just the hump that your writer needs to overcome on almost every piece he writes for you.
You may say, “That’s the writer’s problem, not mine.” True enough, but getting good content from your writer is your problem. Here’s the solution…
White papers need structure, and smart marketing managers work out the structure with an outline early in the writing process.
Be sure your writer includes these elements in an outline.
How often do you get started down a path in your work, only to realize you have to backtrack and go down a different path? Is there anything more frustrating than discarding work you’ve already done and restarting it?
Suppose your marketing communications writer interviews three customers for a white paper you need, then writes up the interviews into a paper and sends you a draft. You read it and realize it’s mostly wrong.
“No!!!” you holler. “This isn’t where I want this to go. We have to tear this down and start over.”
Too soon for a white paper draft?
Here’s what can go wrong when the writer just dives in and goes straight to the draft:
Being bombarded with marketing from all directions, people have become skeptical. They require proof that your marketing hype isn’t just that – hype. Case studies and white papers provide that extra ‘push’ customers sometimes need to make a buying decision.
So, why make it difficult for prospects to get that further bit of proof? If it means the difference between clicking, “YES! I want to buy your widget,” and walking away from your website empty-handed, does it really make sense to force someone to give up his name and email address first?
Having prospects register for content is a very common B2B practice. You are asking readers to fill out a form prior to reading a case study or a white paper. The idea is that you will increase your leads list by doing so. But forcing readers to register can backfire.
Listen up businesses! The white paper is here to stay and it’s only getting more important. Or so says a brand new study by Eccolo Media.
I covered the main take-home message of their last report earlier this year. But this new study has some amazing findings covering everything from the influence of white papers compared to other marketing tools, how they are shared, their ideal length and when they are used in the purchase cycle.
Are you scratching your head trying to come up with current trends on a particular white paper topic? Why not tap into Twitter? By using applications that harness the power of this vast network, you can selectively search the Twittersphere for trends in your industry.
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter… To some they’re social media. But for those in the know, they’re free marketing tools that can attract thousands of customers and make millions of dollars for businesses willing to get in the game.
That’s according to the “The Social Media Dream Team,” four powerhouse social media professionals (Mari Smith, Jason Falls, Chris Garrett and Denise Wakeman), who will be fielding live viewer questions on finding customers and making money online with social media. The group will appear in free real-time video streams on Monday, October 12, 2009 for the premiere of the new online magazine SocialMediaExaminer.com.
An interesting thing happened while collaborating on some sales letter work recently. While sitting in on the initial client interviews, I found myself going back to Mike’s white paper interview template to “fill in” some gaps while we were talking to the client.
Mike’s white paper process is much more interview-heavy than other types of marketing writing, but it’s also much more comprehensive. The “Stelzner method” is more of a guided discussion than an in-depth creative brief filled out over the phone, and I’ve found it much more efficient for gathering information than your typical client discovery questionnaire. This is especially true when talking to technical experts, as they can tend to run off on tangents or even miss the point of a question entirely unless it is asked of them in several different ways.
Let’s say the idea vault is looking pretty empty. No one at your company has really contributed any new thoughts in ages. Does it ever make sense to ask your key players to contribute white papers, outlining new ideas for corporate growth?
This is the essence of a question submitted by Jason, working for an international organization:
I am working for a international high tech company and they have planned a management meeting with the 80 top managers (R&D, Engineers, Sales, Marketing, Finance). They will spend a week together, working on different issues. The outcome of the week must be that everybody has the same mindset and the same goals.
There will be presentations of the CFO, CEO etc. and there will be discussion about how and what technologies the company must develop. To structure the discussion we want to set up a workshop.
Is it a proven technique to give everybody the assignment to write a white paper for the company? From their point of view, and with clear guidelines of how to write it of course.
There’s some serious gold here folks! With literally hundreds of nominations pouring in, this year’s 4th annual competition was intense.
The 27 finalists have been carefully examined, with the greatest weight on the quality of their content. What follows are the top 10 blogs for writers for 2009/2010.
If you’re a writer, you’ll find daily doses of inspiration and discovery at these excellent blogs: Read the rest of this article »
Michael Stelzner is the author of Writing White Papers and has written more than 130 white papers for recognized companies, including Dow Jones, Microsoft, FedEx, Motorola, Monster, HP and SAP.
How does every white paper start out? As a cursor blinking on a completely empty screen.
How often do you get started down a path in your work, only to realize you have to backtrack and go down a different path? Is there anything more frustrating than discarding work you’ve already done and restarting it?
