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How to Engage Your Audience with Well-Written Whitepapers

How to Engage Your Audience with Well-Written Whitepapers

Every marketer should know how much a whitepaper can be helpful to their business.

A whitepaper is an authoritative, detailed, informational report on a certain topic that provides a solution to a problem or promotes a product or service. Whitepapers are mostly used as sales and marketing documents to promote certain products, services, ideas or methods of a company. Most whitepapers require the reader to provide an email address and this is a great way to get leads.

Below are some tips on how to write a well-written, engaging whitepaper.

Use an engaging and interesting title.

Titles are important, especially in our modern world of technology. The first thing that catches a reader’s eye on the web is the title and if it does not pull them in immediately, they will pass it by and go to something more interesting. Remember the 3-30-3 Rule of Whitepapers as mentioned by Mike Stelzner in his book Writing White Papers: You have 3 seconds to grab your reader’s attention. You have 30 seconds to engage your reader. You have 3 minutes for your prospect to read your paper.

Persuade with facts and examples, not sales pitches.

As was mentioned above, whitepapers are used as sales and marketing documents to promote the products and services of a company. However, this does not mean whitepapers should be used to push your company’s product in the reader’s face, that will turn many people off. Whitepapers are already long and time-consuming documents to read and many people will abandon the task if it feels like they are reading a sales pitch. Whitepapers are written to persuade people through facts and examples about the value of whatever is the focus of the document. Begin the whitepaper by discussing problems that your readers may be facing.

When you begin to introduce your solution, write in general terms.

Don’t be too specific. For example, using the name of your company or product to describe or explain a situation. Also, when you use general terms, situations and solutions, you will be able to educate your readers better before diving into specific terms, situations and solutions.

One of the best ways to determine whether you have a well-written, engaging whitepaper is if the reader is persuaded to take advantage of what you are offering them. Most whitepapers fail to complete this goal because they do not give the reader any clear next steps after they finish reading the document. Always include a call to action at the end of your whitepaper. Provide the reader with clear information on how to proceed.

Writing good whitepapers may be a daunting task starting out, but they can be helpful and valuable to your company and your audience in the long run.

If you are in need of whitepaper writing, publishing, or marketing services, we can help. Contact OnlineWhitepapers.com today to get you well on your way to having an excellent and engaging whitepaper.