How Professionals Create Compelling White Papers

Professional staff standing together

 

Many of our articles tend to focus heavily on press releases and white papers. There’s a reason for that. As a firm specialising in creating professional, well-written content for B2B clients, our natural tendency to scrutinise online content routinely uncovers a steady stream of press releases and white papers that do not really help the companies publishing them. In fact, many of these companies would do far better hiring professionals.

You might be wondering how white paper writing companies like ours produce compelling white papers even though we may not be experts in the industries of our clients. Such questioning is perfectly legitimate. So, to help you understand why a professional writing service may be your best bet for white papers, we are going to explain some of the secrets of how we do what we do. Please remember that you are the expert in your industry; we are experts in ours.

Research, Research, and More Research

The most important component in creating a compelling white paper is research. The client gives us a topic that needs to be addressed along with a solution to be offered. It’s our job to fill in the rest. We must come up with an explanation to describe the problem at hand, make readers understand why the solution is necessary, and then present the client’s solution as the best choice.

None of this is possible without extensive research. As professional writers, we devote a tremendous amount of time and effort researching the topic given to us by the client. We scour blogs, informational articles and industry publications. We investigate statistics from the private sector, government agencies, and anywhere else we can find them. Only when we are confident that we have enough valuable information does the writing process even begin.

Developing a Logical Flow of Thought

When white papers fail for reasons other than a lack of research, it’s usually because the writer in question does not present a logical flow of thought. Poor flow is something you can get away with in a casual blog post or social media blast, but it doesn’t work for white papers. Readers should be able to follow the logic in order to understand the problem, identify their own needs, and recognise the client’s solution as being the answer.

The need for a logical flow of thought is one of the primary motivations for hiring a professional writing service. Just because someone in your company is an expert on one of the services you offer does not mean that person is able to conceptualise his or her knowledge in a way that provides a logical line of thinking. If the writer of your white papers is not capable of a logical flow of thought, your audience will be lost at the earliest stages of reading.

Writing as a Reader

People engaged in whatever business sector you’re involved in have the luxury of understanding the industry jargon your company uses. Your readers may or may not be in the same position. Therefore, writing a compelling white paper requires understanding the target audience. A writer must essentially write as though he or she were a reader trying to understand his/her own work.

Sometimes a white paper needs a full portion of industry jargon and terminology. Other times, white papers have to be written to an audience that speaks an entirely different language, figuratively speaking. It is up to the writer to know which audience to write to.

These three ‘secrets’ to writing compelling white papers gives you a bit of a glimpse into how we do things at Connotations. There is more to white paper writing than this, but you should now understand some of the benefits of hiring a professional writing service. If your company uses white papers, we urge you not to attempt to write them in-house. Leave it to the professionals instead.

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