How To Write A White Paper That Doesn’t Suck

  • 1 min read

Your White Papers are a marketing asset that is meant to build trust and generate leads. Your web visitors provide you with their contact details and in return they receive valuable information. Someone is offering you a relationship of trust, they are providing to you information about themselves and in return have an expectation: a quality White Paper that informs. If you fail to deliver, you are breaking the initial bonds of trust, which may not be reparable damage to the potential relationship.


In order to write a great White Paper you need to have three pieces of knowledge/skill:

  1. Product Knowledge
  2. Industry Knowledge
  3. Writing Skills

Product knowledge

You’ve got to know your product, at least enough to understand its’ use cases in various industries. You’ve got to be able to tie your product back to your White Paper topic and do it subtly near the end of the white paper and (sometimes) in your opening paragraph.

Industry knowledge

In order to understand how your product is different from others on the market you need to have industry and competitive knowledge. There is only one thing worse to me from a marketing standpoint (the worst to come) than a White Paper where I could replace the vendor’s name with any other vendor’s name and still have a perfectly relevant White Paper.

Writing skills

There is nothing worse than a White Paper that was written by someone who lacks basic writing skills. If you can’t write, go take a class, every community college has basic writing courses that can help you get your skills up to par.

Your white paper

Make sure your White Paper doesn’t suck and it can be a treasure trove of new leads for your business. If it isn’t up to snuff, it’ll break the bonds of trust before they’re even formed with your prospects.

Author:

Nick Inglis is the Founder/CEO of LeftGen Information Management Group (InformedIM, SolveIM, ClearIM & AgentIM), an expert on enterprise software, and is the author of the AIIM SharePoint Governance Toolkit. Nick has worked with companies as diverse as Ernst & Young, Shell and Canon. Nick is a SharePointM, ECMs, E20m, & IMCP. Nick is a keynote speaker on the topics of SharePoint, Information Management and Collaborative Technologies.

Picture of Nick Inglis

Nick Inglis

Nick Inglis is a Founding Partner at Optismo and Co-Founder of The Information Governance Conference. Nick is a noted expert on enterprise software and is the author of the AIIM SharePoint Governance Toolkit. Nick has traveled the world teaching Fortune 500 Companies, Governments, Organizations, and is a go to keynote speaker for conferences and events. He has worked with companies as diverse as Ernst & Young, Shell and Canon. Nick is a noted keynote speaker on the topics of SharePoint, Information Management and Collaboration. He is an AIIM SharePoint Master, AIIM Enterprise 2.0 Master, AIIM Enterprise Content Management Specialist, Inbound Marketing Certified Professional. With all of this, it is his highest honor in being the proud father of Conor Atom Inglis. Connect with Nick at http://www.nickinglis.com.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

Greif and Gleason’s 1980 research on how children learn politeness routines found that young children almost never say “please” or “thank you” spontaneously, they say it because a parent prompts them with “what do you say?” dozens of times a week, meaning the reflex adults later display without thinking twice was built through years of someone else’s prompting long before it became automatic.

Greif and Gleason’s 1980 research on how children learn politeness routines found that young children almost never say “please” or “thank you” spontaneously, they say it because a parent prompts them with “what do you say?” dozens of times a week, meaning the reflex adults later display without thinking twice was built through years of someone else’s prompting long before it became automatic.

Global English Editing
Still Performing for Ghosts: On the Masks We Keep Wearing for Tribes That No Longer Exist

Still Performing for Ghosts: On the Masks We Keep Wearing for Tribes That No Longer Exist

The Vessel
AI answer boxes are reportedly wiping out a majority of organic search traffic for some blog categories in 2026 — while others have barely lost a visitor, and the split comes down to one thing

AI answer boxes are reportedly wiping out a majority of organic search traffic for some blog categories in 2026 — while others have barely lost a visitor, and the split comes down to one thing

The Blog Herald
Many adult children remember watching a father work sixty-hour weeks for decades so the family could have what he never did, then watched him die in his sixties without ever prioritizing his own happiness, and now see that same pattern quietly repeating in their own lives, under a different name.

Many adult children remember watching a father work sixty-hour weeks for decades so the family could have what he never did, then watched him die in his sixties without ever prioritizing his own happiness, and now see that same pattern quietly repeating in their own lives, under a different name.

Global English Editing
Eye tracking research on how people actually read web pages found that most visitors scan in a rough F shaped pattern down the left side of the screen, which is why professional editors front load the real information instead of slowly building up to it

Eye tracking research on how people actually read web pages found that most visitors scan in a rough F shaped pattern down the left side of the screen, which is why professional editors front load the real information instead of slowly building up to it

The Blog Herald
Harvard researchers had 166 undergraduates rate their own pets on qualities like thoughtful, considerate and sympathetic, and the students who felt most chronically disconnected from other people scored their pets meaningfully higher on exactly those three traits, and no others.

Harvard researchers had 166 undergraduates rate their own pets on qualities like thoughtful, considerate and sympathetic, and the students who felt most chronically disconnected from other people scored their pets meaningfully higher on exactly those three traits, and no others.

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore