* touch most, if not all, media channels.
* distribute a few core messages across different audiences.
* educate on benefits and offer a strong call to action.
* build momentum with sales, PR, marketing and support.

If you replace the words product launch with white papers, you’ll see that white papers share the same powerful attributes as product launches.  Add to this the many studies that show white papers are among the most powerful sales tools available, and you should be wondering: Why don’t I launch white papers like products?

Fortunately, a new method of launching white papers enables companies to gain tens of thousands of dollars in free advertising reach from a single white paper.  This results in more leads, better lead quality, broader reach, speaking engagements, byline articles and more!

The White Paper Launch Method
Companies are turning to the white paper launch method to increase leads, customers and influence.  Beware: For this method to be effective, you must start with an educational paper.  Papers loaded with product features or company propaganda don’t translate well to other media channels.

Here’s a 7-step launch process that’ll get your white paper firing on all cylinders:

1. Create a strong landing page.
Landing pages are critical to convert visitors into leads and customers.  Your landing page should be a powerful teaser that incentivizes the reader to download your paper.  To keep your visitor focused, consider including a video overview of your paper, a contact form below the fold and compelling content to drive conversion.

2. Put a perspective news release on the wire.
Perspective news releases share your white paper in press release format. Not only does the wire service get your arguments into the hands of the media, but it also creates potentially thousands of inbound links from sites like Google News, Yahoo Finance and Reuters.

3. Distribute pitch letters to reporters.
Pitch letters position your white paper with a teaser, enticing reporters to hear your story in a phone interview. While not all reporters will respond, they will be aware of your message.  Those who do respond may provide you with valuable briefing time and a chance at a write-up.

4. Offer byline articles.
Byline articles are worth gold to marketers.  But they’re only possible if your content is educational.  Putting together a byline proposal gives you a chance to get your white paper into print for free in major publications.

5. Pitch speaking opportunities.
Tradeshow organizers grow attendance when attendees know they’ll learn something.  Pitch tradeshow sales reps to add your white paper topic to the speaker agenda.  Tie an educational topic to your presentation.  The more tradeshows educate, the more tickets they’ll sell.

6. Syndicate your white paper.
White paper syndication is a great way to generate leads quickly and motivate your sales team.  Use both free and pay sites to maximize reach and early lead flow.  A few early sales are contagious!

7. Leverage social media.
Social media is all about sharing useful content.  Strategically place retweetand sharebuttons within your white paper and on your landing page.  If you’ve written good content, your readers will spread the word.

To learn how to launch white papers like products, download 7 Tactics to Boosting White Paper Performance: The Many Benefits of the White Paper Launch Method.

About the Author: Ryan Malone is the founder of SmartBug Media, a leading inbound marketing agency and believer in white paper marketing.  You can follow his writing on his inbound marketing blog and follow him on Twitter.

Social media has experienced a significant growth rate relatively quickly. Over the past five years, we’ve witnessed a host of companies establishing a Facebook presence in the same way that websites became the norm in the mid-1990s. For individuals, having a LinkedIn page and adding a Twitter identity to email signatures, contact lists and business cards is no longer just an option; it’s now a social requirement.

Commercial white paper popularity on the other hand has been gradually building over the past 15 years to achieve the same white-hot status as social media. Once the exclusive domain of the large, technically astute enterprise, white papers are now a common marketing tool found in just about every business sector from agriculture to zone planning.

So the question is: Do white papers and social media operate in their own dedicated marketing space or do they complement, support and reinforce each other?

I’m of the belief that social media and white papers complement each other very well.

Before social media, business marketers had a limited number of options to promote their white papers in a cost-effective manner. Sure there were white paper syndicators, but at an average of $30-$100 per lead, only the most well-heeled enterprises could afford to use them on a long-term basis.

Social media complements white papers by providing a no-cost platform for businesses of all sizes to generate leads, build a vast network of followers and find new business opportunities. Today hundreds of new white papers are announced and promoted each week on Twitter. Facebook has become the new way to host a white paper landing page. Because of its predominant business focus, LinkedIn is a great way to leverage a white paper for peer exposure in the same way that in-person networking accomplished at your local chamber of commerce happy hour a decade ago.

On the other hand, white papers also complement social media.

What is one of the best ways to build social media followers? Great content, of course! This includes items such as YouTube video links, audio tracks, podcasts, websites and yes, white papers. In fact, because of their unique and highly valued educational nature, white papers rise to the top of the list as one of the primary ways to generate attention and build your list of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn followers.

So the bottom line with white papers and social media is that one hand washes the other. If you’re looking for new ways to build your social media presence, use a white paper. When you want to generate new leads and readers for your white paper, use social media. When you want to maximize your company brand and online presence, use both.

About the Author: Jonathan Kantor is principal of The Appum Group, “The White Paper Company,” and a 25-year enterprise marketing veteran with over 11 years of white paper marketing expertise. You can read more about “Short Attention Marketing” on his blog at www.WhitePaperPundit.com, and follow him on Twitter at Jonathan_Kantor.

They’re popular, because busy people love skimming, scanning and skipping their way through these documents.

“If I know there are five secrets, and I’m already on number three, there are only two more to go,” noted one technology executive recently. His comments echo what others have told me: when you have too much to read, too much to do and too much to remember, a list-based white paper is a welcome relief.

But a numbered set of tips is very different from a classic white paper.

While a classic white paper aims to provide real insight, a numbered list aims only to deliver quick how-to tips. These can be useful, but they may not add up to the same detailed coverage that goes into a classic white paper.

What does this mean to a content writer or marketer?

If you have a complex issue to discuss or you want to create a thorough analysis you can use for the next year or two, a classic white paper may be a better choice.

But if you need a quick, useful piece of content for a blog or to fulfill some scheduled marketing commitment, you can likely come up with a numbered list very quickly.

Design guru and author Roger C. Parker explains how.

“You take a number and a concept, and you just brainstorm. The number provides a framework for you to complete,” advises Parker. “Once you know you need six steps, your brain will help you get to those six.”

Here’s a four-step process illustrating this approach.

#1: Find a basic concept.
This can be anything your audience wants to gain or anything they want to avoid—including a set of “best practices,” and the opposite, “deadly mistakes to avoid.” For example, network administrators want a secure network with maximum uptime; they want to avoid intrusions, malware, and downtime.

#2: Add a number.
If you take the concept “maximum uptime” and add the number “five,” you get a title like “Five Ways to Guarantee Maximum Uptime.” Take the opposite concept and the number “six,” and you get “Six Secrets of Avoiding Downtime.”

#3: Add a subtitle to position the document.
Your subtitle can touch on a specific job role, such “A Special Report for Network Admins.” Then your complete title reads like this:

Five Ways to Guarantee Maximum Uptime: A Special Report for Network Admins

#4: Fill in the blanks.
Fill in with great content for each point. As you write, you can easily add or drop points. Anything between five and nine is probably fine; 10 sounds a little forced, like a “Top 10″ list.

Another nice thing about writing a list-based white paper is that you don’t need to develop the same step-by-step logic as in a classic white paper. A list is less linear and more modular, so you can pull in more material without building every point into a cohesive whole. Your material is held together by the spine of the list.

What’s the downside to this format?

Well, if your document doesn’t back up your title with great content, you will anger your audience whose time you just wasted.

And white paper expert Jonathan Kantor has blogged that this format can turn into work with a “generic, vanilla tone” that can “turn off the reader completely.” He’s right to point out that there’s no substitute for hard work and creativity.

Don’t think you can write these pieces without attending to your research, proof points, and clarity. Remember that the list-based document is just another tool in your toolkit. Use it when the situation calls for it, not every time you sit down to write.

About the Author: Gordon Graham helps B2B software companies tell their stories with crisp, compelling white papers. He’s the founder of www.thatwhitepaperguy.com, and a frequent poster on the whitepapersource.com forums.

Social Media Success Summit 2010 will teach you how to harness the awesome power of social media.  And it’s amazing: Consider that the “population” of users on Facebook (400 million) is greater than the population of the United States! More than 71% of businesses plan on ratcheting up their use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs in 2010.

The summit, the world’s largest online social media conference, will give marketers and small-business owners cost-effective ways to directly contact prospects and customers without employing expensive (and often ineffective) tools such as list brokers, publications and advertising.

Superstar Instructors
Twenty-four social media gurus will reveal the secrets of their success at the Social Media Success Summit 2010. In addition to event organizer Michael Stelzner, the all-star lineup of presenters includes bestselling authors Guy Kawasaki (Art of the Start), Chris Brogan (Social Media 101), Darren Rowse (ProBlogger), Mari Smith (Facebook Marketing), Greg Jarboe (YouTube and Video Marketing), Kim Dushinski (Mobile Marketing Handbook) and Lewis Howes (LinkedWorking: Generating Success on LinkedIn).

You’ll also hear from social media pros at companies such as Home Depot, Best Buy, Whole Foods, Domino’s Pizza, Edelman PR, MarketingProfs, Foursquare, Groupon and SmartBrief. They’ll tell how they use social media tactics to help their organizations beat the competition.

In sessions such as How to Use Twitter as a Marketing Weapon, Optimizing Your Facebook Page for Profits, Five Ways to Measure Social Media Marketing Success and How to Bring Customers Repeatedly to Your Local Business, you’ll learn:

* The most effective ways to market your company with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, social bookmarking sites, mobile marketing and more

* How to track and measure the return on investment for social media programs

* A step-by-step method for creating a smart social media marketing plan

* How to build a loyal social media following

* How to reel more customers into your local business with social media techniques

The summit will also cover brand-new ground such as YouTube and video, social media bookmarking, mobile marketing and two hot new sites—Foursquare and Groupon—that can drive people to your local business.

By the way, the topics covered in the 2010 Summit are totally new content—there will be absolutely no repetition of last year’s event.

No Travel Hassles
You might be thinking, “Sounds good, but I don’t need the hassle of taking time off, arranging a plane flight and reserving hotel accommodations—not to mention the expense.” No worries. This is an “online conference”—you can sit back, relax and enjoy it in real time in your home or office. The event organizers have taken your hectic schedule into account by spreading the sessions over a month, so they’re convenient to attend.

If you miss a session, they’ve got you covered.  You’ll get transcripts of every session and they’ll be recorded so you can replay them whenever you like. Also you won’t be learning on your own—you can ask the social media gurus questions during the live sessions and join private forums and LinkedIn groups to network with presenters and fellow attendees.

To say that last year’s summit was a success is putting it mildly—97% of people who attended said they’d recommend the event to a friend.  Listen to these rave reviews:

“The breadth and depth of the information covering social media was impressive, and each speaker gave tremendous value in terms of both practical and specific tips and suggestions. Great value overall and well worth my time and the cost.” Elizabeth H. Cottrell

“I can’t even count the number of actionable items I’m taking away from this summit. I have already applied at least a few dozen changes to brand myself on, and use, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.” Jeff Crabtree

Discounted Tickets 
The event kicks off on May 4 and runs until May 25. To take advantage of the 50% off special that runs through April 15, visit http://www.socialmediasummit10.com/. The discounted tickets are limited, so grab yours before they’re gone.

Get in tune with the marketers who are enjoying dazzling social media success.  Social Media Success Summit 2010 will help you move from playing basic “notes” to orchestrating strategic social media programs that’ll bring more sales and greater profitability.

How Are Facebook Landing Pages Created?
Landing pages can be created using FBML, which stands for Facebook Markup Language. It’s similar to HTML for writing websites. By using Facebook’s Static FBML application, you can create just about any type of “landing page” you want on your Facebook page, such as an intro to your white paper, report, or ebook. It allows you to create forms, add graphics—all the bells and whistles that make an interesting web display page.

If you’re already using an HTML editor like Dreamweaver, you can design your page with it and then drop the HTML code into the FBML application. You might have to tweak it a bit for Facebook’s size and display restrictions, which is why I have my designer do it for me. Learning how to manipulate HTML and CSS in FBML can be a little tricky, but you can check out a helpful tutorial on using it at HyperArts.

Pictured above is a landing page I created recently that offers my fans a chance to register for a special report.  I use this report as a list-building tool on my website. When people enter my Facebook page and click on the “Reports” tab, this landing page pops up.

Three Ways to Use Landing Pages to Share Your White Papers
Because all Facebook page content is indexable by search engines, FBML landing pages can generate additional “Google juice” for your white paper offerings.  Here are three options you might consider:

#1: Modified Registration Page: Are you currently using a traditional online registration page to garner leads? Cut and paste the code into FBML (if your registration form uses Javascript, however, your designer will have to convert to Facebook’s version, FBJS).

You should modify the registration a bit—social media users don’t like to fill out long registration forms. For quick and easy opt-in forms, Aweber and other versatile list-building tools can be used to create short forms and autoresponders to collect emails and deliver your white paper.

#2: No-Strings Download: Show a compelling “teaser” of your white paper content (a few paragraphs) followed by a “download full document instantly” button where fans can get the complete document without having to register for it. If having your paper shared virally is more important to you than lead generation, this might be a better option than #1.

#3: Video Embed: Use a short video clip to invite fans to download your white paper. The video can be as fancy as you like, but keep in mind that people prefer interacting with people as opposed to a faceless brand—especially in social media. Short and personal are best. You can use this tactic by itself, or in conjunction with #1 or #2 above.

If your prospects are on Facebook, you really should be thinking of ways to offer your white paper content there. Try testing these and other methods for creating Facebook white paper landing pages, and let us know what works best for you.

Editor’s note: Click here to see SocialMediaExaminer.com’s Fan Page and here for Apryl’s Fan Page.

About the Author: Apryl Parcher was Michael Stelzner’s apprentice. You can learn more about her at http://www.aparcher.com.

But overt self-promotion is more easily denied in theory than eliminated in practice. Run a draft by a salesperson, for example, and chances are you’ll find a comment (scrawled in crayon, in capital letters) along the lines of, “WHAT ABOUT OUR ZINGLEPOODLE FLAMMEL CAPABILITIES? WE HAVE THE ONLY WHOOSIWAFFLE WITH A JINGLEJANGLE OF THIS KIND IN THE ROFORMEX INDUSTRY!”

Worse, maybe features are really the essence of your knowledge. Or, deadline looming, they’re the only things you can think of to write about.

Fear not. The following steps will help transform product and service features into viable topic ideas that have meaning for your readers.

For the purposes of clarity and continuity, we’ll exemplify the steps with the following hypothetical examples:

* A B2C lawn products company selling a fungus-resistant grass seed blend
* A B2B technology company with a packet-shaping appliance for controlling WAN traffic
* A B2B services company that offers keyword audits for search engine optimization

1. Identify the benefit.
Yeah, I know, this is another thing you already knew, but it’s the necessary first step in this process: identify the benefit (the positive influence or outcome) the consumer/customer/client gets by obtaining your feature. To wit:

* Fungus-resistant grass seed: grows in adverse, fungus-prone conditions
* Packet-shaping technology: gives IT the power to control/allocate bandwidth to selected network activities
* Keyword audit: identifies most effective words for efficient SEO

2. Put the benefit in context.
In other words, why is this benefit important to the reader (or to customers)? In what conditions, situations and/or environments does the benefit have meaning? When or how does this benefit matter? For example:

* Fungus-resistant grass seed: works well in shaded and/or waterlogged lawn areas
* Packet-shaping technology: accelerates traffic and improves networking performance without having to buy more raw bandwidth
* Keyword audit: helps companies drive more (and more precisely targeted) traffic to their sites

3. Place the benefit/context within a reader-centric theme.
As the creator of content, your motives are clear: you’re building credibility as a trustworthy authority, a resource to whom money may be reasonably transferred (i.e., ultimately, you’re moving toward a sale). But to motivate potential customers to read your content, you have to speak to their interests.

The theme of your ebook/white paper must address an audience concern—the more urgent, the better. Any feature, transformed into a benefit and placed into context, should be flipped into a supporting point or idea that reinforces the theme. It looks like this:

* Fungus-resistant grass seed:
Theme: 10 Turf-Building Ideas for Tough Lawns
Specific supporting point: “For wet lawns, apply fungus-resistant seed blends.”

* Packet-shaping technology:
Theme: Winning with WAN: How to Boost Performance Without Busting Budgets
Specific supporting point: “Allocate resources by activity and priority.”

* Keyword audit:
Theme: S.O.S. for SEO—Getting the Traffic You Deserve
Specific supporting point: “Review keywords for relevance and popularity.”

Let your customers flip over you
Notice what the examples didn’t do: name the product or service behind the topic idea. Successful trappers don’t go into the woods shouting, “Yoo-hoo! The net’s over here!” Your white paper’s job is to build a connection in readers’ minds between the things they want and your company or brand. Anything that stinks of “commercial” will break that connection.

Instead, let your ideas speak for themselves. If you work your flips correctly, they will automatically point to the unique virtues of your enterprise. To complete the connection, be sure that your ebook or white paper includes a call to action—a demo, a sample, a webinar invitation, etc.—that draws readers another step closer to your company. Make the right flips and your readers are more likely to become customers who’ll flip over you.

About the Author:  Jonathan Kranz is the principal of Kranz Communications and the author of Writing Copy for Dummies. You may download his ebook about ebooks (for free and without registration): The eBook eBook: How to Turn Your Expertise Into Magnetic Marketing Material.

I find these questions absolutely fascinating. That’s why I’ve spent a great part of my adult life studying success.

But it wasn’t until I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers that much of what I had learned came together into one unifying principle:

Success only happens at the intersection of preparation and opportunity!

To better explain this, let’s take this discussion outside of freelancing for a minute, because there’s a fascinating lesson here.

Talent Is Overrated
Did you know that in Canada, arguably the most hockey-crazed nation in the world, nearly ALL top players are born (get this) in the first three months of the year?

Why is that?

Gladwell explains that it has nothing to do with astrology or magic. Quite simply, the eligibility cutoff for junior hockey leagues in that country is January 1. That means that a boy who turns 10 on January 2, for example, will be playing with kids who won’t turn 10 until November or December.

Why does that matter? Well, as you probably know if you have kids that age, in terms of physical maturity, a 12-month age difference is huge. In sports, it means you have a great advantage over the younger kids.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Canadian coaches start to select players for their all-star teams around age 9 or 10. And guess which ones they tend to pick? That’s right, the older kids, who, when compared to those just a few months younger, appear to be bigger and more coordinated.

Once a kid is picked for the all-star team, he gets better coaching. He has twice the number of practice sessions. He also plays in more games. And his teammates are better, which pushes him to improve continually.

By age 14, what started out as a small advantage (mainly in size and coordination due to his age) is now a huge advantage over the younger kids he left behind 4 years before. And now, this young man’s chances of making it to the junior league and into the big leagues are very high.

Gladwell found the same patterns in American baseball, where the cutoff date for almost all nonschool baseball leagues is July 31. As a result, more major league players have birthdays in August than in any other month.

Opportunity Is Only Half of the Equation
Is it luck? Call it what you want, but I say it all boils down to the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

These older kids were all given a chance (opportunity). But had they not prepared—or, more importantly, had their parents not signed them up for the junior hockey league—they would NOT have succeeded.

And once selected to the all-star teams, had they not worked hard, practiced day and night and loved what they were doing, they would not have made it to the majors.

I don’t know where you are today in your freelance career. I don’t know if you’re just getting started or if you’ve been at it awhile. But regardless of your current situation, if you want to succeed, you must continually practice, upgrade your knowledge base and work hard to become better.

In other words, you must constantly prepare. 
That means refining your craft.  Developing smarter prospecting strategies.  Experimenting with better pricing strategies.  Learning basic negotiation skills.  Sharing best practices with some of your peers (especially those who are more successful than you).  And much more.

Only then will you be able to take full advantage of the opportunities when they come your way. (And they WILL come. They always do!)

Earl Nightingale once said that if a person does not prepare for his success, when his opportunity comes, it will only make him look foolish.

Pay the price. Prepare today. Success is worth it.

Ed Gandia is the co-author of the newly released book The Wealthy Freelancer: 12 Secrets to a Great Income and an Enviable Lifestyle: www.TheWealthyFreelancer.com/amazon.

Have you heard of Facebook Markup Language (FBML)? Until I chatted with Denise Wakeman (www.biztipsblog.com), online marketing advisor and co-founder of BlogSquad, neither did I. But Denise swears by it as an effective white paper marketing tool.

Customize Your Page
“Creating a custom landing page isn’t an obvious thing to do on Facebook, but it’s a great option,” Wakeman says. “FBML is a free application. Search for it in Facebook applications and attach it to your fan page. It gives you a box where you can post HTML code for your landing page. When someone contacts you on Facebook, instead of having them go to a wall that has many posts on it, you send them to the landing page that tells them who you are, what you do and how to connect with you. It also gives free access to your white paper.” Click here to see how Michael Stelzner set up SocialMediaExaminer.com’s Facebook fan page.

Denise also suggests that you brand your Facebook landing page. When you create the page, accent it with your company’s logos and colors. If you don’t have an in-house design team, a designer can create your custom page for a small investment. It’s worth the price to give your page a professional look.

Target Your Message
Another potent tip comes from Mari Smith (www.marismith.com),  the world’s leading authority on using Facebook for business. Mari suggests advertising on Facebook “Using advertising on the site is the most targeted messaging you can buy. You can drill down into precise keywords to give your Facebook fans exactly what they’re looking for. This might sound like an expensive way to go, but it’s actually very affordable.”   Ads can be targeted by geography, gender, ad and keywords, to mention a few.

Mari also suggests that as you write your white paper, staying in touch with your fans can serve as “pre-marketing.” As you’re working on your paper, give status updates such as “I’m writing a white paper on this topic and I’d like your advice” or conduct a poll that lets you tap into your fans’ knowledge base. This is “crowd-sourcing”—letting your fans be a source of content for your white paper. It’s also an effective way to market your paper before it’s completed.

Tried-and-True Methods
Denise and Mari also suggest some tips for marketing white papers on Facebook:

* No hard sell—if you’re selling or offering something, don’t be too forceful or impersonal. Use friendly, conversational language. When you do a status update, mention that you’re finishing your white paper and you’re excited to launch it. This tactfully plants seeds in the minds of your Facebook contacts by telling them about the valuable information your paper will provide. 

* Post every day—once you set up your page, connect with your fans twice a day. In your posts, encourage them to ask questions and to comment. Answer their questions and post links to related information so they realize that you’re a trusted resource and not just peddling your own products. 

* Get contacts into your database—it’s best to move contacts from the platform—that’s what Facebook is—and into your own database. On your fan page, be sure to include information on how fans can sign up to get your free white paper. That moves their contact information into your database.

Endless Possibilities
Employing these tactics is worth it when you consider the immense possibilities of marketing your white papers on Facebook. There are over 400,000,000 active Facebook users and the average user is 35 years old with a higher-than-average income. Without doubt, many Facebook users run their own businesses and value the information provided in white papers.

So by all means, use FBML to create a custom landing page on your Facebook fan page and brand the page with your company’s logo and colors. Try the focused advertising available on Facebook and do pre-marketing by keeping fans updated on your white paper project. Avoid hard selling, do posts twice a day and move contacts into your database.

After your business booms, you’ll have to decide whether to reveal these tactics when an impressed competitor asks, “What’s your secret?” 

We’re Taught to “Talk Sideways”
When I took a speech class in college, one of the tips the instructor gave for handling stage fright was to look over the heads of my audience and avoid direct eye contact. Have you ever heard that one? Or how about visualizing your audience naked?

While these “talking sideways” tactics may have temporarily helped reduce my sweaty palms in public speaking, they didn’t help me connect with my audience. I later learned that this was much more important, both in public speaking and writing persuasive copy. Talking directly to your audience—making that eye contact—is what gets the best audience response.

Here’s a little nugget of wisdom I learned in copywriting that may help you avoid talking sideways and make better connection with your readers:

Visualize one person (your ideal reader) right down to their shoes.
The great marketer, David Ogilvy, once said to a soap manufacturer: “Your customer isn’t a moron—she’s your wife.”

Think about it. Wouldn’t you write differently to a spouse than to a group of faceless people? Of course you would—because you know that single person well enough to be able to picture him or her in your head, and understand where he or she is coming from.

So I like to get enough information about my prospects to visualize what they might look like—age, sex, married, kids, income, lifestyle, hobbies—and conjure a mental picture of them before I start writing.

Clayton Makepeace, who many refer to as the “King of Copywriters,” takes this type of visualization even further with a “dominant emotion” exercise before he writes a single word, as illustrated in this excerpt from his book: Two Hours to More Profitable Sales Copy:

“I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and mentally inserted myself into the shoes of a 50- to 70-year-old man (our target demographic) whose life was plagued by chronic health problems–endless doctor visits–taking fistfuls of costly prescription drugs every day–suffering horrific side effects from those drugs–and never getting any better.

I saw myself showing up at the doctor’s office–cooling my heels in the waiting room reading dull magazines for an hour, waiting for my name to be called–ushered into the exam room–and made to wait even longer.

Finally, I saw the doctor hurriedly burst through the door, ask me a cursory question or two, scribble a few chicken scratches on a prescription pad and vanish as quickly as he had come.

I saw myself experiencing what my prospects experience every day, I started feeling the emotions they were feeling: Frustration with health problems their doctors couldn’t seem to cure–afraid of the consequences of failing health–exhausted by doctor visits that interrupted their lives–worried about the cost and side effects of conventional medicine–and disgusted with doctors who never seemed to take a personal interest in them.”

For Better Connection: Go Deeper
Granted, Makepeace is talking about sales copy here, but it translates well to writing white papers too. The deeper you can connect with your reader on an emotional level, the more likely you are to engage him or her in any type of writing.

Give this exercise a try. It may feel a little funny at first, but trust me—getting that deeper connection in your head before you begin a project will help it flow more smoothly from start to finish.

About the Author: Apryl Parcher is Michael A. Stelzner’s apprentice. You can learn more about her at http://www.aparcher.com.

Give Them Value
“One important trend for 2010 is a focus on value,” says Rob Birgfeld, director of audience development for SmartBrief on Social Media, one of more than 100 daily publications produced by SmartBrief. “There has been a massive blitz by companies clamoring to get involved in social media. Many of them started their Facebook page, their Twitter account and a blog, and they feel that simply providing a constant flow of general information will suffice.”

“But in 2010, consumers will weed out the ‘non-value’ participants—companies that are just broadcasting—and look for those that are putting something valuable into a social media channel, such as an informative white paper that helps them solve a business problem.”

Let Them Share
According to Birgfeld, a key trend is to empower white paper readers. Just as important as sending a white paper into social media channels is giving readers the ability to pass the paper along on their own terms. To achieve this, provide the mechanisms that let readers share, whether it’s via email or posts on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (you can make your PDF file “tweetable”). Ensuring that end users can pass the white paper on avoids the mistake of impressing readers with your brilliant paper and having the marketing “trail” end there.

A Community Effort
Another major trend for 2010, says Birgfeld, is enlisting a community of users to help create your white paper. “Involving people in the overall development of your paper makes it better and helps it reach more people. One way of tapping into your social media community is to send a first draft of your paper to your best customers and ask for their comments. Once you have multiple ‘contributors,’ you also have multiple marketing channels because your community will take pride in the white paper that they helped create and will send it to other people.”

Powerful Endorsements
In the coming year, more marketers will solicit product testimonials from their social media users and publish the comments verbatim in white papers. In addition to providing valuable feedback on a company’s product, user comments market a product in their own words, not with a company sales pitch.

“When members of your social media community who are end users say that your product is good, it’s a much more powerful and credible statement than a sales message that most people won’t even read,” says Birgfeld.

Follow These Tactics in 2010

* Don’t broadcast useless information on social media sites—give your readers value.

* Make it easy for readers to share your white paper and let them collaborate in the creation of your  masterpiece.

* Don’t feed readers a sales pitch—let your user community tell readers how great your product is.

Keep the latest social media trends in mind and soon you’ll be tweeting your old college cronies about your new-found business success.