And One Good Tip for Writing Them

A colleague once said to me, “I think the only people reading white papers are the people writing them.” And that’s true to a point. What gets someone to download a white paper — to fork over their contact information to download a PDF in the 21st century — is that they need some obscure piece of information in it. Maybe they’re also writing one or maybe they’re putting together a report for their boss. Or a sales presentation. Whatever they’re doing, they want to know something specific that’s in there.

If you’re writing a white paper, possibly it’s to chase down a detail as far back as you can go. One person writes a white paper and they cite a statistic that someone else writing another white paper cited. But it’s a good stat and would really help you out if it were real. Anybody can say anything and throw it online. And then you can cite that as a source. You need to get the good stuff — the origin of the data.

The farther back you go, the more you’ll learn about that one weird little fact. Whether it’s true. Whether it’s not. What other people are saying about it. How to know when those people are idiots. About eighteen months is how far back you should go on any citation. Longer than that and the whole thing looks stale. Sometimes there’s a stat so old and well known it has to be in there. You’ll need to know the difference between stale marketing glop and an industry standard.

There are all sorts of ways to present that information. White papers aren’t always the fastest. Infographics, videos, flyers, an article. White papers establish subject matter expertise. They tell people that you understand what’s happening right now.

So my one tip about writing white papers — only use the good stuff.