White Paper Pundit

Let’s say that you’ve developed a 10-page white paper based on both interview and printed background material content. Based on your contract, your customer has requested a 6 to 8 page white paper. You realize that you have to chuck a few pages out of your draft.

Which sections make the most sense to reduce or eliminate without sacrificing the impact and marketability of your white paper? Here are some suggestions:

1. Executive Summary – Take this page out completely and use key points from this section in your Introduction. This saves one page.

2. Introduction – You can reduce this from one page to one-half page, by selecting and discussing one background issue. Make sure that your choice best represents the most important issue taking place in your client’s business environment or industry.

3. Business Challenge Section - This is one of the most important sections of a white paper where reader credibilty is built. This section should be reduced only as a last resort. One idea here is to pick the single, most important business challenge that will peak reader interest, instead of presenting several challenge points. If there is a This will reduce section size from one-half to one page.

4. Business Advantage Section – Again, a last resort since your key selling message(s) are contained here. Several ideas for reducing overall size in this section include: replacing large feature attribute paragraphs with two line bullet lists, eliminating transition or segue paragraphs between sections, and using concept diagrams to replace large sections of description text. You can save about a page using these techniques.

5. Concluding Summary – Reduce paragraphs to a series of elevator pitch statements. This can reduce one page to approximately one-half page.

Using a combination of these techniques, you can reduce your white paper from one to three pages. Again this strategy should be used as a last resort. Remember the more you take out, the more difficult it will be to convince your reader to your point-of-view with the remaining content that you’ve kept in your white paper.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under 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.