• White papers are among the top 10 tactics used by B2B content marketers in a CMI study.
• 78% of buyers used white papers in the past 12 months to research B2B purchasing decisions.

Sounds simple, right? Write a white paper to improve the results of your content marketing efforts. If you want to get started now, you can click here to skip down below for a free white paper template. Too simple a directive? Keep reading.

There are a lot more questions to be answered prior to creating a white paper. Here are just a few of them:

White Paper or Whitepaper?

If you guessed “white paper,” you’re correct.  At least according to these sources:

• AP Style Guide
• Wikipedia
• Investopedia

According to Google’s data, people get it right roughly 83% of the time.

White Paper: Average monthly searches = 49,500

Whitepaper: Average monthly searches = 9,900

What is a White Paper versus an eBook?

Oh, the roads you will travel in trying to figure this one out. Here’s a quick summary of differences according to Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman from their book, Content Rules:

eBooks	White Papers
Broken into smaller chunks – designed for skimming and scanning	Long and linear – a deep read
Concept centric – based on ideas and trends of interest	Data centric – often based on formal research
Visually heavy – main text supplemented with call-outs, bullet lists	Text-heavy
Casual and collegial – a conversation among equals	Formal – impressive expert speaks to you

Having worked at IDC for 10 years prior to joining Curata, I prefer to look at eBooks as an evolution of the white paper; at least from a content marketing perspective. Some of Curata’s most downloaded eBooks are in some ways like a white paper according to the above descriptions: data-centric, based on quantifiable research, and deeply researched on a single topic, for example: the 2016 Content Marketing Staffing & Tactics Study. That said, according to the above distinctions, white papers do play a key role in educating and engaging buyers at a deeper level than your typical eBook. (If you do want to write an eBook, read Curata’s Ultimate eBook Template with free download.)

How do I get the Biggest Bang for My White Paper Buck?

Four quick tips to get the most return out of your white paper investment:

1. Create your white paper as part of a broader content strategy. A white paper should be fulfilling the objectives of your content strategy—for example:
   • building thought leadership in an area that aligns with your product direction.
   • addressing the pain points of a particular persona.
   • meeting the needs of your audience at a point in the buying cycle.
   • achieving “ownership” of a popular search term in Google.
2. Optimize the reuse and repurpose of white paper content. Creating a relevant and high quality white paper is a non-trivial endeavor. It would be a waste to simply create this asset, gate it behind a landing page, do some promotion and then move on to the next big project. A strategic way to ensure you get the most out of a white paper is to use the Content Marketing Pyramid framework. This puts a white paper at the top of pyramid, with the content from the white paper atomized into more bite-sized assets such as eBooks, webinars, infographics, blog posts, bylines, tweets, and so on. Using an editorial calendar such as the one in this free editorial template will enhance your execution.
3. Market your marketing. Once you’ve put all this time and effort into creating a white paper, you need to ensure that just as much effort—if not more—is invested into its promotion. Atomizing content as described above will help as most—if not all, of the pyramid components drive traffic to the white paper. Collaborate with your internal and external teams to tap into all available promotional channels, such as social media, newsletters, email programs, search engine marketing, cross-promotion with other content assets, and so on. Teams to align with include: social media, digital marketing, field marketing, marketing communications, and agency partners.
4. Measure pipeline impact. You can’t know what your ROI is until you measure it. There are many content marketing platforms on the market today, and the best of them, such as Curata CMP, offer sound analytics functionality, with the ability to measure things like social shares, leads generated, leads touched, pipeline generated, pipeline touched, and revenue influenced.

How do I Structure a White Paper?

At the end of this post is a a complete white paper template download, which is also chock-full of tips for completing each section. Keep reading to take a deep dive into each of these areas.

Title

Your title can make the difference between a good white paper and a great white paper. Spend time crafting a title that will grab your readers’ attention and entice them to read and share your white paper.

Tips:

• Review the following questions in preparation for title brainstorming: Who is your target audience? What are their greatest pain points, needs, and/or interests that are being addressed by this white paper? What are you providing in this white paper that your audience cannot get elsewhere? What are the key Google search terms you’re looking to target/own as a result of this white paper and its related Content Marketing Pyramid?
• Grab attention with a bold title, but don’t be too risqué. Ensure your title represents what is truly in the white paper. And remember, focusing on your audiences’ needs versus your own will keep you on a track to success.
• Unless you work in a highly technical industry, avoid buzzwords and stick to clear and easy to understand language.
• Abide by standards in your industry, but don’t sacrifice the opportunity to differentiate your white paper with the title.
• Consider search engine optimization as part of title creation.
  • Tap into tools such as Google Keyword Planner and Buzzsumo to see which words and phrases are being searched for.
  • Optimal title length for search engines: “Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, or as many characters as will fit into a 512-pixel display. If you keep your titles under 55 characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly.” [Moz]
• Keep your title short, simple and to the point. As they say, less is more. Do take the time to create a shorter, more powerful title. Having trouble shortening your title? Break it down into sections with a colon, or insert a subtitle that can be more descriptive.
• Analyze which white paper titles already exist in your industry i.e., from your competitors. Determine which types of titles have been most successful (i.e., Google search ranking, social shares), and which aspects have helped set those white papers apart from the others. You may decide to emulate some of the attributes of the best titles, but don’t be afraid to take a chance and be unique.

Abstract or Executive Summary

The abstract provides another opportunity to grab your readers’ attention, and convince them your white paper is worth their time to read. Similar to the title, time should be spent developing a clear, concise and hard-hitting abstract.

Tips:

• Write the abstract after you have completed your white paper.
• Use a direct structure format for the creation of your abstract. That is, include the most attention-getting findings, insights, and recommendations from your white paper.
• Keep it short, simple and to the point. A commonly recommended length is 150 to 250 words.
• Put the entire abstract on the title page. Then you can use the title page as a separate sheet for your sales team to send to prospects.  Add a call-to-action linking to the full white paper and save it as a PDF.
• Ensure that the abstract answers the following questions:
  1. What is included in this white paper? (i.e., What audience pain or need is trying to be solved?)
  2. Why should I read this white paper? Give your audience a reason to take time out of their busy schedule to read your white paper.
  3. What are the white paper’s conclusions and recommendations?
• Have someone review your abstract. Preferably someone that knows your audience and has strong attention to detail.

Outline

Develop an outline prior to beginning the writing process; it will eventually take form as its shorter, more succinct cousin, the table of contents. The outline will provide a map and related trails to keep you on the correct path to meet your originally laid out objectives. It will ensure your messaging and content are on-target, and that information flows in an easy-to-follow manner for your readers. The following tips and subsequent section examples provide a good starting point.

Tips:

• DON’T SKIP THE OUTLINE. Yup, the first tip is that you shouldn’t skip the process of creating an outline. Yes, it will take time and delay the start of the writing process. However, it will save you an enormous amount of time in the long run, and more importantly, ensure you have a better final product.
• Target your audience’s needs. It’s critical to create a white paper focused on readers’ needs, interests and/or pain points. Take a non-egocentric approach to your content creation, minimizing the attention spent on your company and its products. There are plenty of other formats to provide company or product-specific information to your audience, such as data sheets for example. For additional tips on how to align with audience needs, refer to “The Four Steps to Content Marketing Enlightenment.”
• Collaborate with your team for outline creation. As the foundational design of your white paper, modifying your course at this stage is much easier than trying to change direction once the paper is written. Be sure to include team members as part of the development and review of the outline to ensure your white paper plan is on target.
• Plan on many revisions. Creation of an outline is an iterative process. Don’t hesitate to modify its design during the process.
• Maintain flexibility. Although the outline is intended to be the map or blueprint for writing your white paper, maintain the flexibility to adjust your outline as necessary once writing begins.
• Map out sections and subsections. It is important to break up your text into several sections, including section headers and subheads within each section. This increases readability and allows your reader to skim through the document and absorb the sections most relevant to their business.

The below sections provide an example of how to structure a white paper.

Introduction

If you’ve done a good job creating the title and abstract, your readers will be ready to dive into your story. The introduction is essentially the next level down from the abstract. More specifically, it’s an opportunity to introduce readers to the problem, need or pain point that is the basis of your white paper, as well as the related solution. Just as in the abstract, you need to pique your audience’s interest in the introduction and entice them to read further.

Tips:

• Set up the problem, need or pain point right up front.
• Grab your readers’ attention in the first sentence or two. Strive to make a great first impression—try using a controversial and/or bold statement.
• Use data to support your point(s).
• Provide additional detail to that included in the abstract, but avoid going into too much detail. Save the specifics for later sections.
• Introduce a framework that may be used throughout the white paper, or could even provide background into the topic.
• Indicate the objective(s) of the white paper, as well as what specifically will be included in subsequent sections. Providing a map or structure in the introduction will help your audience follow your thought process and understand how the white paper is organized to achieve its objectives.

Background/Problem Statement

The introduction provides an overview of the white paper. This section allows you to expand upon this overview, and thoroughly define the problem statement.

Sample questions to be answered in this section:

• What is currently happening in the market today? (i.e., What’s the current situation?)
• What are companies and/or individuals struggling with most, and why?
• What are the specific problems, needs and/or pain points?
• What are the potential benefits of addressing these problems, needs and/or pain points? Answering this question will help readers understand why your solution is of value; and more importantly, entice them to continue reading.
• What data points help to support answers to the above questions?
• What frameworks and/or models can be used to enhance readers’ understanding of this information?

Solution

You’ve provided a succinct description of the most impactful solutions in the abstract, and an overview of these solutions in the introduction. This section allows you to go into the specifics of the solutions.

Tips:

• Introduce the solution(s), including a clear definition and even a framework or model.
• Provide a detailed description of each part of the solution. Use subcategories as required to help readers draw distinct boundaries between different parts of the solution. Subcategories also make it easier for your audience to follow your thought process and absorb the content.
• Be very clear regarding the benefits of each of the solutions, including how it specifically impacts your audience.
• Target your solutions to different segments of your audience to improve your content’s relevancy.
• Provide specific, real-world examples to support your solution(s). These examples provide another opportunity to connect with different segments of your audience. For example, provide cases targeted for three different buyer personas.
• Create a figure and/or table as a stand-alone sheet to help readers visualize your solution(s). This sheet can also serve as a stand-alone asset for your readers and/or your sales enablement efforts. One example from our recent business blogging study can be seen below.

Conclusion

By this point you’ve told your readers what you’re going to tell them in the abstract and introduction; you’ve told them in the problem statement and solution; and then you need to tell them what you told them. The conclusion provides the opportunity to:

• Summarize the white paper objectives.
• Review the problem statement(s).
• Highlight the solutions and their value for your audience. Be clear regarding how these solutions address the problem statement(s).
• Finish with a strong statement. For example: a vision of future solutions, how your audience can develop new solutions on their own, and/or where they can go for additional information and/or resources.

Additional Resources

Provide a list of available resources for your audience. This may include resources you have sourced throughout the white paper.

More Tips for Creating White Papers

• Formatting & Coloring: Create a consistent color scheme based on the color of your logo. Use the most dominant color for your section headers. Use a softer version or a shade of gray as the subhead color. Use these same colors throughout all visual elements of your white paper such as charts, graphs or figures.
• Grammar & Editing: Ensure your white paper has been run through several editors for quality control. Once someone downloads your white paper, it is in his or her possession and you are unable to make further edits. Correct spelling and grammar will elevate your message and back up the credibility of your company.
• Promoting Other Assets: Use the white paper to link to your other content marketing assets, such as other white papers, eBooks or blog posts. Make sure these assets are highly relevant to the topic at hand and focused on answers the audience may need, rather than pushing your company’s products too aggressively.
• Curating Expert Content: Substantiate your message by including content from subject experts by getting quotes directly from them or curating their content. Be sure to follow ethical best practices for curating content, such as linking back to the original source, only taking a small portion of curated content, and adding your own annotation. For a guide to ethical curation, download our complete eBook on the topic: Content Marketing Done Right.

Ready to get started? Download this free template to create your own white paper today.

My last post introduced you to the fundamentals of fair use and ethical content curation. Now that you understand the fundamentals, we’re digging deeper into best practices of content curation to ensure that you’re holding yourself to high standards of curation and avoiding legal issues. Here’s an overview of four best practices.

1. Curate from a wide variety of sources.
   Consistently sharing content from the same one or two sources could put you into an ethical gray area because you’d be benefiting almost entirely from the content of one or two authors. This could also give your readers the impression that you aren’t very knowledgeable about other industry resources. Avoid these pitfalls by curating content from many different sources. This exposes your audience to a wider range of information and ideas and also positions you as an authority who’s widely read and well-rounded. The other benefit of this approach is that it exposes your brand to more thought leaders who may share your content themselves.

2. Don’t republish third-party content in its entirety.
   Copy and pasting a whole article from another site isn’t content curation; it’s actually piracy if you don’t have the content creator’s permission! If you republish a complete piece, there’s no need for your audience to click through and read the full piece, which deprives the original content creator of that traffic. Reproduce only those portions of the headline or article that are necessary to make your point or to identify the story. You should be linking to the original source and providing your own commentary around any direct quotes you excerpt from the full piece. The more you link to third parties’ original content, the more likely they are to link back to you, which ultimately improves your SEO.

3. Attitude and link to the original source.
   Clearly attributing the original creator shows your audience that you value that content and are curating in an ethical manner. This also gives respect to the original creator and potentially sends them traffic, which most content creators really appreciate. Make sure you’re linking to the original creator, not another curator who has shared the content just as you are doing. Some content curation sites bury their attribution links in small type at the bottom of a post, but we recommend making attribution links more prominent. This ensures that your audience knows you have curated content from a wide variety of reputable sources and increases your credibility.

4. Add value by including your own point of view.
   Instead of simply summarizing or repeating what the original piece said, take curation a step further and provide your own context or insights on the piece. This increases the value your readers get from your curation, reduces the potential for ethical issues, and helps your content stand out from the pack. Make sure that your own commentary is longer than any sections you excerpt from the original piece.

These are just four of the best practices included in Content Marketing Done Right: Curata’s Definitive Guide to Executing an Ethical Content Curation Strategy. Download this free ebook for more best practices and examples of content curation in action.

Year after year, survey after survey, the greatest challenge facing marketers interested in content marketing is producing sufficient quality content.  Last year, the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs ran a joint survey showing that the producing content was the greatest challenge facing marketers (64% of respondents).  Similarly, last year, at Curata, we ran a B2B Marketing Trends Survey and found that the single greatest challenge was creating sufficient original content at 69%.

Even anecdotally, if you have attempted content marketing, you have likely faced this challenge yourself.  Most organizations are quick to start a new blog, and create an introductory post, followed by a few other introductory thought leadership posts, before letting it languish.  Though we all know content marketing works when it’s done right, few of us, are able to pull it off.

The Only 6 Ways to Build a Sustainable Content Marketing Organization

But some organizations are able to reliably produce sufficient content on a regular basis and feed the content beast.  There’s only six possible ways to do this.  Here’s an overview along with the tools to use and the pitfalls to avoid.

Hire a Dedicated Content Creator

One way to get a content marketing program working for the long term is to hire a full-time dedicated resource for creating content on a regular basis.  This person’s job is solely to create content on a regular basis.  While much of the unique thought leadership content about your industry will emanate from senior employees in your organization, this person can add tremendous value in terms of repurposing that thought leadership content in the form of bylines, or creating best practices and tips content on a regular basis.

The downside is that this is will set you back somewhere between $30K and $60K a year depending on the level of experience.  You will also have to dedicate some significant time towards coaching this person to create content from your organization’s perspective and voice before they are self-sufficient.  The cost alone is prohibitive enough for many organizations to avoid pursuing this approach.

The pitfall for many companies is that they attempt to assign these responsibilities to an existing marketing team member without lessening additional responsibilities for that individual.  In such cases, the content creation usually takes backseat to less time-sensitive activities and does not get created on a regular basis.

Crowd Source Internally

Many novice content marketers hope that other parts of the organization will pitch in and create content from time to time.  If everyone could write one blog post a quarter, wouldn’t our company have a vibrant blog representing diverse point of views?  One big advantage of this approach is that you get content from parts of the organization who are very closely to the industry and customers (such as from the customer service, the CTO, and the sales team).

Coordinating content creation among such a large contributor base is challenging.  Luckily there are dedicated content marketing tools to help organize and maintain a content production schedule and workflow process using an editorial calendar.

The problem with this thought process is that other than marketing, no other part of the organization will prioritize content above their other existing responsibilities.  Even if you give prizes, and perks to other employees for creating content, most organizations are unable to pull this off.  As a result, the crowd-sourced approach almost always fails at first.

Outsource Externally

The third way to produce content day in and day out is to outsource outside of your organization.  Under such services, you can post assignments to a marketplace of writers who can bid for the assignment.  Outsourcing content creation is not expensive unlike hiring a full time in house content writer, and it’s something you can try out with little commitment.

If you are looking for a retained relationship, there are content marketing writing agencies like that can help out.  Or if you prefer a per assignment relationship with a broader choice of writers, you try service market places such as Scripted.

The disadvantage to such services is that the quality of work can sometimes be an issue.  You often don’t know the writer you are working with, and they in turn don’t know your company and industry well.  However, similar to software outsourcing, if you are willing to dedicate time towards flushing out thorough requirements, it can work well.

Collect User Generated Content

Another option is to collect content from your audience through user generated content (UGC).  UGC is a popular mechanism for well known B2C brands to build content communities by soliciting stories relating to the brand from a happy customer base.  As an example, Washington-based insurance company, Pemco, does this on their blog.

If you can pull this off, then it’s a big win.  But unfortunately, most B2B companies lack large vocal and passionate user bases who will take time to create meaningful content.  Instead, B2B companies can conduct regular interviews with select customers, and publish case studies, but it’s still too much work to become a mainstay of their content marketing strategy.

License Content

If you have the budget, another option is to license content from media outlets that you can syndicate on your site and blog.  It’s an attractive option for organizations that are short on time, but not on funds, and need something immediate to engage their audience.

But there are several downsides to licensed content to be aware of aside from cost.  Licensed content can’t be indexed by search engines, and must be published as is giving you no room for adding your brand’s point of view.  Lastly, while it’s easy to license content for mainstream topics, it’s difficult to find very relevant content from nice publications that are relevant to your business.

Curate Other People’s Content

If you can’t get budget for hiring a dedicated internal resource, can’t motivate your co-workers to create content, don’t have a user base as a content source, are wary of licensing content, and don’t want to manage an outsourced content team, then content curation may be for you.  As a content curator, you can publish sufficient content for your content marketing campaigns, by selectively finding, organizing and sharing the best content on your topic.  Unlike licensed content where you publish the full text, here you only share a small excerpt from the original text along with your commentary and link back to the original.

The downside of content curation is that it is fundamentally a human process and is not completely automated.  You do have to take time to find interesting content, editorialize it and then publish it.  While you simplify this process by duct taping together Google Alerts, feed readers, and a half dozen other tools to form a rudimentary curation process, there are also content curation tools like Curata that make it a seamless process that can be perform in a little as 20 minutes a day.

In Summary

Here’s a quick summary of the different approaches and what to look out for.

If you are looking to just get started or dive deeper into these approaches, a good starter guide is the How the Feed the Content Beast eBook with a foreword by Ann Handley (author of Content Rules).