Plan for White Paper Success

Developing a white paper is a massive undertaking. It involves gathering tremendous amounts of background about customer challenges and industry trends, interviewing content experts about the vendor’s solutions, and then weaving all of this information into a coherent story that compels potential customers to investigate further. With all of the information required, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Creating an outline can help you stay in control of the white paper-development process. 

How does it work?

An outline serves as a starting point.

I start with a high level “30,000 foot” outline that describes the direction the paper needs to take. This outline, which consists simply of a few bullet points, serves as a guide for the type of information that needs to be gathered during the research phase.

For example, a recent high level outline for a project on tape consolidation hardware included the following:   

• Business problem—the need to reduce costs
• Why that’s moving companies toward virtualization and consolidation in general
• Tie in tape consolidation
• Describe cases where tape consolidation provides value
• Detail the ROI of tape consolidation

It keeps the project on track.

A high level outline—approved by all stakeholders—will help keep the project from derailing midstream. For example, if you send the high-level outline to content experts involved in the project before an interview, you can help them prepare and keep them from going off on tangents.   

It serves as a checkpoint.

Once the bulk of the research is completed, you can create a detailed outline. This outline can serve as a checkpoint mid-project to make sure you’re in sync with the writer on the direction the paper is taking and that it includes all the major points required. The benefit of using an outline rather than a rough draft is that reviewers often get hung up on word usage and grammar at an early stage when they really need to make sure the paper captures the big picture. An outline mid-project leads people to look at what’s important.

To recap, if you want to be sure your white paper project stays on track from beginning to end, create an outline.

How have you used outlines?