Appeal to Different Learning Styles with White Papers

Different people absorb different information in different ways. Some people are highly visual and absorb information through the written word. Some people do better aurally.  

Until recently, marketers used different tactics to reach people with different learning styles. They’d create a white paper for those who prefer to learn by reading, a podcast for those who learn best by listening, or a webinar for those who prefer multimedia and graphics. 

Now, there’s an emerging trend where companies are seeking to address different learning styles in the same piece of marketing collateral by including multiple types of media, such as more graphics, podcasts and multimedia.   

More Graphics

One trend is to make white papers more visually appealing. Jonathan Kanter refers to this as “White Paper 2.0.” The idea is to move white papers away from their traditional boring, term-paper-like presentation to include more visual elements and graphics. The idea is to have interesting information “tidbits” that readers can scan, and that will draw them into the text. Even if readers don’t read the entire text, they will gain valuable information.

Examples of these visual elements include:

• Pull quotes—a sentence or so of interesting text pulled from the document.
• Quotes—these might be quotes from a customer, company representative, or industry analyst that relates to or expands on a theme in the document, but may not be pulled word for word from it.
• Data—You can highlight information that provides data from actual studies illustrating a trend discussed in the main text. For example, in a paper on current challenges in the logistics industry, the paper itself spoke about how new regulations could create a driver shortage while the graphical information provided actual statistics supporting that argument.
• Graphs—You might include charts or graphs that illustrate a point that you make in your text.
• Tables—In one case, a paper spoke about different types of situations where customers could benefit from using the vendor’s software. We included a table that summarized how three different scenarios would play out step-by-step with the vendors’ software compared to how they would have played out without it.
• Slides—often people will pull existing slides from presentations and include them in white papers.
• Illustrations of processes—often graphics will be used to illustrate steps in business processes and how an application can simplify those processes.

Multimedia and More

Another trend, documented in the Eccolo Media 2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report is to include links to video, podcasts, webinars or other related multimedia presentations that relate to the topic within an electronic version of the paper. These techniques are proving to be highly effective: 93% of respondents to the Eccolo survey clicked through to these files; and 80% viewed them either “very positively” or “positively.”

So as you develop white papers, think not only of the content, but how you can use visual, audio and multimedia elements to appeal to different types of users and improve the overall effectiveness of your paper. 

How have you used new media to improve your white papers?

Comments

[Magnus Mahony]

Those are actually better ideas. As the trend grows, the learning styles of people also develop and change. Those visual elements can prevent the boredom that people feel while learning. Everyone should take note of those and apply them in any teaching practice that they do.

[Moncler Billig]

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[Belstaff Jacket]

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