Turn White Papers into Articles

"A guest editorial completes the story started in the white paper."

One of best reasons to write white papers is that you can turn them into magazine articles for print and the web. But how exactly does that work? In particular, how do you use the same paper to support multiple topics that editors accept and that your sales prospects find interesting?

The answers are important. Each new topic is a different line of attack into the prospect’s consciousness. Each new topic is also a fresh pretext for editorial coverage. It’s a bigger return on the investment you’ve already made in the original white paper.

There are multiple ways to do this -- too many to go into here. But one of the most compelling ways is the guest editorial. They’re short and they’re provocative. So by definition they’re intended to create a response, which, after all, is the purpose of any marketing campaign. They also boil down your sales pitch into its most essential elements.

But editors don’t like sales pitches. And even if they did, white papers aren’t written that way. They’re also not written like guest editorials -- which advocate a position on an important industry issue. And that position can’t be “buy more of my stuff.” It does, however, take a position in favor of a world in which your stuff is highly relevant.

White papers are different — they explain the benefits of a business strategy or a technology or (better yet) they connect the dots between the two. In a sense, a guest editorial completes the story started in the white paper. It states the inevitable conclusion (and takes the position) that the world should embrace these benefits. “Embrace the benefits” is the topic of the guest editorial -- not why the strategy or technology is great (which is the white paper’s topic).

“Embrace the benefits” sounds pretty much like a sales pitch -- and it functions as one. The reason editors accept it is because the benefits flow from the technology or strategy. Your stuff is merely a proof point.

In this white paper example, the technology is robust time and frequency synchronization. (Defining "robust" is what the white paper is all about.) The benefits that flow from that technology are single frequency networks. In the related example, the guest editorial states the logical conclusion that now “single frequency networks are ready for prime time.” The proof point is the vendor’s products.

You can keep doing this for as many topics as you want. And guest editorials are just one way to “articlize” a white paper. There are also technical articles, tutorials, business features, and other types — as well as hybrids like my perennial favorite, “use the best tool for the job.” It’s fun and it stretches your marketing dollars.