A professional white paper writer knows the copywriting techniques that will engage your audience and ultimately convert them into taking action.
To find out more read: 3 things a white paper writer does to elevate your copy
Historically, white papers were reserved for a technical ‘deep-dive’, but over the last 10-years I’ve seen the term used more widely to encompass:
🧁Repurposing events into long-form content
🧁How-to-style guides that focus on the non-technical elements of business transformation
🧁Reports on the latest industry trends
🧁Use cases for a new technology innovation
🧁Publishing commissioned research or insights gleamed from your SaaS offering
So what makes a great professional white paper writer?
A professional white paper writer finds the details that matter
“As specialists in digital transformation, we needed a copywriter who could grasp the intricacies of our services and effectively communicate them to diverse audiences. From the very beginning, Alice has demonstrated an incredible ability to comprehend our unique value propositions and tailor the messaging accordingly.”
Management consultancy, S&S, has truly embraced the teaching of Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes’. It has built a dedicated community of change agents, who regularly come together face-to-face to discuss topics related to successful transformation. These are individuals with decades of experience, working on the biggest and most complex projects – true subject matter experts.
By repurposing these events into white papers, S&S creates new ways to deliver value to its audience.
Here, the professional white paper writer will distil the insights shared into a handful of key themes, back up individual opinions with credible third-party research, and share real examples to bring the content to life.
A professional white paper writer adds substance to ideas
“During this project Alice was able to bring in her experience of teacher wellbeing alongside her copywriting skills. She undertook a great amount of research for the project and put together drafts ahead of scheduled deadlines. She adapted the work based on feedback and the finished product is something that will be a valuable resource to our teaching community.”
BCS: The Chartered Institute for IT, supports IT professionals to raise standards of competence and conduct across the industry. As part of its offering, it has established dedicated communities, like Computing at School, to share specialist sector knowledge.
Often, this requires syndicating content from across the industry and passing it through a specific ‘lens’, to ensure the information shared is useful, relevant, and timely.
Here, the professional white paper writer will perform extensive research to investigate a topic from multiple angles. Where possible, subject matter experts are interviewed so the content benefits from an understanding of real-life skills, knowledge and experience. And the white paper writer will format the content so it includes a mix of deep learning and practical tips, which the reader can take away and use today.
A professional white paper writer makes it personal
“Alice writes engaging thought-leadership content, based on our brief but also substantial research, that successfully attracts people to our brand. After helping us develop the tone-of-voice guidelines for our brand, Alice has authored a range of popular guides and reports for us, as well as ghost-written pieces published in national press.”
Prior to being acquired, Exonar positioned itself as a challenger brand, which forced organisations to open their eyes to the value and risks that lay hidden within their vast data estates through data discovery technology.
At the time, GDPR was relatively new, so data was the hot topic of conversation within every organisation – to the point people were feeling fatigue.
Here, the professional white paper writer has to find engaging ways to talk about the technology to cut through the noise (and boredom!). When a company is so passionate about what it does, it’s easy to capture that enthusiasm in the tone of voice. Rather than using fear to hook people in, the writer will pitch a different angle – perhaps posing a question to make people think or highlighting the opportunities the unknown presents.
Need some help?
I’ve been a professional white paper writer for 20(ish) years, so have a lot of experience of taking your ideas and transforming them into content that engages and converts you audience.
If you have an event coming up, are planning a ‘hero’ piece to create a marketing campaign around, or want to share some true thought leadership content with your audience, send me a message and let’s talk about your project.
Email: hello@alicehollis.co.uk