But unlike marketing a book, you don’t have to market your white paper for months before you publish. If you start your marketing push a week or two before you plan to publish, you should have plenty of time to generate excitement and prepare to engage your readers.
The tips below will help you prepare for the big launch:

1. Have a distribution plan at the ready

Before you launch a white paper, you need to have a plan. You shouldn’t just publish on a random day when it’s ready. You need to make a plan and set a publish date ahead of time and stick to it.

Have your white paper ready at least a week or two in advance. Make sure it is proofread, edited, reviewed, designed, etc. This will ensure that when the day comes you won’t encounter any problems. You won’t need to postpone the publishing date, clean up any errors or oversights, or go through the stress of publishing your paper in a last-minute rush.

2. Create a landing page

Don’t wait for the white paper to publish to go live with your landing page. Rather, it’s good to publish your landing page about two weeks ahead of time. The aim of the landing page is to get the reader to provide contact details. It should be short and persuasive. This study by Website Magazine shows that 80 percent of the visitors to a blog are new visits, while only 20 percent are repeat visits. Which means that most of the people who visit your blog on a certain day will probably never visit it again, and they might never find or read your white paper. But if you publish your white paper landing page in advance and collect email addresses, you will make sure that your white paper gets read by more people.

The call to action for the pre-landing page should let readers know that if they register with their names and email addresses, the white paper will be sent to them as soon as it’s published. Using this technique will help ensure that you have a list of readers waiting to read your paper.
After the paper has been published, you can tweak the call-to-action to reflect the immediate gratification: “Register below to download the white paper now!”

3. Write a series of relevant posts to support and promote the paper

Attract traffic to your blog in preparation for your white paper launch by writing a series of relevant blog posts.
At the end of each post, have a call-to-action that informs the reader about your upcoming white paper and links to the landing page. This will increase landing page traffic and encourage more people to sign up to read the white paper.

For example, if you’re publishing a white paper on inbound marketing, write a series of four to six posts over two weeks covering related topics. For example, you could include an article on tips for writing blog posts, or one on using social media to generate buzz and interest. Some of the content you use in your blog posts can even be excerpted from the white paper itself. At the end of every post, be sure to include a link to your landing page and a call-to-action that asks the reader to register.

4. Write guest posts

Writing guest posts on popular blogs can be another fantastic way to help launch a new white paper. If you want this strategy to work, make sure you target blogs that focus on the same niche or topic as the one your white paper covers.

For example, if your white paper is on a technology-related topic, you can write a post for submission to popular tech blogs such as VentureBeat, Webware, and GigaOM. Just as with posts on your own blog, don’t forget to include a call-to-action and a link to your white paper to increase your landing page traffic and drive registration.

You will want to try to get some of these posts to publish before your white paper goes live and some on the same day on which your white paper is published. This can help boost your readership both before and on your launch day. This may require you to work with blog editors well in advance of launch, to make sure they can accommodate your launch schedule, but doing so can be highly beneficial, especially if you have specific days in mind for your guest posts to be published.

Writing all these posts will also have some long-term benefits — it will help establish you and your company as an expert on the subject and convince readers that they will find your white paper to be helpful.

5. Get reviews

One amazing way to gain traction for your white paper is to get people to review it. If you know an expert on the subject or someone who has a popular blog in the same niche, make a preview copy available and ask them if they would write a review and post it on their blog. The association with an established expert or thought leader can significantly increase your white paper’s credibility.

If your connections are too busy to write a full review, ask them if they would be willing to read it and provide a short, four- or five-line blurb. You can add these short reviews to your landing page, which can help make it more persuasive and add additional legitimacy for your work.

6. Invite experts to guest post

Publishing guest posts on your blog, written by experts on the same subject as your white paper, can help drive a lot of relevant traffic to your website. Posts from experts can help attract users to your blog who might be interested in reading your white paper.

Experts usually have a following on the internet who read their newsletters, tweets, social bookmarks, etc. When they write posts on topics they specialize in for your blog and share them, their followers will visit your website, read the post and notice your white paper. If it interests them, they will download it or sign up to receive it when it’s available.

7. Email it to your subscribers

Having a long list of newsletter subscribers can make it really easy to launch a new white paper. You can inform your newsletter readers about your paper a week or two before you launch it. You can let them know about the pre-publishing landing page and ask them to sign up if they are interested.

You can also send them an email on the day your white paper gets published and ask them to download the paper by visiting the landing page. If you already have their contact details, you can send them a direct link to the PDF.

These are a few ways to optimize the launch of your new white paper. If you want to launch with a bang, getting hundreds of people to read your paper as soon as it’s published, make sure you follow these tips.

How do you launch new white papers? Have you got any tips you would like to share? Please leave your comments below.

Below are six of the most common mistakes content marketers make when promoting their white papers, and some simple ways to counter them:

Mistake #1: Not creating a proper landing page

A white paper can be anywhere from a few pages long to dozens of pages in length, which can make reading them a daunting task for prospects who are not already familiar with the value and insight your business can provide. Quite often, white papers are placed in an obscure location, like the website’s resources page, or on a page that doesn’t have a way to highlight its value. Placing your white paper on its own dedicated page, in the context of the benefits it provides the reader, can help to convince potential readers that downloading and reading your insight will be worth their time.

There are a few core components every white paper landing page should feature:

• A short, persuasive letter that lets the reader know what the white paper contains, and why they need to read it. This sales letter needs to have an attractive headline, and should be around 100 to 300 words long, so it’s quick and easy to read.
• A keyword density of 2 to 6 percent, so your white paper can be found through relevant consumer searches.
• Don’t forget to provide a link so viewers can download the white paper, or a form that they can fill out to request a copy.

Another important decision is whether to include ads on your landing page. The sole aim of your landing page should be to get visitors to download the white paper. When you include ads on your landing page, you risk distracting them from your landing page or, worse, chasing after the ad offers and not returning to download your content . So it’s best to get rid of all the ads if you want to optimize the your white paper conversions. (More tips to improve your white paper conversions can be found in this post by Rachel Foster.)

Mistake #2: Including company promotions in your white paper’s marketing material

Some people promote their white paper through landing pages, press releases, etc. But these marketing materials can’t do their job if they are poorly focused on the mission at hand (i.e., selling the white paper), or contain more information about the company, the brochure section of the white paper, and your other offerings than they do on educating consumers, building a trusting relationship, and turning them into leads.

People read white papers because they want to learn from others’ expertise and experience. If your promotional efforts focus on how your white paper provides vital insight and information, you will build the trust — trust that will make them want to learn more about your company and its products and services. So you see, by not selling, you actually create a more successful sales pitch for the value your business provides.

Marketing the education value of your white paper is all about sharing the benefits it provides with those who might read it. You want to let them know what they are going to learn, and how this information can help them reach their goals — such as improving their company’s performance, increasing profits, or producing better products. If you can demonstrate that reading your white paper can help them be better at something they want to be good at, it will motivate them to download and read it.

Mistake #3: Asking for too much personal information

There are two ways you can provide access to your white paper: by letting visitors download it directly through a link or by offering it in exchange for providing some personal information (such as their contact information, their company name, their job function, etc). It’s always good to get as much information as possible on the prospects that download your white papers; but if you ask for too many details up front, or consume too much of their time filling out forms, you risk losing their interest — and any ability to connect with them in the future.

• If you want to encourage downloads, the information you require should be as minimal as possible. In the beginning, just their name and the email address where the white paper should be sent should be more than enough.
• Once they’ve read your white paper and have grown to trust your expertise, the connection you’ve forged should provide you with additional opportunities to gather more information from them directly.

Mistake #4: Forgetting to make your white paper social media friendly  

There are over 800 million active users on facebook, 200 million users on Twitter, 100 million on Linkedin and 62 million users on Google+. These figures indicate a huge potential audience you can reach through social media outlets. Even if only a small percentage of these users are searching for good content to read, it still provides a tremendous opportunity for targeting and marketing your white paper.

But if you want your white papers to be shared regularly on social media, you need to make them social media friendly. The first step you can take is to add social sharing buttons at the top of your landing pages, to make it easy for people to “like” it on Facebook, retweet it on Twitter, or share it on LinkedIn.

This can be done by visiting the respective social media websites, copying the HTML code for the button, and posting it on the header of each page of the white paper. You can also add these buttons to your blog or other website pages by downloading and activating an appropriate plug-in, or go one step further by including them directly in your white paper documents. (You can learn more about how to add these buttons by reading this post.)

Once you’ve set up this functionality, readers only need to click on the button to share it on their social media profiles. There’s no need to go through the tedious process of opening the social site page, shortening the link to your white paper, writing a message, and then sharing it.

Another advantage of enabling social sharing is that it can add credibility to your content. When people see that a particular page has been shared multiple times, they are more likely to want to know what’s so special about it — which can drive them to check out your white paper landing page for themselves. 

Mistake #5: Not taking advantage of white paper distribution services

There are many distribution services available to help you host and promote your white papers, and they can offer some distinct advantages over self-distribution, such as:

• Access to an established audience of people who want to read white papers
• Experience with successful white paper promotion techniques
• Newsletters and social media channels they can use to increase the reach of your content
• Many of these services are available for free and have made the process easy for content creators at any experience level.

If you want your white paper to get more exposure, it’s best to place it on a few distribution services at once, and see which ones perform best for you. Depending on the topic of your white paper, its intended audience, and your ultimate goals, you can start with those that specialize in targeting your niche business area, or you can cast a wider net by going with services that market to a larger range of audience interests. A few good white paper distribution services are CIO White Papers, Information Week, and Bit Pipe.

How do you promote your white papers? Are there any tricks and techniques you would like to share with us? Please leave your comments below.

Some say the value of the B2B white paper is slowly eroding under the weight of its success. White papers were once the simple, functional, unfussy marketing tactic of B2B. These days, so many businesses are pushing out poorly conceived and unprofessionally written white papers that some marketers are questioning the format itself.

Recent research says otherwise. The B2B Content Marketing 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report revealed that 50 percent of marketers find white papers valuable. If you’re in technology, they’re even more important. According to the Eccolo Media 2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report, 83 percent of technology buyers say “white papers were moderately to extremely influential in helping them make their final purchase decision.”

So, how can you create white papers that excite and influence your target audience? 

One answer: Use technology to reimagine the classic white paper. Let’s explore two trends that are changing the way we think about this marketing tool.

Interactive white papers

Today’s buyers spend more time conducting their own research online before they contact a sales representative. They rely on content to gather information, gain corporate buy-in and make purchasing decisions. That’s why it’s vital to provide your prospects with information that addresses their concerns and encourages them to take the next step in the sales cycle.

Interactive white papers are emerging as a way for you to engage your audience, provide highly relevant content and stand out from your competition.

Here’s how they work …

A website visitor completes a form to request a white paper. The form may contain three to six questions about the visitor’s industry and role—not very different from the questions someone would answer to download a traditional white paper. Based on the visitor’s responses, however, the user will receive a customized white paper that focuses on his or her interests and concerns. For example, a white paper on B2B content marketing will contain different sections depending on whether the reader is the owner of a small business or a marketing director for a large corporation.

You can think of interactive white papers as the marketing version of “choose your own adventure,” where readers are in control of the content they want to explore.

“White papers are still the fuel that fires the marketing campaign,” says Tom Pisello, chairman and founder of Alinean, a company that develops interactive white papers. “However, many tend to be one-size-fits-all and too long. By adding interactivity, white papers can be shorter, more relevant and deliver the right content for their readers’ needs.”

Early adopters of interactive white papers report impressive results.

According to Alinean, its first campaigns have attracted 350 percent more prospects to a website and generated 120 percent more qualified leads than traditional white papers.

Ready to get started? Here are the top three things to consider when you develop an interactive white paper:

1. As with any project, start by defining your goals. Do you want to attract more leads? Support prospects already in your sales funnel? Build your company as an expert in a particular area? Having clarity about what you’re trying to accomplish will inform the level of detail and customization you want to provide.
2. Define the areas of customization you would like to achieve. Consider this from your audience’s perspective. What particular types of customization would be most valuable to your audience? For example, would your prospects prefer to be defined by company size? Role? Industry? All three? What sections of the white paper will you customize for each of these dimensions?
3.  Scope out your project. Providing interactivity may mean that your overall scope of work is larger. Prepare yourself by creating a content storyboard for your “choose-your-own-adventure” white paper. The storyboard will likely have some sections shared among all readers and others that offer detours to provide more customized, relevant content.

Interactive white papers are still in their infancy, as marketers develop new ways to use them and maximize their ROI. In the future, they will include more multi-media, social functions and peer-support options.

Video white papers

Since white papers often address complex topics, adding video can make your messages easier to digest. Here’s how a video white paper works:  

Viewers complete a short form embedded in the media player to access the video. Then, they can watch the video all the way through or jump to the most relevant sections. Links along the bottom of the player allow viewers to download a text version of the white paper, submit a question, complete a survey or share the content with their friends.

“A huge benefit of online video is the ability to track your results,” says Ann Roskey, vice president marketing and audience development, KIT digital, a provider of end-to-end video technology services. “You can see how long people watched and what segments they watched. This tells you how well you’re engaging your audience. You can’t get access to this information with a text-based white paper.”

Biomni, one of KIT digital’s clients, tracked the results of its video white paper and learned that the average viewer watched 81 percent of the content, and 76 percent of the viewers downloaded the text version of the white paper. These results suggest that video can engage your audience for longer periods, allowing them to learn more about your product or service than they would from a traditional white paper.

Video white papers are still a new concept, with marketers just starting to explore their possibilities.

“We’re always envisioning something new and exciting to do with the technology,” says Ginger Shimp, marketing director, SME marketing, SAP America Inc. “For example, we put together an interactive video for industries with 19 different segments. Branching technology guides prospects through a decision tree where they can explore solutions for either their own industry or a related one. We find that using video makes our message more entertaining and thus lowers the barrier to engage with SAP. The use of video is also more compelling and helps us capture our prospects’ attention.” 

Before I get to the surprise, let’s talk a little about how we can make content marketing real in our organizations.

At this point, you’re no doubt convinced of the “why” of content marketing; it’s now a question of “how”: How do we make it a reality in our organization? We know that the ideas in content marketing aren’t new — we’ve all been doing it for years, in varying ways. But really, there’s been no standardized way to create repeatable, manageable, and measurable processes to manage content marketing.

As we’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the world on creating content marketing strategies, we’ve see some of the same things coming up again and again, including certain challenges, tools, solutions, and processes that just simply work. And, they are reflected in the themes that we see repeated throughout the amazing content from CMI contributors. The big issues to address all seem to boil down to a great Top-10 list…

10. How do we build the business case?

Remember: A business case is not ROI; ROI is a goal that the business case addresses. Sometimes, before we can build a business case in our organization, we have to build a case for innovation itself, to prepare for this new way of thinking. As I mentioned, content marketing itself isn’t new; but implementing it as a regular practice in a company very often is an unfamiliar prospect that requires some guidance. You can find some of that guidance in Tom Pisello’s article, Is Your Content Marketing Relevant to Buyers, or Arnie Kuenn’s Developing Your Content Marketing Mindset.

9. Who are our buyer personas?

We need a process for identifying our buyers — the people who will be passionate subscribers to our brand — and mapping them to a content marketing strategy that will support our business case. I recommend Barbara Gago’s 4 Questions about Buyer Personas to get you started on this task.

8. What are our pillars of content?

What’s our story really about? Whether it’s one blog, a small white paper program, or a holistically integrated strategy, we have to tell a complete story. I discuss how to do this in my recent piece on What Content Marketing Is Really About.

7. What channels do we use?

Should we use print? Do we have a social media strategy? How do we create a channel strategy that makes sense and can be repeated? If you are looking for answers to these questions, take a look at Joe Chernov’s excellent post on how Content Marketing Is a Force Multiplier.

6. What workflow should we use, and how do I set up an editorial calendar?

How do we align content on all the available channels into a calendar and other process tools? Take a look at Kathy Hanbury’s wonderful post on creating a Content Marketing Toolkit or Michele Linn’s post on How to Put Together an Editorial Calendar for some ideas.

5. What tools do we need?

Of course, a great process is facilitated and made easier with the tools we use. From content management to lead generation to social media, choosing the right tool can mean the difference between struggle and success. My post on How to Choose a CMS for Content Marketing offers just one example of this.

4. How do we get our choir to sing?

It’s a safe bet that any given organization might not necessarily be filled with skilled writers and other content producers. We need to align our best content resources so we know when and where we might need to outsource. A number of CMI contributors tackled this issue in the great roundup post, How to Hire the Right Consultant.

3. What is the best way to listen?

Of course, one of the biggest changes in our strategies is that it’s not just content we’re publishing — it’s conversation. And, as part of any good conversation, we need to listen first — to both the conversations we’re generating and those happening outside of our organizations. Joe Pulizzi’s post on setting up and managing Listening Posts provides an excellent discussion on how to make this happen.

2. How do we measure success?

Perhaps the most popular topic in content marketing is how to effectively create a measurement process that can justify the time and effort it takes. Tom Pisello’s post on How to Calculate the ROI of Social Media Marketing has some great measurement tips that can help.

1. How do we put it all together?

Here’s where I get to the surprise that Joe and I have for ya’ll:

We are very proud to announce that we’ve spent the last six months taking all of the experience we have gained over the last few years of working with REAL clients with REAL content marketing challenges and have distilled it into what we think can be your owner’s manual for content marketing.

Our new book, Managing Content Marketing – The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand, is designed to tell marketers exactly how to put content marketing to work with a structured, repeatable process. In fact, it covers the processes of the Top-10 list that you just read.

As Jeffrey Hayzlett, the former CMO of Kodak and author of the bestselling book, The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing, said in his very kind forward:

“What gets me fired up about this book is that these guys have it so right. Their book provides the vital steps required to navigate this new path called content marketing.”

You can certainly learn more about the book here. But we’re very proud to announce that, due to the herculean efforts of Newt Barrett and the editing team at CMI Books, we will have a limited supply of preview copies for sale at Content Marketing World, and online sales will follow very shortly in mid-September.

At Content Marketing World, we’ll have four full days of talking content marketing. We’ll learn so much about how the power of story can work for our business. The process is new. We need to be okay with that. The budget allotted for new content creation is going to become a significant part of our “new media” budget. And subject matter experts in our organizations are going to have new responsibilities. It’s a transformative new process, and it won’t happen overnight. But it can, and should, happen.

Get Content Get Customers, showed us the light, but there’s been no book to show us the way.

Until now.

See you in Cleveland.

• Meets the needs of sales and marketing
• Is compelling
• Can be created quickly
• Can be created cost-effectively
• Supports the sales cycle

We covered a lot of ground in our discussion (which you can listen to or view in its entirety). But I’ve put together some of the main tips and takeaways here as a summary.

Understand your audience

Whether you create content to raise awareness of your products and services, establish thought leadership, increase your search rankings, feed your social media engine, or nurture your leads, remember that your ultimate goal is to generate sales leads. It’s a point many marketers lose sight of.

TO DO: Start by analyzing your sales funnel:

• What sales objections and questions do you typically encounter for each stage of the sales funnel?  
• Who are you speaking to if you had to categorize them by persona?
• Do you have content that addresses their objections or their questions for every stage?

A big portion of the content will be used by the sales reps and not just for your marketing efforts. So the key steps here are:

1. Determine your personas.
2. Understand your buying cycles.
3. Map your content to your funnel.
4. Fill any gaps you find with new and relevant content.

Create alignment with sales

Marketing and sales may not qualify leads the same way. You need to have a handle on the differences so you can create content that addresses the needs of both marketing and sales.

TO DO:

1. Sit down with your senior sales leadership and perhaps a top individual performer to discuss what signs they look for in a lead at every stage of the sales cycle. Obvious signs may be job title or company size, but there may also be smaller signs — like specific customer pain points — that would equally qualify them.
2. Assign weighted values to each qualifier. You’ll soon learn what is important to the sales cycle, and you can then create content as well as calls to action that will help you determine if a prospect qualifies as a lead.

These factors should influence your content development and promotion efforts and will quickly get sales to buy in to your efforts.

Be prepared to repurpose your content

You need to balance the demands of your tight budget and the buyers’ needs to consume content in their own preferred channels and format.  Make your life easier and minimize the impact on your budge  by repurposing some of the content that you create to fit other platforms.

TO DO: Plan to repurpose key content. For instance, if you host a webinar and record it you can:

• Reproduce it as a podcast.
• Transcribe that podcast into a pseudo-white paper.
• Take some of the key points in the white paper and turn them into a blog post.
• Leverage some of your sound-bite worthy quotes from any of these assets for social media traffic generation.

Now you have at least four pieces of content from the one piece you spent time and money on to create. With all of the content you’ve just created, your website looks more impressive and credible, and your prospects have more options for consuming your content through their preferred channels.

Cross-promote whenever possible

In any business field, there is only so much that is new and content creation-worthy at a given time. Even the best writers can get writer’s block and find it hard to create new materials. You can overcome these issues by using content created by others to inspire your own content development efforts.

TO DO: Share content you find with others by using your own words and points of view to create more robust and interactive conversations with your audience. Some ideas:

• If you see a great video or read a great white paper, create a blog post that highlights what you learned from those materials or record a podcast that reviews key lessons from your own perspective. Always be sure to attribute the content to the original author or provide a link, if possible.
• Check out the associated discussion forums (including those on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) and comment on relevant articles and share your perspective, making sure to refer back to any supporting content you’ve created that can add value to the discussion.

Use technology to create efficiencies

There are many ways you can use technology to make your job easier and scale your time more efficiently. This is especially true when creating and promoting your content.

TO DO:

• If you have a Mac computer, you can use some of its free programs like iMovie, or GarageBand to create videos or podcasts  or to turn a video into a podcast and vice-versa.
• If you’re a PC user, free, open-source programs like Audacity work very well for creating podcasts.
• Don’t be afraid to use your webcam to generate YouTube quality content videos (just be sure to use good lighting and incorporate your points concisely).
• Rather than being a slave to your social media networks, tools like HootSuite can help you distribute your content-based promotions across multiple social platforms at all times of the day using its scheduling capabilities.

While these points summarize what Rob and I discussed, I want to add one more key point for consideration: Create a content calendar. For such a complex and important discipline as content marketing, it can be overwhelming to tackle the whole job in one piece. So after you have completed an analysis of your content needs, schedule each action you need to complete to reach your goal. You’ll find the process to be far less daunting and more affordable once you understand it doesn’t need to be done overnight.

But as any writer knows, sometimes “style” is hard to incorporate into your corporate messages.

A good content marketer must always be focused on telling a great story (we all know this — it’s why we visit the CMI blog) to get your company messages out to a broader audience. But let’s face it, some corporate marketing pieces can feel tired or even dull. You get so caught up in what statistics to include, where to distribute the piece, how to make it SEO-friendly, and how best to socialize it that you can end up feeling like a monotonous writing machine rather than a creative thinker. Blog entries can feel like chores, case studies and white papers can feel formulaic, and social discussions soon become stale or robotic.

Still, the best and most successful content is the kind with style and flavor; it has a little piece of your voice and passion in every fiber. So here are some ideas on how to ignite that style even on the darkest, non-inspiring days (yes, even Mondays).

Use a blog to talk about your products and your passions

If you adhere to an editorial calendar, you know it’s important to write something — anything — at least every day. This is why so many of us have blogs. But what do you do when you’ve written about all you can about… say… paper stock for one week? Easy. Take something that you love and incorporate it into your regular blog entries to give your readers a pleasant surprise (and your brain a break).

Take a bite out of this blog for example, by David Byrd of Broadvox: “SIP and Serve by a Foodie.” His latest article, “OMG Crab Cakes and Bing”, is a great example of finding a way to incorporate something you love from your personal life (in this case, cooking) with a discussion of your industry news, or even your company’s products or services.

Take a few minutes to think about what you read, watch, listen to or explore in your spare time, and consider how you can connect it to a weekly blog entry. Your creative side will thank you for it.

Think — and interact — outside “the cube”

I’m fortunate to work with some pretty cool (and smart) people, but some days I barely get up from my desk to even say hello to them in passing. I’m so nose-deep in my writing that I forget there’s an untapped creative resource just beyond my cube.

Here’s an idea: Think of a question and go around interviewing your colleagues to see how they would answer. You’ll find that by exploring different departments, you’ll get some unique insight you may not have considered from your marketing perspective. Jot down the answers, and you’ll have a week of blog entries and tons of discussion starters for your social sites.

Seriously, don’t take yourself too seriously

I loved this article by Heidi Cohen about diving into content marketing, especially Number 5: “Entertain people.” Some of the smartest, most “sticky” campaigns I’ve seen (like the hilarious Old Spice commercials) are the ones that don’t take themselves too seriously. Now, this is usually more common in a B2C environment than B2B, but regardless of what you sell — from the latest soft drink to the newest call center software — you still need to make a connection with the person you’re selling to so you can build trust.

If you add an element of fun or personality in your white paper, or you start your webinar with a joke, you”ll break down some of the company-to-consumer walls, which will make your company real, personable, and accessible to your audience. And the more at ease your audience feels with you, the more comfortable they’ll be investing in you over time. Plus, no one’s above having a good laugh now and then, right?

Use social media for what it’s good for: Socializing

If you’re using social media, that’s great. If you’re using it to just re-post your content, that’s not-so-great. Why? Because social media isn’t just a place to add link value or re-post your existing content; it’s a place to initiate conversations around your content. Think of your company website as the hub for your content.  It’s where it lives, and it’s a library for the volumes of great content you’ve written. Your social networking sites are where the content pieces really come alive (which includes your blog) and gives your readers a chance to engage with you in a two-way dialogue.

For every piece you re-post on your social site, take a few moments to generate  questions around it that will spark someone’s interest. Then, take another few moments and scour your social connections’ pages and LinkedIn groups and post content that’s relevant to them or respond to one of their posts. This extra step of proactive posting may be just the right thing to get a conversation going and encourage other people to do the same on your site with their content. The next thing you know you’ll be engaged in a healthy, interactive exchange of content that builds not only your linking power but also credibility in a broader community.

What are some ways you find inspiration or bring style to your content marketing initiatives? 

Even though content marketing has become standard in the marketing toolkit, resource centers are not as common as you might imagine. If you do not have a resources section or have not assessed your current offerings for a while, you may wonder why it’s worth the investment. A dedicated online resource center can really make a difference for your customers. Here’s why:

• It enables customers and prospects to easily find the information they seek.
• It encourages serendipitous discovery of content. When prospects look on your resource page for one product line or in a particular market segment, they may also notice content that addresses other questions they have.
• It increases “stickiness” of your website. Customers are likely to stay and browse when visiting a resource center, and they know where to return to find updated content.
• It helps spread your influence. When content is easy to find and interconnected, people are more likely to share your links and recommend your content to their colleagues and clients.

Here are three B2B companies that do a nice job with their resource centers. Review them as a guide to help you make improvements to your own resource center. At the end of the post, I’ve shared some suggestions for incorporating their strengths into your own resource centers.

Pegasystems

Pegasystems is a provider of business process management and customer relationship management software.
Their resource center home page features a list of documents and a search form.

Pros:

• Their resources link is easy to find in the site’s main top navigation bar, which is available across the site.
• Users can search by keyword, industry, topic, type of content, and type of document.
• Search results are sortable by date, document type, and popularity.
• Users have the ability to “like” documents.
• Blog posts are searchable from the resource center.
• The link to Pega’s blogs is easy to find above the top navigation bar, which is available across the site.
• Users can save content from their own libraries on the site to share or access later.
• They offer a separate community page with links to content such as forums, blogs, podcasts, and content related to the PegaWORLD conference.
• Their community page provides access to social media —Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, Xing, etc., — and the ability to sign up for RSS feeds or emails via their Follow Us link.

Cons:

• The resource center home page does not display all recent content; you must search and sort if you are looking for all new content in any format.
• The search bar is difficult to find, as it is located below the “Refine Your Results” navigation box.
• The results list does not display number of hits per article.
• The results list doesn’t prominently display the search term, though the search term remains visible in search bar.
• Users cannot search by the date the content was posted.
• Other than access to user forums, the community page is not optimized to provide content that is significantly different from what’s given on the resources page.

Motorola

Motorola is a provider of technology, products, and services that enable companies to stay connected.

Their resource library home page is a search form; no documents are visible.

Pros:

• Motorola’s resource library link is easy to find from above the top navigation bar, which is available across the site.
• Users can search by keyword, business needs, document types, industry solutions, or products and services.
• The results list displays search terms and number of hits per article.
• The search form includes an option to see popular searches.

Cons:

• Results in the document list usually contain only a title, without a description or date, so you have to dig to understand the results or to find the newest content.
• There’s no way to sort results in the document list.
• Users cannot search by the date the content was posted.
• Users cannot “like” or rate documents.
• There are only a limited number of document types (case study, white paper or brochure).
• Blog posts are not searchable, and there are no links to blogs or other social media sites from the resource library or navigation bars.

EMC

EMC is a provider of products and services that enable businesses to manage data and information.

Their resource library home page is a search form, so no actual documents are visible there.

Pros:

• The resource library link is easy to find from above the top navigation bar, which is available across the site.
• Users can search by keyword, resource type, language, solutions, product or service.
• The results list displays the search term and number of hits per article.
• There is a separate community page with easy to navigate tabs: blogs, forums, and social media (YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and FriendFeed), as well as the ability to sign up for RSS feeds.

Cons:

• There’s no way to sort results in document list.
• It’s not clear how often new content is posted.
• Users cannot search by the date the content was posted.
• There’s no ability to “like” or rate documents.
• Blog and social media content are not searchable via the resource library.
• There are no links to blogs or other social media sites from the resource library or navigation bar.

Each of these resource centers does several things quite well, but as you can see by the “cons” for each, there is room for improvement.

Key takeaways for B2B resource centers

Users have high expectations for internal search engines such as those used in resource centers. To keep them happy — and returning to your website — it is best to make it as easy as possible for them to find, download and share the valuable information you created. So providing direct links to social media sites and services is a strong benefit to include in your resource library.

Here’s a list of tips for a good resource center.
The anchor page

• Display recent and/or popular content to allow users to see some content without first having to do a search.
• Arrange navigation so the link to the resource center is available for every page, so users can find the page from anywhere on the site.

The search function

• Enable searches by keyword to allow users who know what they are seeking or know the subject that interests them to find information quickly.
• Enable searches by criteria like industry, product or content type to encourage browsing.
• Let users search by date to help them find recent content or content created at a specific time.
• Provide the ability to narrow results by a number of criteria to minimize frustration with a large number of results.

Viewing results

• Display the search term and number of hits clearly on the results page to help with navigation and enable users to better understand the results.
• Display the content title, a short description, and the date it was posted to clarify the results, enable scanning and improve users’ ability to select relevant content.
• Sort the list of results by criteria, including date and relevance, to enable users to narrow the results more easily.

Content to include

• House all content across services, industries, market sectors, and content types to make it easy to find any content you produce.
• Make social media and/or blog content searchable in the resource library to ensure a strong connection with other marketing efforts.
• Include links to social media and/or blog content to encourage other forms of engagement.
• Include the ability to “like” documents in order to promote social sharing.

Are there other features you think are must-haves for a B2B resource center? What are some nice-to-have features? What are the definite no-nos for a B2B resource center? Any what other B2B resource centers do you love? Let us know in the comments!

The Content Chasm is actually comprised of several types of gaps, each needing specific strategies and actions for resolution.

The capacity chasm

At its most basic, there is a lack of enough fresh, quality content. In order to generate leads and nurture them properly, new (or repurposed or curated) content must be continuously developed to attract and retain prospects’ attention.

The customization chasm

What’s useful and relevant (and, therefore, likely to be consumed) by one person, may be irrelevant and useless to another. So content must be customized to the target consumer group (or persona).
In B2B, this means that different versions of content must be developed for consumers who have different business roles and titles. For example, a CFO and a VP of Sales each have different questions that need to be answered and objections that need to be overcome, so the content you deliver should speak to them individually.

Also, someone making or influencing a buying decision for a complex, high-ticket B2B product or service will need different information throughout the different phases of the buying cycle. At the beginning of the cycle, they may be interested in company reputation and basic product functionality. As they get ready to make their buying decision, they might be more interested in integration issues and contract terms.

It’s helpful to develop a message map to identify what information each persona needs based on what  stage of the buying cycle they’re in. This post from Barbra Gago will give you step-by-step templates to map your B2B content.

The consumption chasm

As your prospects’ content habits evolve, you need to keep pace with how they want to consume your content. It’s typically the case that as new media formats become commonplace, traditional media and formats remain. Even as we add new media such as video podcasts and high-tech devices such as tablets, people still read books and listen to the radio. New media doesn’t replace old media – it extends the available options.

So what’s a marketer to do? Obviously you can’t and shouldn’t reformat every piece of content to fit every type of media and device, but you can make informed choices by studying your message maps and considering which formats best fit a specific piece of content. For example, video works well for telling success stories, while technical specs aimed at engineers may work best via text-based media.

The major trend, however, for content delivery is toward multimedia. Fat fiber optic pipes capable of transporting torrents of digitized audio, images, video, etc., are becoming the norm. And our devices are becoming more proficient at processing and displaying sights and sounds. Delivery concerns that once surrounded multimedia are fading away.

At the same time, busy executives (personas who most likely have the authority to make a buy decision) expect to be educated about complex products and services online. They no longer have the time or patience to read a 12-page white paper, so choosing to deliver multimedia experiences can help you package your information and marketing messages for quick, convenient consumption.

I think we’re going to be hearing much more about the Content Chasm over the next several months. Meanwhile, review your marketing content development and delivery processes by answering the following questions:

• Do you have resources in place to develop a steady stream of fresh, relevant and useful content?
• Are you creating, repurposing and curating content customized for the different personas who influence your buy decision and for the different stages of your buy cycle?
• Are you researching, testing and developing multimedia capabilities so that you can deliver persuasive content in a format that your prospects prefer?

How about you? What kind of Content Chasms are you experiencing? And how are you meeting the challenges?

Content leverage

Content leverage is using every  piece of content  in multiple ways to get the highest return on investment from each piece of content. Obviously, content is not valuable unless buyers are aware of it and are engaged with the material.  This requires marketers to deliver the content in new, interactive ways and channels. Borrowing from Newton’s first law, content in motion will tend to stay in motion and be more effective as a result.

Let’s track the life of a single blog article to bring these practices to life and show how a marketer can leverage content to its best use.

Developing content derivatives

An executive writes a compelling blog article based on new research from a survey of customers and prospects. The blog post explains how the research findings uncover an important buyer issue, validates the market need for the vendor’s solution, and highlights that solutions exist to address the issues identified in the research.

A research-focused post helps in the early stages of the buying cycle to inform  buyers that  solutions are available  to  make improvements.  In this scenario, marketers can develop content derivatives such as:

1) Research White Paper: The marketing team develops additional content based on the original blog post to create a white paper. However, keep in mind that research indicates buyers prefer shorter white papers; the recommended length is four to six pages.

2) Infographic: Research and best practices recommend converting content into an infographic to illustrate data that can be  quickly understood and enhance a call to action.  The elements of an infographic can be weaved into the white paper and other materials to make the data “come to life.”

3) PowerPoint: The presentation is an overview of the research findings on the market opportunity, a summary of the white paper and the executive’s best practice recommendations, which can be uploaded on Slideshare.

4) Live and On-Demand Webinar: The executive leverages the PowerPoint to present a live webinar, which is also recorded for on-demand playback.

5) Video and Podcast: The executive is interviewed in Q&A form to create a series of short and compelling videos and podcasts. Creating transcripts of each interview can provide additional content leverage.

To improve the connection and engagement of today’s busy buyers, more marketers are moving beyond traditional options to leverage interactive media such as:

1) Microsites: The marketing team develops and publishes a collection of related research and advice to a best practices microsite, providing buyers with a single resource to facilitate each step through the buyer’s journey.

2) eBook: The team  converts the key white paper content and PowerPoint into a visually compelling eBook, an interactive overview of the research, and key points  that an executive can quickly read  to understand main concepts and recommendations.

3) Mobile Content / Applications: The team converts the research into content optimized for mobile devices and creates a “Solution Finder” application to help users find the right solution  based on which piece of the research matches customers’  specific priorities / pain points.

4) Multi-media White Papers: The team enhances the white paper presentation with embedded video and podcast recordings, helping buyers feel more connected to the executive.

5) Interactive White Papers: Today’s buyers demand content be more relevant and concise. To deliver a personalized white paper, the marketing team should consider assembling and customizing the content for each buyer. This content customization can be developed on pivot points, which matches content to the buyer’s industry, location, size, role in buying cycles and pain points. The content is put into an interactive software application to survey the buyer on his profile. From there, a customized white paper is delivered with content precisely matching the buyer’s profile.

6) Interactive Diagnostic Assessments: Most buyers struggle to understand whether research issues are  relevant or applicable to them and whether addressing the issues should be priority.  The marketing team may consider a diagnostic assessment to gather and benchmark the prospect’s opportunities against industry peers and leaders. This can illustrate to buyers the competitive costs of maintaining the status quo versus the competitive advantages of adopting new solutions that can address priority issues.

7) Benefit Calculator: Without a business case, today’s economic-focused buyers are hard pressed to allocate budget and pull the trigger on an investment. The marketing team can tap the research to create a customized, interactive benefits calculator that will quantify potential benefits for prospects.

Putting the content in motion

The traditional ways to connect and engage buyers with valuable decision-support content is evolving to incorporate more channels and social sharing.

Traditional channels use promotions, excerpts, and links to the content in order to increase awareness and engage buyers.

Some of the traditional channels that the marketing team leverages to promote content include:

1) Website(s): Promote and link to the content from the main company website and microsites, not forgetting to promote the content via portals in support of sales / channel enablement.

2) eNewsletters: Include excerpts and links in regular newsletters as value-added content.

3) Banner Advertising: Use banners to promote the content as a call to action for users.

4) Paid Search: Use targeted keywords and content as a call to action.

5) Traditional Advertising: Place promotions and links from traditional advertising to the online content.

The one issue with these traditional channels is that they are paid advertisements and have a low trust rating.  However, social content placement is often earned and is trusted more than traditional advertising  by today’s skeptical buyers.

Using social media-focused channels, marketers connect and engage with influencers and the buyers’ communities via:

1) Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Posts and Links – Beyond just links to promote the content, marketers post key excerpts of compelling findings and advice. These posts are liked and forwarded by other members.

2) YouTube & Slideshare Posts: Based on the type of content, the marketing team leverages specific social channels for sharing content such as YouTube for videos and Slideshare for PPTs and PDFs.

3) LinkedIn Discussion Groups and Quora: Marketers determine what key questions would be compelling to discussion groups  to attract group members’ comments on the research and findings as well as to  collaborate on additional opportunities, best practices and solutions..

4) Influencer Links: Marketers make influencers aware of the content and findings / advice, prompting several influencers to write about the content and pass along excerpts / links.

5) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engines prioritize links to content that are seen as  timely, relevant and valuable to the community. To optimize SEO, marketers still need to be sure that content is tagged properly and contains important keywords. Additionally, marketers must ensure that content is back-linked,  liked, promoted and linked to/from other independent and influential sites.

6) Article Syndication: Marketers convert the blog post and other content into article form, and get digital and print publishers to feature / promote the article because they feel it will help their readers.

The bottom line

When an author develops a blog article or other  piece of marketing content, it’s key that the marketing team leverage the content in multiple ways by creating derivatives to put the content in motion. This strategy should include creating multiple traditional and new interactive media derivatives that engage buyers with content through traditional and social channels.

This graphic illustration of  a single piece of content from a research oriented blog post can be used to derive multiple pieces of content to connect and engage buyers via multiple channels  and facilitate the buyer’s journey that can help drive content marketing effectiveness.

Have you tried this approach? Anything you would add to the graphic above?

A white paper is more than a writing task. In addition to writing and project management, a white paper requires:

• Identifying and understanding the audience
• Conducting research
• Communicating with and interviewing subject matter experts, customers, and other stakeholders
• Analyzing information
• Working closely with executives and the marketing team

Each task and step of the process is a potential weak point that can derail your project. The key to ensuring success for your white paper is avoiding the following three things.

Setting unrealistic deadlines

The first way to ensure failure of your white paper project is to request a fast turnaround time. In this day and age of blog posts, mobile marketing and 140 character tweets, it’s easy to forget that writing takes time, and that effective content marketing takes even more time than that.

A white paper, even a short one, is a marketing document that must include certain elements. It needs to be:

• Targeted to a specific audience
• Written with an objective in mind
• Organized
• Factually accurate
• Researched and sourced
• Well-written and persuasive

In almost every white paper project I’ve worked on, I’ve had to push back on the initial deadline because there was not enough time.

Just take one aspect of a project: Interviewing subject matter experts. It can take a week or two just to reach some people and schedule time to talk with them, let alone find time to brief them on the project and their role in it and conduct a thorough interview. Yet clients have presented me with projects with a stated deadline of fewer than three weeks, in which subject matter experts had not been identified, let alone vetted or prepped.

Unrealistic deadlines can be the result of not understanding the scope of a project, choosing to write a white paper in response to a competitor or market forces rather than an editorial calendar, or an idealistic view of how long things like setting up interviews and getting approvals can take in the corporate world.

Skipping the outline

The second way to ensure that your white paper project fails is to start writing it without an outline. Some writers feel that starting with an outline stifles their creativity or that they know enough about the subject matter to just sit down and start writing. But writing white papers is a bit like building a building: You cannot start tiling the roof or painting the walls until you have built the foundation.

Likewise, you cannot start interviewing experts or wordsmithing until you have an outline addressing the major elements of the paper, detailing supporting topics, and revealing a clear path from the problem all the way to the solution and call to action.

The marketing team, writer, subject matter experts, executives, and other stakeholders involved in the project each bring their own point of view. And everyone involved in the project will be able to identify missing elements or spots where more or less emphasis should be placed. This is a critical collaborative exchange that can take from several days to a few weeks, depending on the project scope and availability of involved parties.

As the foundation for the entire project, the outline plays another key role in the process: A way to get feedback and executive buy-in. You want everyone with a stake in the project to review the outline, make comments , and eventually come to consensus. Once the outline is approved, it becomes the working document, and you don’t add or subtract elements or change direction without approval first.

Making 11th hour changes

The third way to ensure failure for the project is to start messing with it once the outline has been written and approved.

The shorter the deadline, the more important it is to get approval of the outline and stick to it. It is easy, and in my experience, common for managers and others involved in the project to sign off on the outline with the assumption that they can easily change it later.

No matter how much time is slated for the project, changing the outline or direction after approval of the outline is one of the best ways to doom it to failure. In one project I worked on, one high-level team member came up with a new idea that changed the direction of the paper. Though the deadline was fluid and not a looming concern, the changes would have required rewriting for a different primary audience as well as identifying and interviewing new experts. What made matter worse is that this team member could not articulate exactly why a change was important.

As with many things content related, good planning is the way to keep your projects on track no matter how big or small.

Do you have any ideas about other key steps to ensuring the success of your white paper?