6 Tips to Make Your White Paper Interesting

So many people without an original thought in their head re-hash other people's thoughts and think this is enough to create 'thought leadership'. Not surprisingly, many white papers turn out to be ineffably dull.

At least The White Paper Pundit is doing something about it.

In 5 Ways to Create a more Engaging Introduction (http://www.whitepapercompany.com/blog/?p=4638), he returns PR and marketeers to the basics of good journalism and writing: remember to engage the reader.

The tips are familiar to most journalists and editors.

They include:

1) creating compelling headlines,

2) recruiting authoritative sources to back up your position, and

3) relate the heading to that expert endorsement.

4) use graphics to underline your point - and get your key message to those that skim, rather than read. And the more visuals that do that, the merrier.

5) Plus a highlighted sign off that encapsulates your key message.

6) I'd add using sub-headings and captions to echo the key points, but that's probably implicit in the earlier points.

As ever in communications, it's a case of picking one line through a story and making everything else serve that line. Broadcasters do that all the time, even when they show two opposing sides of a question.

You will have spotted that I've just done a re-hash with a little extra content from my own editing experience. But hey - this is a blog, aiming to pass on thoughts from the coalface rather than any pretensions of 'thought leadership'.

I'll save that for the white paper...