There are many things you can do to help get a white paper noticed, ranging from the cover to the structure to how you write the content.<\/p>\n
Here’s a more detailed answer, expanded from my original notes on Quora.<\/p>\n
Let’s start with your cover. Always choose a strong visual so that your cover works as an thumbnail you can show anywhere you promote the white paper.<\/p>\n
Now on to some more specifics…<\/p>\n
Tip #1: Touch on a problem in the title<\/h3>\n
This is classic content marketing advice: Start with a problem your prospects are grappling with.<\/p>\n
[Tweet “Show your prospective white paper audience a way to solve a problem and you’ll have their attention.”]<\/p>\n
If you can show them a good way to solve a business problem, you will have their attention.<\/p>\n
Not sure what that problem might be?<\/p>\n
Ask anyone who interacts directly with customers: sales people, customer support teams, channel partners. They will likely give you an earful.<\/p>\n
Then offer practical, tactical tips and advice for how to solve it. That’s what business people really want.<\/p>\n
Warning<\/strong>: Never resort to clickbait\u2014a flashy title with nothing useful behind it. In B2B marketing, that\u00a0 can misfire badly.<\/p>\n Business people have no time to waste. Publishing a 10-page white paper is like asking them to give you\u00a0 30 minutes of their day.<\/p>\n Why should they do that?<\/p>\n You must tell busy business people what they will gain in return for the time they spend with your paper.<\/p>\n Ideally, try to work some attractive benefits right into the title. Here are a\u00a0few examples:<\/p>\n See how each title promises a specific benefit?<\/p>\n (I’ve actually written white papers with those titles.)<\/p>\n Try tinkering with your white paper title until you spell out a valuable benefit.<\/p>\n You don’t have to limit yourself to just a title.<\/p>\n There’s room on the cover for a subtitle that can help\u00a0 attract your ideal readers.<\/p>\n One effective way to use a subtitle is to name the job title or role of your ideal reader.<\/p>\n In fact, you can name both a title and sector in one short line:<\/p>\n You can also attract ideal readers with a well-chosen cover photo. For example, consider the covers from two white papers I worked on.<\/p>\n In the first cover, the persona is a middle-aged executive in a hospital or HMO who’s concerned about extracting more value from her electronic health records.<\/p>\n She’s clearly computer-literate but older than a Millennial, making her more likely to be a decision-maker.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the second cover, I found this stock photo, which I think perfectly captures the persona of a serious CFO watching every expense like a hawk.<\/p>\n Nothing spells “finance” better than a blue shirt and tie, a pile of business reports, and a grim expression on the face of a middle-aged white guy.<\/p>\n Also notice how the color scheme of this photo echoes the blue in the sponsor’s logo. This was really an ideal photo for this white paper’s cover.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another way to attract attention is to show the ideal reader’s industry or work environment on the cover.<\/p>\n Here are two examples from white papers I worked on recently.<\/p>\n In the first example, the sector is clearly healthcare. More specifically, the setting is a hospital operating room (OR).<\/p>\n That’s perfect for this product, aimed at helping head nurses schedule operating room procedures more efficiently.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And in this second example, the sector is industrial construction.<\/p>\n The background and hard hat suggest\u00a0 “construction” while the laptop hints at an engineer working on-site.<\/p>\n In fact, the product helps to manage documents for large engineering projects, and this photo shows a typical intended user.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Once a reader downloads your white paper, they will most likely flip through it on the screen. So please don’t hit them with a “wall of grey.”<\/p>\n Many white papers get abandoned at this point because they look like too much work to read.<\/p>\n Make yours easy on the eyes, with\u00a0good editorial design on all inside pages:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At least use a pull-quote<\/strong> or a snippet of text set in a bigger size, as shown here. Pull-quotes are easy to scan and can sum up a lot in a short phrase.<\/p>\n Using grey text is idiotic. Why’s that?<\/p>\n Decision-makers tend to be older. And people’s eyes start to change at around 40<\/a>, so they need larger type and more contrast to read easily.<\/p>\n Check out these samples:<\/p>\n Why would you deliberately make your carefully crafted words harder for your ideal readers to decipher? (100% black)<\/p>\n Why would you deliberately make your carefully crafted words harder for your ideal readers to decipher? (WordPress grey)<\/span><\/p>\n Why would you deliberately make your carefully crafted words harder for your ideal readers to decipher? (WordPress medium grey)<\/span><\/p>\n Notice how your eyes have to work harder to read the greyer versions?<\/p>\n New rules for website accessibility are coming into play around the world.<\/a>\u00a0One rule covers the contrast between the text and background on a webpage. When in doubt, use this contrast checker (or equivalent<\/a>.)<\/p>\n If your ideal reader has to squint to decipher your text, you’re making them work too hard. And you can likely kiss them goodbye.<\/p>\n The simple solution: Always use 100% black text on a white or light pastel background to make it crisp and easy to read.<\/p>\n P.S. I just read something on a WordPress blog that made me sputter in my coffee:<\/p>\n “You seem to prefer black on white, but others (including me) find it too crude<\/strong>. Like many designers, I would\u00a0never<\/em>\u00a0use pure black on pure white for the main text: you soften the contrast<\/strong>…” blah blah<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is exactly what the accessibility rules say NOT to do: Discriminate against anyone who’s visually challenged, including every 40+ year-old on earth.<\/p>\n I certainly won’t be asking this naif to design any white papers for me.<\/p>\n As Strunk & White say beautifully in Principle 17:<\/p>\n A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Busy business people have no time to waste, remember?<\/p>\n So don’t waste words that slow down their scanning and gum up their reading.<\/p>\n But how can you avoid unnecessary words?<\/p>\n Here’s three simple things you can do.<\/p>\n Eliminate throat-clearing. <\/strong>These are\u00a0rambling introductions that tell readers something they already know. It’s okay to draft these as you get warmed up, but make sure cut them on your first revision.<\/p>\n Stick to the main point<\/strong>.\u00a0Don’t go off on any side tangents. Don\u2019t let reviewers add irrelevant details or minor issues that don’t matter.<\/p>\n Always ask yourself, “Do my readers absolutely have to know this?” Often they don’t.<\/p>\n Use one word instead of two<\/strong>. Do you ever see passages like this?<\/p>\n To avoid and mitigate the risks and downside of choosing or using multiple or synonymous terms or phrases, it’s always best and advisable to focus on or specify a single or chosen or ideal word or item. What good are all those double terms linked by “or”?Pick one or the other and get on with it.<\/p>\n To avoid the downside of using multiple, synonymous phrases, it’s best to specify a single word. (16 words, 2 synonyms)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n See what I mean? Be decisive. Pick the word that’s closer to what you mean, and drop the others.<\/p>\n A well-designed table can replace hundreds of words. It’s accessible and simple to scan.<\/p>\n I could write a whole book about tables!<\/p>\n But for now, remember to try using a table whenever you need to:<\/p>\n I try to include a table in every white paper I write. And sometimes I manage to work in three or four.<\/p>\n Most people flipping through a white paper will stop at a table to give it a once-over. If you design it well, a table can communicate lots of information very quickly.<\/p>\n At the start, include a half-page Executive Summary<\/strong> that sums up the rest of the paper.<\/p>\n This tells readers what you’re going to tell them, and helps a busy person decide whether they need to read the full document.<\/p>\n At the end, include some Conclusions<\/strong> with the key takeaway messages and the call to action. This tells readers what you told them, and helps a busy person remember the highlights of your argument.<\/p>\n These summaries are indispensable for white papers. Some people say they’re repetitive. Yes, they are.<\/p>\n But just ask any school teacher: Repetition helps the lesson sink in.<\/p>\n And not everyone reads a white paper the same as a novel by their favorite author: Straight through from front to back.<\/p>\n Many people scan the start, where they will find your Executive Summary. Some flip to the back to see the “bottom line” where they find your Conclusions.<\/p>\n These sections help readers to scan, evaluate, and ultimately decide what to do with your white paper.<\/p>\n They’re easy to write, so don’t forget them.<\/p>\n And if anyone complains they’re repetitive, remember how teachers teach and how people learn. How many times did you sing “ABCD, EFGee…” to help learn the alphabet?<\/p>\n Sometimes I see white papers that make me cringe.<\/p>\n Their creators obviously rushed through research and writing, skipped any polishing or editing, slapped the text into a prefab design, and then plopped the results on a company website.<\/p>\n Is that any way to impress prospects with the quality of your products? Or your attention to detail in your services?<\/p>\n Rewrite, rewrite and rewrite again<\/strong>. I routinely polish every draft 5 or 6 times.\u00a0The goal of any rewrite is to make a white paper more clear and concise.<\/p>\n And I try to reduce the word count by 5% or 10% in each draft. That’s not so hard. Try it and see.<\/p>\n Use Word’s built-in readability metrics<\/strong>.\u00a0Not every writer uses this, but everyone should.<\/p>\n Word contains a free readability checker that will tell you how easy your text is to read.<\/p>\n For your reference, I shoot for a Grade 10 Level or lower, and a Reading Ease score of 50 or higher. If your draft doesn’t hit those levels, keep rewriting.<\/p>\n So there are my 11 tips for how to grab attention with a white paper.<\/p>\n This article doesn’t say anything about how to promote a white paper effectively using social media, e-mail, channel partners, or any other methods. You can see those related tips in this article: 18 must-do’s to promote a white paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nTip #2: Offer a benefit in the title<\/h3>\n
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Tip #3: Name the ideal role in the subtitle<\/h3>\n
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Tip #4: Show your key persona on the cover<\/h3>\n
![\"white](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/cover-Healthline-Analytics-232x300.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"white](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/white-paper-cover-finance-212x300.png\")
<\/p>\nTip #5: Show the reader\u2019s industry<\/h3>\n
![\"white](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/white-paper-cover-hospital-OR-232x300.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"white](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/white-paper-cover-construction-232x300.png\")
<\/p>\nTip #6: Make every page easy on the eyes<\/h3>\n
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![\"graphic](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/magazine-design-pull-quote-300x236.png\")
<\/p>\nSource:<\/em> www.magazinedesigning.com<\/a><\/h5>\n
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Tip #7: At all costs, avoid grey text<\/h3>\n
Tip #8: Provide clear, crisp writing with no wasted words<\/h3>\n
![\"book](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/elements-of-style-cover-189x300.jpg\")
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\n(37 words, 18 synonyms)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nTip #9: Use tables to replace words<\/h3>\n
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Tip #10: Include summaries<\/h3>\n
Tip#11: Don\u2019t publish a first draft<\/h3>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/thatwhitepaperguy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/bigstock-210181318.jpg\")
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