Quick tip: Don’t cross the red line

I’ve worked on some white papers that suffered from what I call “The Kitchen Sink Syndrome.”

This often happens when a company is publishing their very first white paper.

They tell me they want to generate leads.

But they’re also dying to tell the world about their brilliant new product.

And they come up with a listicle or two.

So they proceed to dump all that material into one document.

Of course, that ends up as a mishmash with no clear narrative.

I tell my client they will get far better results if they separate the content out into two or three different documents:

• To attract fresh prospects, use a a problem-solution (chocolate)
• To re-engage prospects in the middle of a long customer journey, use a numbered list (strawberry)
• To beat competitors in a product evaluation, or to support a new product launch, use a backgrounder (vanilla)

And here’s a simple way to say that in shorthand, and get your client to follow it.

Set a red line that each white paper must not cross

Politicians love to set “red lines.” Even when—as John McCain famously said—these seem to be written in invisible ink.

So here’s how you draw your red line for a white paper, based on the audience analysis you did before you started.

(You did an audience analysis, right?)

It’s a simple box with one line through it, as shown above.

On top, you write: “What readers need to know.”

Below the line, you write: “What they don’t need to know.”

How to use your red line with your client

From then on, whenever you hit irrelevant material or a suggestion to add some side issue, ask this question: “Do our readers need to know that?”

For a followup, you can ask, “Really? Are you sure about that? Why?”

An inexperienced client may be unsure what a prospect knows and what they don’t. In that case, you can layer in some background, as described in “How to write a white paper for multiple audiences.”

Or a SME may want to include a “history lesson” on how the product was developed. In that case, gently tell them, “Yes, that’s interesting to us. But I’m concerned that your prospects might stop reading if we go into all that.”

By the way, “redline” means the maximum speed you can run an engine at before it will likely break down. If you have a tachometer in your car, you can see the redline around 6,000 RPM.

So I urge you—marketers and writers both—don’t cross the red line.

You could turn your white paper from a smooth-running machine into a fiery wreck by the side of the road.

Thanks to Manny Gordon for this concept, which he used effectively when interviewing software developers on technical writing projects.

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