White Papers Suck but They Don't Have To

Write your white papers, make them worth reading, not boring old professor articles.

Have fun in them, make them topically relevant if product specific or connect them to a long standing service or profession. They should be like reading the best album inserts, sorry, CD covers, that bring out the personality of the band or their music.

Perhaps stop making white papers and start producing videos of real people discussing your product. Wait, you probably do that.

Blog the white paper information over the course of a few days or weeks to grow some interest. You probably do that too.(Bet most of you do not)

Do a podcast about your company or solution that people can listen to and hear your excitement come alive. You probably do this too.

So why do you insist on writing white papers no one reads?

Because either you were told to and could not argue yourself out of a paper bag or are an old time marketer or company that just knows executives love to read these. I admit, I have been asked at times about a white paper or details from a vendor but I have never given them to a client. Sales people who have worked with me know I am against white papers on many levels.

Why would a perfectly sane and capable person want to have me go and find something they could do? Because they want you or me out of the way. No sale until you bring me proof in a white paper. No, bad salesman, no cookie.

What will an executive glean from the document that will sway them to buy from you over the other people who sent him their white papers? Nothing, bingo.

Maybe there is something to these documents that really speaks to executives. This is what you and I are for, we present information tailored to you, our clients, in a way that no white paper will ever do. When was the last time you read a white paper that explained social media using golf analogies? (If you know of any, please comment with links)

Stop wasting your time, please, I beseech you, put your excellent editing to usage and write more blog posts. Transform your glossies and pdf files into working, active living documents. You have the power, it was just sucked out of you to write that last 35 page white paper.

Someone has a course on writing White Papers called "No More Boring White Papers" really, here is the link. I found this link because a few days ago, this blog post was published by Rachel Foster. I do not know Rachel but hope she appreciates me sending her some link love.

In a similar vein but possibly where all of this leads, I found this old posting.Written in 2003, with the title, oddly enough, How Win an Award for Your White Paper. Yes, you can not make this up, that is the real title. One of the three criteria is editorial quality, not sure you want them as judges.

What if you do write such an awesome paper that people actually read it and recommend it to other people? Congratulations and please let me get a link to it.

At the end of this blog post, White Paper Worst Practices by  Lauren Moody and Randall Cronk they state:

A great white paper can be a powerful tool in your campaign, while a terrible one will do a lot of damage to both your brand and your online social presence. And while the shock treatment can be an effective writing strategy, writing badly is not the best way to implement it. That is, of course, unless you don’t want to be a writer in the first place, and would rather someone else take that role. If that’s the case, please try our free marketing copy edit before you hurt yourself!

Need help, and who doesn't these days, give them a try but read their blog post, it was well done.

Everything is Just in Time (JIT), well almost everything

Have you ever been working at home, or the office, when you get a phone call from a sales person who is just dying to send you their latest white paper?

Ever hang up directly, if you even took the call? I normally talk to the people and try to understand the logic of what they are doing. Obviously this is their job, however, if they could open the mind of the company they work for, they might get further in their efforts.

Usually I point out to them that calling me, when I certainly did not ask them to do so, is not likely to be helpful to their cause. That aside, I then ask, if you were going to email it to me anyway, why not just email it to start and not waste your time calling? Either way, my spam solution will probably block it because it should know by now, I do not like emails with the words found that include "free white paper".

Decades ago when I was in college and hating my economics classes, JIT was discussed and technology has truly brought us to a world where everything is JIT. Outside of customization for something, or having a baby, everything else could be done JIT. Education could be, but that is a whole other post. We all want that Matrix like power to just know how to do something we never did before.

A friend of mine had questioned about the benefits of a newsletter or even blogging in general over some other formats. My feeling is the former is like blogging and I do believe in blogging. Do I expect you to read this blog post or any other when it is posted? Some of you will, but next week or month or year more people will find it. Maybe for a report, maybe for a presentation, or just because I tagged it with something that brought you here. You will find it when you need it. My technical posts are written for long term searching so everyone can benefit from the things I found earlier on in my career. One of my most hit posts is about the iNotes Redirector and is from 2009 which gets viewed daily. That is Just in Time help.

I am not a white paper person. Like many others, I trust my friends recommendations, not some paid for document produced by a company selling something. If I need your white paper for a client, I would hope they already found it but if not I will certainly use Google to find it.

One thing you can not do JIT is create an audience. Got a new app? How will you push out to the world? Have something to say to the world, how will they hear you? Building your audience takes time and then once you reach a critical mass stage, it then becomes a JIT plan. Apple now has millions of devices sold JIT on day one for whatever device is newly available. We all want to be like that, but think about this, it took Apple just under 25 years to get to this level. How long do you have?


JIT tools or data can only be found once someone else has put in the time and effort to create it or create something to provide what you seek. We all need a little JIT but how often do we create information for the next person in line? Collaboration, social business or just plain communication only comes from someone else who went first to clear a path for the rest of us.

My posts are for the JIT person, searchable and helpful when you need it.