The unsexy content which needs to be part of your communications strategy

Podcasts are going from strength to strength. There are currently more than 900,000 of them to choose from and more than 7 million people in the UK listen to them every week.

The whitepaper seems to have something of an image problem. What was once a very popular content marketing approach is now often seen as a bit unsexy, boring, bland and perhaps a little quaint and antiquated.

ther forms of content, such as the less formal eBooks, blogs, infographics and interactive games appear more exciting and attractive and ultimately seem to have become more popular.

You could be forgiven for thinking, therefore, that whitepapers have had their day and are just another victim of digital progression.

But there is another school of thought – one which we subscribe to at Thirty Seven – that whitepapers are alive and well and continue to play a crucial part in effective content marketing strategies.

In fact, we believe they have an integral role in providing the comprehensive, detailed material which is all too often missing in other parts of content marketing.

It is the perfect long-form content medium in which to position a brand as a genuine authority in its field and take a deep look at the issues which matter to its clients and potential customers.

Here are a few more of its strengths:

Whitepapers have longevity

A whitepaper which successfully tackles an important issue will be saved and printed out and people will refer back to it again and again when they make important decisions.

Whitepapers are shared

They may not go viral in the social media sense, but whitepapers are typically shared by colleagues and teams and can travel extensively within just one organisation, greatly increasing the size of the audience and spreading awareness of your brand. My boss, for example, will regularly share whitepapers with me that he has downloaded and found useful and I often pass these on to other colleagues and even people in other organisations.

Content that can be reused

A common concern organisations often have about whitepapers is that they require considerable time and effort for just one piece of content. But actually that isn’t the case. A good whitepaper can typically be sliced and diced into a series of blogs. Not only is this fresh content, but each resulting blog can be used to encourage the reader to download the whitepaper for detailed analysis of the wider issue.

Whitepapers create strong leads

Whitepapers are not for the casual reader – they require too big a time commitment from the consumer for that. So, when someone signs-up to receive a whitepaper they are looking for a solution to a particular problem and they are trusting your organisation to provide it.

If whitepapers have all these benefits, how can you ensure yours doesn’t fall into the ‘unsexy’ trap?

Tackle a topic which matters to your audience

As with all content marketing, understanding your audience and the issues that matter to them is pivotal.

For your whitepaper to gain the interest of your customers it needs to tackle both an issue they want to be resolved and offer a unique perspective.

This involves detailed research, information being verified and experts being interviewed - and a clearly communicated argument.

Improve the visual

One key way to improve the image of whitepapers is to make them look visually better. Page after page of text is only going to cause readers to lose interest and stop reading, no matter how well it is written.

Photographs, infographics, charts, pull-out quotes and even coloured boxes all have a role to play in adding a creative touch and making whitepaper content more visually appealing.

Length

Even though whitepapers are long-form content a careful eye needs to be kept on length.

A 10-15 page document should easily be enough to construct a credible and persuasive argument and will be much more digestible and less daunting than something double that length.

This means that writing needs to be sharp, concise and waffle free.

Use variety to spice it up

If you’ve already got whitepapers as part of your content, try using different templates and styles to make new ones stand out. Find different ways for readers to test what they have learnt in different sections of the paper, add bullet point summaries after specific sections and use different layouts.

Produce an attention-grabbing headline

No matter how strong the content of your whitepaper you still need to find a way of ensuring you customers are going to read it.

The headline is key to ensuring that your whitepaper stands-out, generates curiosity and promises the solution to a problem.

Enable people to preview whitepapers before they download

Allowing customers to preview a few sample pages of the whitepaper before they need to enter their details and download it is a great way to entice readers and highlight the quality of your document. If it is good enough for Amazon and the books they sell then I think it is something we should all consider.

Check out this example we created for Every Angle.

Whitepapers may not be sexy. They may not provoke instant excitement. But get them right and your customers will find them hard to resist.

At Thirty Seven, we offer content and design services to ensure your campaigns reach the right audiences at the right times. Our journalist led approach ensures your content is interesting, engaging and informative so you gain brand awareness and engagement whether it is social media content or a whitepaper.

f course, the regulations, which are supposed to improve data protection for EU citizens, residents and businesses, do have significant implications for brands and the way they communicate with their customers.

But is there another side to the doom, gloom and scaremongering?

Well, at Thirty Seven we believe the changes, which come into force on May 25, present an opportunity for marketers and could be a catalyst for good.

Before the rise of the internet it was very hard for brands to produce content, at least cost effectively.

But as the World Wide Web has gone from strength to strength it has become ever easier for organisations to reach customers.

However, this has come at a cost, because while content marketing has been enjoying a boom, there is little doubt it has been at the expense of quality. There’s now less craft and more churn in the majority of content and all too often what customers receive offers little in the way of value.

Of course what exactly constitutes ‘quality’ content is subjective, vague and elusive. However, Google uses a definition which I believe works as well as any.

Its evaluators use the EAT acronym when ranking website pages. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness and we believe it is a good model to adopt to ensure content stays ahead of the pack.

So how will GDPR impact the quality of content? Well, by giving people more control of their data they will also have more control of what information they receive.

Brands need to be able to show that consent to receive their information has been “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” – ideally this should be achieved through a double opt-in procedure involving a signup process, such as clicking a box, and a confirmation of that instruction by clicking a link in a follow-up email.

Businesses will also have to make it easy for that consent to be withdrawn at any time.

This means that, particularly in the days after the May deadline, many brands will have fewer people on their mailing lists. While there will still be those who argue that size matters, it is surely better to have a more concise list of people who look forward to receiving your content than a larger list of people who are indifferent and don’t really know how or why your emails end up in their inbox.

More importantly, it also means brands will have to work harder than ever to get people to subscribe and sign-up and continue to be happy to receive their content.

And that in turn means content needs to be better quality, targeted, personalised, niche and valuable. In short, content that turns recipients into fans.

Of course, it is possible that some email marketeers will try to duck these regulations or convince themselves that only the really big players will be targeted by GDPR enforcers in the early days, but the risks of non-compliance are eye-watering; a fine which is either four per cent of turnover or €20 million - whichever is the larger.

Another possibility is that organisations may simply reduce their email marketing activity as they struggle to comply with the GDPR May deadline and turn to social media more instead to fill the vacuum.

But to make that approach work they will still need to place greater emphasis on the quality of their social media output, because if customers are going to engage with that content they will again need to feel it has value and is worth sharing.

We are not suggesting that GDPR is going to improve the quality of the internet, but it will give the content you receive in your mailbox a much needed shot in the arm.

At Thirty Seven, we offer content and design services to ensure your campaigns reach the right audiences at the right times. Our journalist led approach ensures your content is interesting, engaging and informative so you gain brand awareness and engagement whether it is social media content or a whitepaper.

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