Gordon Graham

Nothing undermines a good white paper faster than poor design. No matter how compelling and persuasive the text may be, if people can’t read it because of a poor design, they’ll quickly move on. Then all your effort and expense are for nothing.Here are ten down-to-earth tips for anyone designing a white paper.

White papers are the “king of content” that can help any B2B company build mindshare, generate leads, engage prospects, and undercut competitors. But to get powerful results, you need to use white papers effectively. Make sure to provide useful information that can help a business person understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.

Your white paper title can make or break it. B2B buyers scan pages of search results to find useful information. Your white paper title is often all that prospects have to go on to make their decision about whether to download or read your white paper. If your title falls flat, they’ll skip right past it, meaning that all the effort you put into creating that document was a waste.

Don’t hurry through preparing your final white paper document, or you may have some embarrassing mistakes to deal with later. In this penultimate step, everyone gets involved — the writer, illustrator (if any), designer (if any), and client. The writer makes any final changes in the text, while the illustrator makes any last tweaks to the graphics.

After doing the research, it’s time for the writer to start drafting a six- or eight-page white paper, right? Wrong. An executive summary should come next. Without a direction blessed by the client, much of what the writer drafts could end up discarded. Instead, the writer should provide a short deliverable so the client and reviewers can confirm the proposed direction, usually no more than one page long.

As you become more adept at developing white papers, you’ll naturally tend to look for ways to make them more persuasive and memorable. Many of these tips combine both structure and content; you must include a certain element at the proper place in the proper type of white paper (structure) and you must word it correctly to get the best possible results (content).

Your white paper title can make or break it. As the first thing a reader will see, consider this your opportunity to make a first impression; something you can’t do twice. Stress the benefits of your white paper to readers Why not tell your readers explicitly what they’ll gain from reading your white paper, right in your title?

This step is a well-understood part of any publishing process. After the writer creates a first draft of the white paper and the illustrator creates the graphics, the reviewers need to comment. And the client has to manage the reviews to make sure they happen in a timely and constructive way. This process must be handled with patience, tact, and sometimes a dash of good-natured humor from everyone.

The first step in producing a white paper is to create the first-draft text and graphics. Writers, illustrators, designers, and business people understand this step well. This step groups together text and graphics instead of keeping them separate or parallel processes. The visuals in a white paper are vital; in some ways, they’re the most important part.