White Paper Pundit

It’s often been said that “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.” This is certainly the case with your white paper introduction.

With that said, here are five steps to improving your white paper introductions that will garner greater reader affinity and effectiveness:

1. Don’t Assume Your Reader Knows What You Know

Many white paper writers make the mistake of assuming the reader knows basic core issues related to the topic. In many instances, your potential reader may be an influential business executive that is in charge of a purchase decision, but is under-informed on key principles. As a result, spend a few more lines describing the current state of your market, industry, or business issue contributing to your primary white paper topic. This extra effort may just buy you some additional brownie points in the minds of your reader, prospective customer, and ultimate decision maker.

2. Provide a Flow that Goes From Broad to Narrow

To make the biggest impact with your reader, the flow of your white paper should be akin to a good novel. As a result, set the stage in your reader’s mind to the existing business situation. Talk about broad industry issues then move on to more specific points of interest.

For example, if I were writing a white paper on a wireless network security solution, the content flow for the Introduction would look something like this:

- Online crime is on the rise (hackers, viruses, Trojan Horses, phishing schemes).
- Online security threats cost users billions of dollars in lost information and productivity.
- Existing security solutions can’t provide the level of security that enterprises need to protect sensitive business information.
- Enterprise customers need new robust security solutions based on 128-bit dynamic encryption.

3. Validate Your Point with Statistics and Quotes

Let’s face it. Most readers are born skeptics. Even though your descriptions of a particular business situation may sound fairly logical, the fact that a commercial business is writing about the issue automatically creates skepticism.

The Introduction page is one area where you need to build credibility early in the education process. To overcome the potential for skepticism, you need to add a statistic, quote, or statement from a leading industry new or information source that your reader will deem credible. Such validations build credibility for your main point and make the process of telling your solution story easier for your reader.

4. Use an Visual Element to Gain Greater Reader Attention

If you use a visual element such as a sidebar callout, pull quote, or business/concept graphic, it will be one of the first things your reader will notice on the Introduction page. Make sure the element you choose represents the single most important point on that page that will draw your reader’s attention and incent them to read the rest of the white paper.

In our example above the sentence I would select the sentence, “Existing security solutions can’t provide the level of security that enterprise need to protect sensitive business information”, as my callout or pull quote.

5. State What the Reader will Gain

This final point may seem instinctive, but you’d be surprised how many white papers don’t bother to tell the reader what they will gain once they have completed the paper. You don’t have to give away the farm on this point, but simply tell the reader in a generic fashion what benefit will be gained if they invest the time to read your white paper. For example:

“This white paper will educate CIOs to the network security advantages that can be gained from the deployment of dynamic, 12-bit encryption security devices within the enterprise information infrastructure.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Misc. Rantings, Twitter, WP Resources, White Paper Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.