We went there : a white paper on writing better white papers

1. A publication from
A guide for content
marketers to craft
white papers that
captivate readers &
generate warm leads
A WHITE PAPER
HOW TO
A publication from
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2. A publication from
White papers drive purchases
Whitepapers are authoritative guides that help readers understand an issue, solve a problem
or make a decision. In today’s advertising-saturated world, value-additive content like white
papers are important weapons in a modern marketer’s arsenal.
B2B buyers believe white papers are the most
important content format for researching purchases.1
Nearly 1/3 of the white papers on the World Bank’s
site have never even been downloaded.2
How can you ensure that the investment you make into your whitepapers pays off? Read on…
High quality whitepapers can become long-lasting assets that raise awareness, generate
new leads and establish your company as a thought leader in your market. Poorly executed
white papers can be colossal time and money sinks, ignored by your readers.
White papers drive
purchases
High quality whitepapers can become long-
lasting assets that raise awareness, generate
new leads and establish your company as a
thought leader in your market. But poorly
executed white papers can be colossal time
and money sinks, ignored by your readers.
Nearly 1/3 of the white papers on the
World Bank’s site have never even
been downloaded.2
How can you ensure that the investment you
make into your whitepapers pays off? Read
on…
1. 2013 B2B Content Preferences Survey, Demand Gen Report.
2. Which World Bank reports are widely read?, The World Bank. April 2014.
1. 2013 B2B Content Preferences Survey, Demand Gen Report.
2. Which World Bank reports are widely read?,The World Bank. April 2014.
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3. A publication from
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes
First identify your customer’s problem, then target the words your customer uses to
search for the solution. It’s important to make the distinction between the problem and the
keywords your customer uses. Use these words in the title of your materials so your customer
will give you their name, email, etc. in exchange for accessing the white paper’s content.
When you align the message with what your customer is searching for, you’ll rank higher in
search results. This will guarantee your white paper will pop up in the search results and be
something theyre looking for. Remember: use the language people want to read about.
Here are some examples of how companies used the keywords their customers were
searching for in their titles. This works especially well if there are two similar phrases that
mean the same thing. A great example is “b2b” (searched for 201,000 times per month) vs.
“business to business” (only 14,800 monthly searches). The choice is clear, you would use
“b2b” in your title. In the next section, we’ll show you how to use Google’s Keyword Planner to
find out exactly which words your customers are searching for.
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The term “ROI” gets 201, 000 avg.
monthly searches.
The term “Content marketing” gets
40,500 avg. monthly searches.
The term “b2b” gets 201, 000 avg.
monthly searches.
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4. A publication from
Find the keywords your customer is
searching for most often
Now that you’ve identified the problem, use Google’s AdWord’s Keyword Planner to find out
exactly which words your customers are searching for and how many times per month those
words are typed into a google search.
Tip: Make sure you’re logged into AdWords to see all the features. You can sign up for an
account and not run any ads if you want to use the Keyword Planner for free.
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Click “Tools” > then “Keyword Planner”.
Once you’re in “Keyword Planner” > Click “Search for new keywords...”.

5. A publication from
Fill out the form and click “Get Ideas” at the bottom of the page.
Look at the “Avg. monthly searches” > Use the words with the highest number that still
matches your content. In this example it’s “b2b”.

6. A publication from
deal of time thinking about at Chartbeat. Consider the
audience flow on the right.
At each juncture, there’s a huge risk of audience drop-
off. Traditionally, web analytics have been quite good
at measuring steps 1 and 5—raw incoming traffic and
social sharing statistics—but user engagement and
their likelihood of returning hasn’t been measured
nearly as much.
what does engagement mean for your brand?
Readers who don’t e
opportunities—miss
with your content, an
remember your bran
seconds of Engaged
brand recall for the a
for those additional
engagement can ma
first-time visitors into
3 The more data, the better
If your white paper makes an impact on the first reader, it will likely be shared to others within
the organization. After you win over a champion at a company, they likely need to convince
skeptical colleagues (maybe even your own boss) that it’s worthwhile of their time and money.
Give your champion the ammunition needed to fight those battles for you, in the form of
facts and statistics that support why your solution will help them succeed. Cite specific facts
that will show your customer how you can solve their problem and why they will benefit from
your service.
Chartbeat is a web analytics company that helps customers figure out which is their most engaging
content. Showing positive correlation between brand recall and engaged time gives an easy justification
for how their product helps companies.
MyEmma (an email marketing company) uses this fact to show that creating email campaigns
to nurture leads will increase purchases for your business.
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7. A publication from
DOX is a venture-funded company sponsored by StartX, Stanford University’s
startup accelerator. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Say Hello mike<at>usedox.com
About DOX
4 Use photos & infographics like content
In the age of technology, attention spans are shorter than ever. Jakob Nielson reports that a
user stays on a website for less than 1 min. This means you need to make sure your stats, facts
and ammunition grab your users attention. According to 3M Corp., our brains process images
60,000 times faster than text so try to use at least one meaningful graphic on each page. Keep
readers engaged by using data and imagery to tell the story.
You can use something as simple as Microsoft Excel to generate a graph or professional
services like Visual.ly or Picktochart generate high quality content. Here is a good example
of how to balance graphics and text content in an engaging manner.
Introduction to the U.S.
Public Company Financial
Information Repository
8
This query takes 4.6 seconds to execute, which is absolutely acceptable for such an analysis. The reasons for this
exceptional performance lie in the choice of the underlying technology: from the 28.io unified information access
platform to the MongoDB NoSQL data store.
Feature #4: Bring Your Own Filings
SECXBRL.info builds upon the 28.io platform and the generic semantic business reporting architecture and customizes
it by (1) populating the XBRL data store with the SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings and (2) defining an SEC profile. It
was specifically designed with extensibility in mind. This extensibility can go into two directions: (1) to include user-
specific non-public filings and (2) to be used for non-SEC data sets. Users will be able to bring their own filings using
the SEC profile, which will be visible only to them and which they can then analyze by themselves or compare with the
public filing data set. It is also possible to create a whole new XBRL profile by replacing the SEC specific configuration
with another XBRL-compliant one, i.e. FDIC, IFRS, FinRep, CoRep, or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
reporting. The effort to develop a new XBRL profile is small compared to all the functionality that has already been
put in place to implement a generic XBRL analytics platform.
Two Ways to Use the Repository - and Any
Way in Between
The SECXBRL.info US Public Company Financial Information Repository has been built as a specific implementation
of a more generic business reporting platform.
introduction to business bloggingintroduction to business blogging
www.Hubspot.com www.Hubspot.com
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the facts speak for themselves. marketing data clearly shows that blogging is a critical piece of the inbound marketing
methodology and directly correlates to better business results.
but merely blogging won’t dramatically transform your marketing. Your blog has to be well-optimized and promoted, and,
most of all, rich with content. Frequency of blogging plays an important role in this equation, too. In fact, our research “Lead
Generation Lessons From 4,000 businesses” shows that companies who blog 20 or more times in a month see the most
return in traffic and leads.
A blog is a long-term marketing asset that will bring traffic and leads to your business. It introduces you as a thought
leader in your space and allows you to earn people’s trust. In this ebook we will walk you step-by-step through the blogging
fundamentals and show you how to start reaping the benefits of this marketing channel.
Nearly 40% of us companies use
blogs for marketing purposes.
companies that blog have 55% more
website visitors.
B2C companies that blog get 88% more
leads/month than those who don’t.
B2B companies that blog get 67% more
leads/month than those who don’t.
Hubspot does a great job of calling out stats right away.
This keeps your reading wanting to know more.
Steer clear of traditional academic journal style of layout. Not
only is it boring, but engagement will drop and the users will be
less likely to return to your site.
Use supporting text to
help your argument. This
is where you can explain
how your solution works
in more detail.
Images make the
page easier to scan
and break up text.
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