The whitepaper is one of the most effective means of public relations of the companies. It serves the compact and intensive knowledge transfer and presents your services to customers in a clear way. What matters here is the high quality of the content.
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Whitepaper: modern knowledge transfer in practical eBook form
Anyone who spends a lot of time on corporate websites will come across download links for white papers again and again. These small eBooks of around five to fifteen pages provide information on a specific topic and present the reader with the products and services that the company offers as a solution to an existing problem. The language is rather simple and direct, but the knowledge transfer always takes place at a high professional level.
All the technical details have to be right in a successful whitepaper. Companies from the IT sector in particular rely on white papers to explain their services to customers. The short text focuses on the customer's problem and the company's approach to solving it. Why are our products and services best suited for this purpose?
Anyone reading the whitepaper should get a positive impression of the company's competence and come to the conclusion that they have found the right partner for their task. The whitepaper is therefore usually written by an employee who is very familiar with the subject matter. Afterwards, the download is linked to the company blog or the company website.
Typical is also the integration into the newsletter sent by e-mail. Readers can also find the link to the download here. In this simple way, a quick distribution of the text can be achieved. The goal is clearly defined: What the opening rate is for the e-mail, the download rate is for the whitepaper. As many interested parties as possible should download the eBook onto their hard drive.
Whitepapers are not advertising
Although so many companies have long since successfully used the whitepaper in their public relations work, there are still misunderstandings regarding the conceptualization of the texts. This is because a whitepaper is by no means advertising, but a factual text. The focus is always on imparting knowledge. In no case would a market-shouting tone be appropriate here.
In the B2B sector, white papers are among the most successful downloads. They are aimed at readers who have little time but still want in-depth information on a topic. The whitepaper is perfectly suited for this with its length. It is longer than a simple blog entry and can therefore convey more information and details. At the same time, it is not as long as a normal book.
Although the white paper is not an advertising brochure, the products and services that a company offers are still included. Here, however, everything revolves around functional descriptions, case studies and theoretical application possibilities. What can I do with a company's products and why do I need it? The whitepaper conveys this information in a factual style.
Whitepapers are part of a successful content strategy today
White papers have been widespread in the computer industry since the 1980s. From the very beginning, they have served to explain technical innovations and have always placed high demands on quality. This is no different today. Companies benefit from this product in many ways.
A good whitepaper succeeds in positioning you as an expert in a particular field. You show the reader that you are most familiar with the subject matter and have thought through the problems most deeply. Competitors who don't offer a single whitepaper quickly come across as significantly less competent.
The whitepaper offers the almost unique opportunity for a recipient to spend up to fifteen pages on a particular company and its work. It is not a matter of course to receive so much time from potential customers. Of course, this requires that the whitepaper is well written and encourages further reading on every page.
Readers of eBooks like to share them with others. And that is definitely desired with this free download. So in addition to the pure downloads on the website, there are also the sendings via file attachment of the readers among themselves. This often makes it possible to achieve a high degree of dissemination with successful whitepapers.
In addition, search engines reward the publication of white papers. Google is not interested in advertising messages, but in high-quality content. And this is exactly what the whitepaper delivers. The reward is often a significant improvement in ranking if new whitepapers appear regularly on the company website. Important here: The word whitepaper should already appear as a keyword in the title of the eBook.
And of course, the whitepaper is one of the best ways to generate leads. At the end of the whitepaper, the author is given the opportunity to include contact details so that the reader can obtain further information about the products or decide to buy them straight away. A reference to the company's newsletter and a request to subscribe to it after reading the text is also popular.
How to create the white paper successfully
It should now be clear that a whitepaper is enormously valuable for the public relations work of companies. But how do I create such a whitepaper?
In any case, the basic prerequisite is that the writer has excellent knowledge of the subject. In order to increase the content quality of the text from the outset, it is worthwhile to fall back on existing material. If the company operates a blog, articles published there are excellent building blocks for an eBook.
If the creator collects several thematically related blog articles for the eBook, he almost automatically gets an outline for the text. Each blog article could then function as an independent chapter in the whitepaper. In this way, it is possible to generate a successful whitepaper from existing content in the blog.
After that, the publication takes place on a landing page. This should be easy for potential readers to find, so a little SEO is required. The best eBook is of little use if it does not find any readers. If possible, the company uses all its available channels, such as social media, to promote the white paper.
And it should not remain with a single work. One white paper is good, several white papers are better. And even better is the regular publication of corresponding eBooks. These highlight the company's services from constantly changing perspectives. This is how the company is most likely to inspire customers with its own offering.
