I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of the warm fuzzy feeling that comes upon receiving a flurry of comments on LinkedIn – especially if the comments are insightful. The response to my post on white papers certainly was insightful with plenty of new ideas thrown into the mix.
The overriding feeling from the feedback was that white papers are, indeed, documents to be cherished by marketing teams, and businesses shouldn’t be disheartened if they don’t get an immediate return on your “investment”.
Olga Tsubiks, digital marketing manager at nModal Solutions Inc., offered up an array of suggestions which she has found to be effective.
Firstly, she makes sure her white paper is chock-full of useful links, and is not shy about including a link to her company’s sales pages, as long as it doesn’t come across as gauche. Tsubiks adds that she’s found it worthwhile to share her white papers again a year after it was originally written and has some advice for those firms which don’t have access to designers in order to create infographics.
She wrote: “Converting whitepapers into slideshows works too and more people are comfortable with making nice PPT slides. Good SlideShare presentations make a great post on social media.”
Heidi J Hanson, a content development specialist, agrees that white papers are much more versatile that some people give them credit, explaining that she continues to mine content from them when developing other forms of “collateral”.
“We also turn them over to our PR people to use on our behalf, and have seen them morph into articles in trade publications we follow,” she added.
That’s a tactic Chantelle Marcelle, senior marketing manager at Intelity, has had some success with too, adding that she’s also now considering breaking up a white paper into bite-size posts for her company blog.
Meanwhile, Martyn Lenthall, owner of SEO Company Bristol, noted the SEO benefits that come with converting a white paper into a pdf and having it available on your website. “The pdf will rank as if it were a website,” he explained.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the discussion. I await and look forward to reading your thoughts on my recently published post on personal branding.