v+j success team

Your carefully crafted copy and painstakingly gathered statistics won’t earn those clicks on their own. The average human attention span is now less than that of a goldfish. And with 3.3 million Facebook posts, 448,800 tweets, and 149,513 emails sent every minute, competition for your readers’ attention is intense, to say the least. Long form mediums like the white paper need serious sparkle just to compete.

Table of Contents

For example, you can use a white paper to share marketing statistics, compare different campaigns, present a complex analysis of an industry trend, or share an in-depth explanation of a specific process carried out by a team or company.

How is a White Paper Different From an eBook?

In many cases, you might find that the terms ‘white paper’ and ‘eBook’ are used interchangeably. However, there are a few differences between the two, and it’s important to know which one is best for your needs.

eBooks are electronic books that usually provide a general overview of a topic. They are more conversational in nature, and are normally directed at non-expert audiences who are new to a particular topic.

White papers, on the other hand, are targeted at more expert audiences who are already familiar with a topic and want to learn more about a particular aspect of it, such as a detailed analysis of a specific strategy. White papers are more factual, professional and research-based.

What is a white paper?

In the world of marketing, a white paper is a long-form piece of content, similar to an eBook. The difference between the two is that white papers tend to be more technical and in depth. The facts and opinions expressed in white papers are often backed by original research or statistics that the publisher has aggregated from reliable sources. They often include charts, graphs, tables, and other ways of visualizing data.

Today, the term is most commonly applied to “deep dive” style publications. Businesses — especially in the consulting, financial, or B2B sectors — use them to communicate their organization’s philosophy on a topic, make the case for the superiority of their product, or simply to present research findings related to their field.

Who uses white papers?

In the past, white papers were most often produced by governmental agencies, NGOs, think tanks, consultancies, and financial institutions that needed to present the findings of their ongoing research in a succinct format.

With the widespread growth and adoption of content marketing (the creation and distribution of non-promotional content intended to generate interest in a business and its offerings), white papers have become more common in other industries as well. Any organization that engages in content marketing can benefit from producing white papers.

Their popularity across industries is due to their versatility. While all white papers have certain elements in common, a B2B startup will use them differently than a large consultancy, and both will use them differently from a governmental organization.

Types of white papers

Other types of white papers simply present a summary of useful statistics and information about the state of a particular field or industry. An example of this would be the Content Marketing Benchmarks Budgets and Trends from the Content Marketing Institute.

Whatever type you produce, the contents of your white paper should serve to showcase your expertise in a given area. Your audience is searching for information, and will look for an authoritative source — a business they perceive as having in-depth knowledge of a subject.

The purpose of a white paper

White papers enable you to build trust with your audience. They show readers that you’re reliable, experienced, and adept in a given domain. When potential customers search for information to help them understand a problem or opportunity they’re facing, and you provide them with a quality white paper that helps, they’ll turn to you again in the future.

This perception of authority can also serve to boost sales in an organization. More than half the respondents to the Eccolo Media B2B Technology Content Survey reported having read a white paper before making a buying decision. Buyers prefer to purchase from vendors they trust and see as experts in their field.

Finally, white papers are extremely useful for lead generation. The Content Preferences Survey from DemandGen found that more than three-fourths of survey respondents were willing to exchange personal information for a white paper — more than for eBooks, case studies, analyst reports, podcasts, or infographics.

White paper examples

What Developers Want – CodinGame

This unique one-pager presenting findings from the Developers at Work Survey demonstrates how a white paper should be done. The animated, interactive data charts show off just what’s possible with our embed feature.

This well-produced special edition produced by BDO and creative agency Monte Media does an incredible job of turning a conventionally dull topic into a piece of content that’s engaging and comes to life.

Building and Applying a Content Marketing Strategy – Foleon

Use these white paper examples to create a design that reflects your brand

Use these examples of white papers as springboards for your own unique and brand-appropriate designs. Knowing how to write a white paper that considers your audience every step of the way will help you develop the perfect response to their questions and make your designs accessible .

What is a white paper?

White papers are also research-based and widely considered to be a valuable resource. In fact, Equinet reports that a whopping 75% of B2B would share information about themselves and their company in exchange for a white paper.

Why should you create a white paper?

White papers can be extremely valuable documents to educate your stakeholders, clients, and top-of-funnel traffic—when the white papers are actually interesting. According to the Demand Gen 2018 Survey Report , 71% of B2B buyers used white papers in the last 12 months to research purchasing decisions.

How long is a white paper?

Typically, white papers are around 3 to 20 pages long. But some whitepapers can be longer. A white paper should be long enough to cover the concept or problem at hand. Since this usually includes case studies or new research, plus explanations and analyses, a good rule of thumb is writing white papers to provide enough evidence to back up your claims.

How to write a white paper that people will actually read?

If it doesn’t have an appealing design, your white paper probably isn’t going to work as well as you want it to. As with any type of content—from writing blog posts to making presentations to crafting ebooks —a lot of your white paper’s success comes down to the design.

How to format a white paper with design in mind:

1. Make sure your cover page immediately informs readers what your white paper is about.
2. Summarize key takeaways at the start after writing your white papers.
3. Don’t forget to think about your readers’ experience. Use clear page numbers to make it easier to scan your white paper.
4. Visualize your data to make your white paper more engaging.
5. Use consistent brand colors and fonts throughout your white paper format. This will make your design look more polished and professional.
6. Use high-quality photos with a consistent style.
7. Keep your target users in mind throughout the design process. If you’re using images of other people make sure they resemble your target users.
8. Emphasize section headers in your whitepaper with icons.
9. Break up walls of text with visuals like infographics and charts.
10. Use a glossary to outline the specific topics you aim to address.
11. Incorporate calls to action throughout your white paper design.
12. Format your white paper to allow for plenty of white space. This will prevent your whitepaper design from looking cluttered.
13. Switch up your page layouts to keep readers interested.

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Sara McGuire is the former Content Marketing Manager at Venngage. She believes that growth by content doesn’t require a big budget if you’re scrappy. Her writing has been published on Marketing Profs, HubSpot, and Content Marketing Institute. Follow her on Twitter @sara_mcguire

Sources:

https://visme.co/blog/how-to-write-a-white-paper/
https://www.foleon.com/topics/how-to-write-and-format-a-white-paper
https://venngage.com/blog/white-paper-examples/

This helps you to test your comprehension and give your brain a chance to assimilate the information before you continue reading. The post goes on to quote Daniel Coyle’s advice for retaining the information we read:

Does Reading Make You Smarter? How Books Make Us More Intelligent

Reading isn’t for everyone. But maybe reading should be universal because of all of the benefits it bestows. Statistics show that over 24 percent of American adults went through the past year without reading a single book.

There’s no doubt that reading is important but does reading make you smarter? Are those who take the time to flick through the pages of their favorite novel or nonfiction genre more intellectual?

Yes, reading makes you smarter. Our intelligence level goes up when we learn something and reading is a great way to learn. Reading a book enhances our emotional intelligence and comprehension of things which helps us make smarter decisions.

Since there are different ways of interpreting what smarter is and is not, we are going to take a closer look at some of the studies. We will also find out if it has benefits for the brain in other ways as well.

Skip sections

I’m one of those people who feels bad if I miss anything (sometimes known as ‘fear of missing out‘). When it comes to reading, I definitely feel this. If something further ahead catches my eye, I can’t keep reading until I go back and catch up on the parts I missed.

I’ve actually realized recently that there is a kind of freedom in giving up that feeling of needing to see everything. Sometimes, it’s okay to skip parts. Especially if they’re not relevant to you. Readers on the web skim for a reason. In fact it has almost become our default way of reading, as this eye-tracking study shows:

When we’re reading on the web, we’ll often find handy stuff to help us do this, like subheadings or bold text. These can help us skim through and get the gist of an article quickly, so we can decide whether to go back and reread the parts we skipped.

A short bonus regarding long reads: in case of doubt, skip to the conclusion. If it’s worthy of understanding how the author got there, read it all. If not, congratulations. You just avoided wasting time.

One of the benefits of skipping over sections is that you’re not overloading your brain with irrelevant information, so the info that is going in can be processed more easily. Hopefully, this method can help us to remember more of what we read!

All the information we have available only increases our stress levels and diminishes available time. We consume much more than we create, we read much more than we think, and it should be the other way around. We have to make sure we consume the things that truly matter to us, but only so that we have time to create something that matters to someone else. – Roberto Estreitinho

Exercises to improve writing skills

1. Write every day

This is the best writing tip for beginners. Write like it’s your job. Practicing every day is key to learning how to write good. It helps you stretch those writing muscles and learn from doing. Keeping a journal with you at all times also means you can write whenever inspiration strikes, like when you’re walking your fave four-legged friend.

Write every day, and you’ll turn it into a habit. That doesn’t mean you have to write ten thousand words every day, as the author of the children’s novel, See You in the Cosmos, Jack Cheng says:

“When mastery is the goal, spending an exorbitant number of hours in one sitting will likely lead to burnout. We don’t go to the gym expecting to put on 20 pounds of muscle in a single, day-long workout. Instead, we do several short workouts a week, spread out over months.”

2. Turn long paragraphs into bullet points

Want to learn how to write better sentences? Sentences that are easy to read and get to the point right away? Practice the art of brevity by chopping up hard-to-read paragraphs into succinct bullets.

This is especially useful for business writing because your readers are likely short on time. They want you to get to the point fast! And they want easy to digest information.

There is a place for long sentences in your work though, especially when it comes to creative writing. Writology has a great guide on this full of ace writing tips for beginners.

3. Change passive voice into active voice

A little recap on passive and active voice: Active voice is when the sentence starts with the subject acting on the verb. Passive voice is when the subject is a recipient of the verb’s action. Active voice is more engaging because it takes less processing time from the reader, and also gives the impression that the action is happening now, not in the past.

Use an AI writing assistant tool like Writer to spot unengaging instances of passive voice and transform them into the active voice. This will help you draw readers in and make your writing easier to read.

Benefits of Reading

1. Mental Stimulation For Your Brain

As per a study, one of the prime benefits of reading books is slowing down mental disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Dementia [1] It happens since reading stimulates the brain and keeps it active, which allows it to retain its power and capacity.

Every part of our body needs exercise to stay healthy, and the same goes for our brain. Reading gives it regular exercise and keeps it healthy and sound.

2. Good Habit For Stress Reduction

Everyday concerns will keep bothering you unless you do something to divert your mind. Reading gives you that mental space to occupy yourself with something more interesting.

When you read a great story, all your stress seems to slip away and relax you since you tend to travel mentally in a different realm. Sometimes while reading, you come across valuable advice or solutions to your problems.

3. Knowledge-Enhancement

Since the onset of civilization, we have grown and developed mentally. Many learned scholars give credit to the erudite tomes written by our predecessors for our knowledge. The importance of reading books is now more than ever since. Not everything is available in digitalized form.

There are numerous ways to learn more about life, from self-help books to reading fiction. Even when you feel demotivated, you can read an inspirational biography to lift your mood. One of the great benefits of reading books is that the knowledge you gain from them can never be taken away from you. Unlike worldly possessions, your knowledge will stay with you till the end of time.

4. Vocabulary Expansion

If you are not yet convinced on why reading books is important, this might interest you. When you develop the habit of reading, you enhance your vocabulary. Reading any type of book can improve your vocabulary to an impressive extent.

A Guide to Becoming a Better Writer: 15 Practical Tips

If you’ve always dreamed of being the next Hemingway or Vonnegut (or even Grisham), or perhaps if you just want to write better essays for school or posts for your blog … you need to sharpen those writing skills.

It takes hard work. But it’s worth the effort. And if it seems like an insurmountable task, there are some concrete things you can do today that will get you on the road to improvement.

Personally, I’ve been a fiction, newspaper, magazine and blog writer for 17 years now, writing for a variety of publications … and I’m still trying to improve. Every writer can get better, and no writer is perfect. I think I’ve grown tremendously as a writer over the last couple of decades, but it has been a painful journey. Let me share some of what I’ve learned.

No matter what level of writer you are, there should be a suggestion or twelve here that will help.

1. Read great writers. This may sound obvious, but it has to be said. This is the place to start. If you don’t read great writing, you won’t know how to do it. Everyone starts by learning from the masters, by emulating them, and then through them, you find your own voice. Read a lot. As much as possible. Pay close attention to style and mechanics in addition to content.

2. Write a lot. Try to write every day, or multiple times a day if possible. The more you write, the better you’ll get. Writing is a skill, and like any other skill, you have to practice it to get better. Write stuff for yourself, write for a blog, write for other publications. Write just to write, and have a blast doing it. It gets easier after awhile if you practice a lot.

3. Write down ideas, all the time. Keep a little notebook handy (Nabokov carried around index cards) and write down ideas for stories or articles or novels or characters. Write down snippets of conversation that you hear. Write down plot twists and visual details and fragments of song lyrics or poems that move you. Having these ideas written down helps, because they can inspire you or actually go directly into your writing. I like to keep a list of post ideas for my blog, and I continually add to it.

References:

https://www.selfdevelopmentsecrets.com/reading-make-you-smarter/
https://buffer.com/resources/5-ways-to-be-a-better-reader-and-improve-your-writing-in-the-process/
https://writer.com/blog/how-to-write-better/
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-benefits-reading-why-you-should-read-everyday.html
https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/a-guide-to-becoming-a-better-writer-15-practical-tips.html