Interviews: How to Land a Busy Expert
Learn about writing white papers and interviewing pros.

Writing Look Like Dead Grass? Fertilizer for Your Fingers
Has your writing dried out? Feel like your creative energy has been leached? Are you growing?

Attorneys and White Papers: The Common Thread
A white paper is not far from a courtroom legal argument. Interestingly, they are amazingly similar

What Francis Ford Coppola Can Teach Us About Writing Compelling White Papers
It wasn’t until I watched a behind-the-scenes interview with Francis Ford Coppola, the accomplished movie director, that I saw the similarities between writing white papers and directing movies.

Interview: Michael Stelzner, Author of Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged
Michael gives our readers a sneak peek into many of the techniques and insights he reveals in his upcoming and definitive book on white papers.

Writing the First Page: A Simple Formula
Many writers indicate the first page is extremely difficult to write. The fact is, getting started is hard enough and the first page is particularly challenging because of its importance to any white paper.

Freelancing From Home: Don’t Interview Folks in Your Pajamas
Have you ever considered breaking out of your nine to five and 5-by-5-foot cubicle to become a full-time freelance writer?

Steve Slaunwhite, Author and Copywriting Pro
Steve Slaunwhite, author of Start and Run a Copywriting Business, shares his insight on writing and being a freelancer.

How to Find Clients Who Need White Papers
Freelancers often wonder where to find clients. What kind of companies need white papers written for them, anyway? Here’s three simple questions that will tell you the answer…

Writing When You Are NOT the Expert
Have you ever been asked to write a white paper about a topic that is completely foreign to you? If not, you most certainly will. This article will help you set your foot down the right path.

The Top Five Writing Mistakes in White Papers
A compelling topic and an attractive design will initially draw readers to a white paper. But those readers may lose interest if the paper contains any of five common writing mistakes.

Why a Good Title Makes a White Paper
The title is your white paper’s absolute first impression. In it rests success or failure for the words that lie beyond, waiting for a reader. If the title does not encourage someone to read further, the ink that coats your white paper will never be seen.

You Get What You Pay For: What’s your business image worth?
Unfortunately it seems that more and more companies are choosing the lowest price in deciding which white paper writer to engage. Why would a business that would never bat an eyelash paying for a high-quality website, choose the low price provider for a white paper?

Dead Tree or Detailed Treatise: What is a white paper?
So what exactly is a white paper? This is one of those questions many people have been wrestling with for some time. If you look up the term in a dictionary, you’ll find an outdated response describing a government report.

Tips from The Well-Fed Writer: An Interview with Peter Bowerman
We interviewed Peter Bowerman, award-winning author of The Well-Fed Writer and The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds These two groundbreaking books set the bar for how-to “standards” in the lucrative field of commercial freelance writing.

Five Ways to Ensure White Paper Success
How can a business ensure that its white papers will successfully help further the sales process? Effective, high-quality white papers follow these five golden rules.

Ann Handley-MarketingProfs.com Chief Content Officer
Ann Handley, MarketingProf’s Chief Content Officer shared her insight on writing and marketing white papers and the importance of keeping content fresh.

Leveraging the Power of Google to Perform Research
As a writer, there is undoubtedly no better tool for researching than Google. This article focuses on how to use Google to find analyst research, important data and other factoids that will round out the quality of your white papers.

Seven Steps to Writing White Papers More Efficiently
Read about a seven-step process used when writing write white papers and other complex documents.

Extracting Pearls from Other People’s Brains: The Art of Interviewing
Perhaps one of the bigger challenges faced by white paper writers is coming up with good content. The default course of action is to do a Google search. While this approach can yield valuable information, the best pearls reside inside someone else’s head.

The Abstract Trap: Why Abstracts Are Bad for Persuasive White Papers
Abstracts, also known as executive summaries, are bad. As a matter of fact, they are really bad, and I stand nearly alone in my opinion. Abstracts are those summaries that typically stand in front of the core content of a white paper. They tend to include the key points about the white paper.

Who’s Writing Your White Papers? The Never Ending Debate of Technical Knowledge versus Writing Proficiency
A common mistake that many companies make when starting a white paper project, is the assumption that a technical subject matter expert who has used, developed, or is highly knowledgeable about the topic is automatically assumed to be best qualified as its author

Interviewing: How a Willie Nelson concert taught me how to listen
The best interviewing is conversational and nothing else. It’s not over complimentary, gushing or just about impressing your interviewee with your knowledge.

Robert W. Bly - The King of Copywriting and Author of More Than 60 Books
Robert Bly, the King of Copywriting, discusses his views of white papers and writing in general.

Ready, Aim, Write: The Value of Identifying Your Target Reader
One of the most important first steps when preparing to write a white paper is to determine who will be reading the document. This article will help you perform this critical step in the needs assessment process.

11 Tips on Terrific Titles
Read this article for 11 tips on putting together compelling titles for white papers.

Are you Frodo, Aragorn or Legolas? Writing Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings
Are you a “Frodo,” “Aragorn” or “Legolas” writer? Each has a unique style and advantages suited to specific types of writing. Much can be learned from J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings characters.

Wrestling with the Expert: How to Ensure the Conversation Stays on Track!
Regardless of the field, a white paper writer must conduct interviews, and the best “content-rich” interviews are with the experts: the chief scientists, product managers, engineers and inventors who spawned the product or idea you need to write about. So why are these people so hard to interview?

The Death of Team Versacorp: The Risks of Skipping the Needs Assessment
I remember watching Donald Trump’s hit reality show “The Apprentice.” It was early in the season and the men – team Versacorp – were suffering a crushing defeat by the women – team Protégé. The task was to develop an ad campaign for an airline while under an extreme deadline. Team Versacorp made a fatal error that ultimately led to their demise: they decided to forgo calling the airline to understand its needs. They sacrificed clarity for time.

Why the “IKEA” Style of Writing Will Lose Your Readers
I clearly remember that first day I wandered into an IKEA megastore. A line from that famous Eagles song came to mind: “Welcome to the Hotel California… You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

Luring Readers by Translating Features into Problems
We recently interviewed an experienced white paper writer who has written for big names in the technology field such as Motorola, HP and Comverse. Our topic was writing white papers that focused on problems rather than features.

How Story Helps Your White Paper Take Flight
The most powerful thing about a good story, no matter what the topic, is that it engages the audience from start to finish. In life and in business the power of a story is what propels all of us forward.

Why You Must Seek Out and Destroy Hype
While every company is unique, a lot of white papers share the same problems. How can I put this delicately? Many white papers suffer from an over-abundance of wishful thinking, unattributed statistics, vacuous logic, and good old-fashioned hype.

Getting Off the Starting Block: Practical Tips to Starting a White Paper
Why are white papers so hard to write? Simply put, they require effort. Effort makes us sweat. Just the thought of working hard causes some people’s blood to percolate.