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How To Write & Format a White Paper [Tips & Templates]

By Chau Nguyen , Jun 28, 2023

Okay, so you’re working on a white paper. That’s great! The thing is, attention spans are goldfish-level short these days.

People are busy, and dense text can be hard to get through. Even if your white paper has valuable information, a lot of text might make it difficult for readers to absorb everything.

That’s why I’m here to help! In this article, I will help you craft an engaging white paper using Venngage’s white paper maker . Discover tips for keeping it interesting, using visuals (spoiler alert: they’re key!) and even snag some white paper templates to kickstart your project!

Let’s get started!

Click to jump ahead:

How to write a white paper

How to structure a white paper, how to create a white paper outline, tips for designing an engaging white paper, faqs about white paper writing.

Before making your white paper engaging, you first need to make it informative and credible. After all, it’s an important document to establish you as a thought leader in your industry.

Here are some guidelines to ensure the quality of your white paper:

Research your audience and topic well

Think about who will be reading your white paper. Are they actually experiencing the problem you’re trying to solve? Will your solution work for them? How much information will they need to be persuaded?

White papers are authoritative in nature, so people expect them to come with meaningful data from credible sources. Make sure you research your audience and your topic well to know how much data you need to make your case.

If your data comes from primary research, you can include your methodology as well for transparency and credibility:

Once you’ve nailed your research and solution, time to deliver all that information the best way you can. The language you use here must be the same as your audience’s: think of all the words and phrases they use often and try to incorporate them into your white paper writing.

You should also consider how people will read your paper — on desktop, on tablet or on mobile.

Mobile accounts for about 50% of global website traffic , reaching nearly 60% in Q2 2022. 

Unless you have enough resources to create a responsive white paper ( like this one! ), you should make sure your document is legible on mobile. This means breaking up your paragraphs into smaller chunks of text and adding plenty of visuals so it’s easier on the eye:

I’ll touch on more tips to make your white paper engaging in the next section, so stay tuned!

Make sure people can scan your content

And to do that, you should break up your text with headings and subheadings. This helps keep your white paper organized and allows your reader to scan through the information easily.

You should also add a Table of Contents after the title page to help readers navigate your paper. Or in this case, the Table of Contents sits right on the first page:

Keep it succinct and to the point

There’s no standard length for this type of content, but a good rule of thumb is to write a white paper that’s around six pages. This should be enough space to do justice to your research and data, without overwhelming your readers.

Plus, it’s always good to be mindful of your audience’s time when creating any type of content.

As white papers ‌provide expertise or a solution to a problem, your audience should be willing to devote a good amount of time and attention to your content… but don’t push your luck!

No matter how interested a reader is in a topic, they’ll drop off eventually if you ramble instead of getting to the point. 

Most white papers follow a standard format that includes a:

Introduction

• Proposed solution

You may be wondering why there isn’t a problem statement section. After all, a white paper is supposed to dissect and provide solutions to a problem, yes?

Well, you can include the problem statement in the intro — intros explain what a white paper is about. This section is the perfect place to make a case for your white paper.

But of course, there’s no rigid format you should follow to a T. If it works better with your content, feel free to make your Problem Statement a separate section.

Now, let’s look at what you should write in each section with examples:

The title page is straightforward: it includes the title of your white paper and the name of the organization that produced it (or the author’s name).

This government white paper discusses the problem of illegal tobacco trade and proposes several approaches to address it: 

Just so you know, some of our templates are free to use and some require a small monthly fee.  Sign up  is always free, as is access to Venngage’s online drag-and-drop editor.

You can also include a sub-headline under the title to further explain what it’s about: 

The introduction should explain the purpose of the white paper and why the reader should care. It should be interesting (and informative) enough to hook the reader right away and keep them reading.

As mentioned, the introduction also contains your problem statement. In other words, it should provide an overview of the problem you’re trying to address. You don’t need to include too much information here, as that’s the role of the Background section.

Here’s an example:

The author introduces an overview of the problem — phishing scams — which is backed with visualized data that allows readers to grasp its impact at a glance:

Related :  How to Visualize Data In Your White Papers

Here’s where you provide background information about the problem you’re discussing. This section tends to be research- and data-heavy.

Let’s revisit our “Approaches to Battling the Illegal Tobacco Trade” white paper. Here’s what the Background section looks like:

The author provides a table that lists the countries where illegal tobacco trading is present, from the least problematic (less than 10% of the industry) to the most (40% and above).

The author also includes some background information on illicit tobacco products, all backed by data:

“Cigarettes account for over 90% by value of tobacco product sales. They are also the most illicitly traded form. Numerous bodies of research indicate that the illicit cigarette trades represents approximately 10%–12% of the total cigarette market — although this varies by country.”

And why illegal tobacco trade is problematic:

“Each year this translates to a loss of government revenues from US$40 to US$50 billion.”

Now, onto the proposed solution.

This could be a product, a service or a course of action. 

This government white paper addresses the sugar consumption crisis among children and proposes a policy to ban the sale of added-sugar products in schools:

Let’s look at another example. This technology white paper proposes a product as a solution: new technology that helps prevent falls in tilted chairs:

No matter what solution you propose, it should be well-supported with evidence. In the white paper above, the author presents elements that make their new technology the solution to fall prevention: 

Stuck for ideas on your tech white paper? Check out our awesome tech white paper templates to get your creative juices flowing.

The conclusion should summarize the main points of the paper and provide recommendations for next steps:

You can also add a call to action here, like “contact the author for more information”. Or if you’re writing a white paper to gather more leads, you can add some information about your business too: 

Note : white papers are academic in nature, so you should use reliable sources to back up your argument and include citations/references as needed.

You can follow these ten useful pointers when creating your white paper outline:

• Define your purpose : Clearly identify the objective of your white paper. Determine what problem you’re addressing or what information you’re providing to your audience.
• Research and gather information : Conduct thorough research on the topic to gather relevant data, statistics, case studies, or expert opinions. This will help you support your key points and strengthen your arguments.
• Develop an introduction : Begin your white paper with a compelling introduction that grabs the reader’s attention and provides an overview of the topic. Clearly state the problem or opportunity you’re addressing and briefly outline your proposed solution.
• Organize main sections and subtopics : Identify the main sections that will structure your white paper. These sections should correspond to the key aspects or steps of your proposed solution. Break each section into subtopics that will be discussed in more detail.
• Provide supporting evidence : Within each section, present evidence, examples, and data to support your claims and validate your solution. Use clear and concise language to convey your points effectively.
• Include visuals and graphics : Visual elements such as charts, graphs, diagrams, or infographics can enhance the readability and understanding of your white paper. Incorporate relevant visuals where appropriate to illustrate complex concepts or data.
• Craft a conclusion : Summarize the main points discussed in the white paper and reiterate the proposed solution. Emphasize the benefits or value that readers can gain from implementing your recommendations.
• Add an executive summary : Write a concise executive summary at the beginning of your white paper, providing a brief overview of the entire document. This allows readers to quickly grasp the key points and decide if they want to read the full paper.
• Review and revise : After completing the initial draft, review and revise your white paper for clarity, coherence, and overall effectiveness. Ensure that the information flows logically, the language is concise and engaging, and there are no grammatical or spelling errors.
• Format and finalize : Format your white paper to make it visually appealing and reader-friendly. Use appropriate headings, subheadings, fonts, and spacing. Consider adding a table of contents for easy navigation. Finally, proofread your document one last time before publishing or sharing it.

Let’s say you’re looking for a white paper on sugar consumption in children. Would you read this:

Needless to say, applying visuals and data visualizations to your white paper makes a big difference. And you don’t need to be a professional designer to do so. Let’s look at some tips for creating an engaging white paper design:

1. Use a white paper template

If you don’t have the design skills to organize your draft into a well-designed document full of visuals, using a template is the way to go.

Venngage offers dozens of  white paper templates  you can edit for your business.

To get started, simply  sign up for a free account , search for a white paper template and edit away.

To make it even easier for you, we’ve made a video walking you through editing a white paper template in Venngage. Check it out here:

2. Add data visualizations to your white papers

If you’ve got yourself some good data, don’t bury it under heaps of text. 

While everyone on your team is busy creating boring Word documents, you can be the creative genius that uses charts and pictograms to craft a visually engaging white paper.

The type of charts you use will depend on the type of data you’re visualizing. We have  a guide to picking what types of charts to use  that can help you there. 

You could use a line graph to show revenue  growth over time . Or you could use  pie charts  to show parts of a whole, like in this policy white paper example:

Pro tip: with our  online graph maker,  you can create better charts and graphs than the standard Excel charts. A plain old bar graph won’t do much to inspire anyone, but a creative chart that tells a story can. 

Pictograms  are also a creative and effective way to visualize statistical data. Take a look at the white paper example below. Pictograms act as visual aids to showcase key statistics and changes in the IT sector:

Don’t be afraid to mix it up. They say variety is the spice of life — and this saying applies to white papers, too! This business white paper design, for example, combines both bar graphs and pie charts:

For more tips on visualizing data for your white paper, check out our post:  How to Visualize Data In Your White Papers

3. Emphasize key points and takeaways with tables and text boxes

Visualizing information or data doesn’t mean just using graphs. When writing a white paper, you can also section off important pieces of information using tables and boxes.

In the white paper template below, the designers used a table to organize key points and takeaways from each main section:

Here’s another example of a white paper layout that uses a table to highlight some key statistics:

Breaking up lengths of text with boxes will help make your white paper easier to read, like in this example:

Which brings us to our next point…

4. Break up chunks of text with visuals

Visuals are perfect for illustrating ideas and emphasizing points.

Don’t be afraid to break up your text with visuals and create some breathing room in your white paper. You can even dedicate a whole page to pictures. Images give the eyes a rest and help reinforce information.

Take this white paper example — it dedicates a whole page to an evocative quote and photo:

Visual headers are also a great way to break up expanses of text while still having the visuals serve a purpose. You can create your own illustrations using icons — this can make for some fun and quirky headers, like in this workplace tech white paper:

5. Allow for plenty of white space on your pages

Speaking of giving your text some room to breathe, make sure you don’t crowd your pages with too much text or images.

Adding white space (or negative space) can help ensure your design isn’t too cluttered. 

Check out how this example uses plenty of white space on nearly every page. The result? An organized and modern white paper design:

6. Use a consistent design that reflects your white paper topic

When you’re designing a multi-page document like a white paper or a report, your pages should have a cohesive look and feel.

(Note: by using a consistent design for your white paper, you’ll achieve  unity  — one of the 13 basic  design principles .)

First, think of the themes reflected in your white paper. Is your white paper about social media engagement? Then using illustrations of birds (“tweeting”) or speech bubbles could work.

A white paper topic focused on establishing a sprint process could use race track visuals instead.

The hiring strategy white paper below uses greenery as the main design theme. Plants reflect the concept of growth associated with recruitment:

7. Incorporate your branding into your white paper design

To improve brand recognition, you need to have  consistent branding  across all marketing collateral. This not only helps your  marketing efforts  but also helps you maintain consistency in your internal and external comms.

Be sure to incorporate your  logo , brand color palettes and fonts into your white paper design.

For business users, Venngage’s  My Brand Kit  makes it easy to save your logos, brand color palettes and brand fonts for later. Then, you can easily apply them to your designs with one click. 

For example, you could change the colors of this white paper template… 

…to this: 

Try thinking of creative ways to incorporate your  branding . 

This white paper design, for instance, extends the use of its signature color beyond standard headers and icons. It actually applies a transparent color overlay to the images, adding a punch of color and reinforcing its brand palette in an unexpected way:

We have plenty more white paper design tips in our post on the top 20+ white paper examples you can use for your business. Or you could browse our business white paper templates selection to get started right away!

What is a white paper?

A white paper is a well-researched, in-depth report that discusses a problem and proposes a solution to that problem. Here’s an example:

Typically backed up with lots of data and persuasive, factual evidence, quality white papers address complex concepts or problems, making them essential for any content marketing strategy.

For more information on the origin of white papers (including why they’re called “white papers” in the first place!), read our post:  What is a White Paper? 15 White Paper Examples to Get Started .

What is the purpose of a white paper?

White papers often have original research to back them up, and take a strong stance on what needs to be done to solve a problem.

In other words, white papers advocate for the best solution to a particular problem, making them authoritative by nature. This makes sense given that they’re often used by the government, like in this example:

White papers are everywhere these days, and businesses use them for all sorts of things. But if you’re tackling a government white paper, these government white paper templates might be just what you need.

They’re still an authoritative source of information, but rather than just to inform or educate, white papers can also influence an audience’s decision-making process.

This marketing white paper , for example, aims to persuade businesses to market themselves effectively in order to attract talent:

Companies can also use white papers to show that their product or service can best solve their customers’ problems. Of course, they still need to back their claims with research and evidence.

A cyber security company could use this white paper to showcase their expertise and offerings in order to drum up more business.

Make sure your white paper is not only informative but also engaging!

Remember how the average human attention span has dropped to below that of a goldfish?

Even when a reader is interested in the topic of your white paper and plans to devote a good chunk of their time reading it, they may still bounce if your content is too dense (read: walls of text).

So make sure you think of your audience when you write your white paper and follow our design tips to keep them engaged.

And remember, you can create a professional, well-designed white paper using one of Venngage’s white paper templates. It’s free to get started!

How to Write and Format a White Paper: The Definitive Guide

Table of Contents

What is a white paper, use and value, how to select a white paper topic:, white paper preparation, white paper format, final thoughts.

You’re ready to compile and share your company’s deep knowledge of your industry. A white paper seems like the perfect format. It’s a useful product to highlight your company’s expertise and a valuable tool in marketing.

But, how do you transform your knowledge into white paper content?

White papers are similar but distinct from business reports. In order to write a successful one, you need to understand the difference and include key elements. This article will help you decide if a white paper is right for you, and if yes, how to prepare and produce one.

To write a white paper, thoroughly research a topic and propose a comprehensive solution in a well-structured, factual, and persuasive document.

A white paper should include: 1. Title (accurate but enticing) 2. Abstract (including the Problem Statement) 3. Background (may be detailed and technical or broad and high-level, depending on audience) 4. Solution (the ‘ta-da’ moment of the white paper) 5. Conclusion (the summary of findings) 6. References (using correct industry format)

A white paper is an authoritative document intended to inform the reader on a particular topic fully. It combines expert knowledge and research into a document that argues for a specific solution or recommendation.

The white paper allows the reader to understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.

White papers are data-centric, text-heavy business documents. Due to a large amount of data and research, white papers are deep reads and tend to have a formal tone.

Businesses write white papers both to record expertise and to market themselves to prospective customers.

White papers are generally written for an audience outside of the business. Therefore, they are a tool to attract readers to the company by offering top-quality, industry knowledge.

However, a white paper is not a sales pitch. It sells the company by highlighting the internal expertise and valuable recommendations, not by bidding for business.

Sales Pitch: 8 Ways ABC Marketing will save money on your social media budget

White paper: Social Media Advertising: Matching marketing needs and platforms

Write an actual white paper with individual instructor guidance.

Our Advanced Business Writing Course + Coaching includes written feedback and two live coaching sessions.

Choosing the right topic is essential to have your white paper read. There are three major factors:

1. Audience

As with any business writing, your audience is your first consideration. The white paper must be written with a target reader in mind. The audience may be long-time customers familiar with the industry or new prospective buyers who are entirely new to the field.

Reflect on the reader’s pain points or major questions. Within these topics, look for ones that have not been fully investigated or the available information is out-of-date.

2. Expertise

Your white paper should match and highlight your company’s expertise.

The entire document should provide a complete investigation, including external research and internal knowledge. The business’s own know-how informs the content that is included and how it is compiled.

3. Problem-based and solution-focused

White papers should identify and address a particular problem. The problem should be relevant and timely in your field. The document may focus on issues such as common dilemmas, new trends, changing techniques, and industry comparison.

The white paper must have a proposed solution or recommendation to answer the problem. This solution is based on thoroughly examining the problem and potential solutions.

The selected topic must be comprehensively researched. Pull information from online references, industry resources, and internal documents. White papers are data-focused, so they should be supported by significant research.

There’s no hard and fast rule on citations but you need to cite any information that is not public knowledge and that you didn’t know before beginning your research. However, understand that the reader’s confidence is likely to increase with an increasing number of cited references.

Of course, all resources must come from authoritative sites. In order to write a valuable document, all research materials must be from credible, reliable sources.

Read other white papers

Are there white papers covering your topic or area already? Read them to determine the knowledge gaps and the opportunities to build on existing content. This review will also ensure that your white paper is novel instead of redundant.

Use a mind-map

It can be overwhelming to keep track of the many sources, ideas, and content involved in preparing a white paper. A helpful organizational tool is the mind-map . A mind-map allows the writer to catalog and connect the many different pieces into one visual overview.

We suggest using the free tool MindMeister to organize your content. It’s simple to use and free.

FreeMind is another alternative but some organizations don't allow it to be used since it must be downloaded.

Don't forget visual elements

When designing a white paper, the written content is most important. However, taking the time to create an aesthetically pleasing design cannot be ignored. It should be remembered that the visuals used can greatly contribute to the overall impact of your white paper. By using visual elements such as images, animations, videos, charts, and graphs that reinforce and illustrate arguments, can greatly increase clarity for the reader while making key points stand out.

White papers generally follow a standard document format. The content order may seem similar to other business reports, but there is one major difference:

A white paper places the conclusion at the end.

Many business communications, such as technical reports or proposals, place the main conclusion at the beginning of the document. This order responds to the desires of the reader and their preference in receiving the information.

In a white paper, the content and research inform the reader and increase their understanding of the problem throughout the document. The final section provides the ‘ta-da!’ moment where the reader now receives the solution which is supported by the evidence in the document.

The reader’s journey and preferences in a white paper and business report differ. The major findings follow suit.

If you’re unsure of these distinctions or are looking to improve your business writing skills, consider enrolling in our online self-paced Technical Report Writing Course (see all of our courses here ).

And, no matter the journey, the document must be easy to understand and include informative headings for easy navigation.

Choose an accurate title

A good title is essential. It should clearly indicate what the reader will learn from the white paper. It should also be enticing.

Bland title example: White paper on Law 123.4 Referencing Environmental Impact Assessments.

Enticing title example: The Rules are Changing: White Paper on the Environmental Impact Assessment Legislation Proposals in 2018

The phrase ‘white paper’ does not necessarily need to be in the title at all. Some audiences are seeking that authoritative indicator. Other readers may be scared off from valuable content because of the term. As always, think of what your audience would prefer.

The abstract offers the reader a brief overview of the white paper’s main points. It allows the reader to ensure they have found a document relevant to their needs. After reading, the reader should be able to know if they are ‘in the right place.’

Problem statement

The problem statement specifies the issue the white paper will address. The problem needs to be defined and placed into a context to ensure it’s understood by the reader.

This section provides the background information required for the audience to grasp the problem and, ultimately, the solution. The content may be detailed and technical or broad and high-level. The content depends on the reader and the problem.

If original research is completed for the white paper, the methods should be communicated.

The ‘ta-da’ moment of the white paper.

Based on the preceding information, the solution is now presented. It is developed and argued for using the gathered evidence and the expertise of the author and their company.

This section summarizes the white paper’s major findings. Recommendations based on the solution are provided.

All sources used to develop the white paper must be collected and cited in this section. It adds validity to the document. It also gives the reader content for further research. Depending on your industry, follow MLA or APA citation formats. 

Write any complex document and get personal feedback on your actual business writing.

Our Advanced Business Writing Course + Coaching includes written feedback and two live coaching sessions on any document.

Writing a good white paper is not a simple task. However, the investment of time and skill can produce a valuable document that shares your company’s knowledge, contributing to overall education and progress in your industry. And, a good white paper increases business opportunities. As you develop an informational document such as a white paper, it's helpful to strengthen your writing process with our Advanced Business Writing course. 

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Writing a White Paper (Format, Tips, Examples & Templates)

Get white paper examples by leading companies. Learn how to write & format a white paper for business and marketing. Create, write & design white papers A-Z.

Hadar Peretz

9 minute read

Short answer

What is the best white paper format?

• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Problem Statement
• Solution Overview
• Benefits and Advantages
• Case Studies or Examples
• Technical Details or Methodology
• Recommendations
• References or Sources

What makes an effective business white paper?

An effective business white paper format is concise, well-researched, and addresses a specific audience's pain points. It offers actionable solutions, incorporates compelling visuals, and establishes the author's authority on the subject.

Key considerations when creating a business white paper

Audience Understanding : Know your target audience's needs and preferences.

Clear Objective: Define the purpose of the white paper.

Visual Appeal: Incorporate relevant charts, graphs, and images.

Credibility : Cite reliable sources and provide evidence.

Engaging Narrative: Craft a compelling story in content and design that guides the reader.

How to write a white paper (step-by-step guide)

Writing a white paper is no small feat. It requires research, understanding, and a knack for presenting information engagingly.

But with the right approach, your white paper can position your brand as an industry leader, driving leads and fostering trust. Remember, it's all about offering value and meeting the needs of your audience.

Step 1: Grasp the white paper's core

Recognize that a white paper is more than just a long article. It's a detailed report on a specific topic, designed to educate and address issues.

Understand its origins from government documents and its evolution into a tool for thought leadership.

Step 2: Define your target audience

Identify who you're writing for: industry professionals, novices, or another group.

Tailor your language, tone, and content depth to their needs and interests.

Step 3: Prioritize value over promotion

Keep the content educational and avoid overtly promotional language.

Aim to establish trust and position your brand as a reliable information source.

Step 4: Embrace the drafting process

Don't aim for perfection in the first go.

Write multiple drafts, take breaks, and seek feedback for refinement.

Step 5: Build your content around a narrative (not facts)

Use storytelling techniques to maintain reader interest.

Introduce problems, provide solutions, and share success stories for context.

Step 6: Dodge common mistakes

Avoid a salesy tone; keep it educational.

Base your content on thorough research.

Invest in good design for readability and engagement.

Ground your content in real-world examples and actionable insights.

Step 7: pay attention to format and design

Use design elements to highlight key information when formatting your white paper.

Stay updated with design trends, but ensure they align with your topic and audience.

Step 8: conclude and review

Summarize the main points and insights.

Review the entire content for coherence, clarity, and value.

16 impactful white paper examples for business and marketing

Discover exemplary business white paper formats from industry leaders to refine your approach. Draw inspiration from best practices and elevate your corporate documentation standards, and learn est practicess based on our in-depth analysis of each example.

Microsoft white paper

The white paper from MSA discusses the future of operational development, emphasizing changes in the operational landscape. It targets professionals in the operational and business development sectors.

Microsoft digital marketing white paper

Good Points:

Forward-Looking: The document does an excellent job of forecasting future trends and aligning them with current industry practices, making it highly valuable for strategic planning.

Cohesive Structure: The white paper is organized logically, allowing for easy navigation and comprehension of the content.

Inclusion of Data: The use of data, charts, and figures strengthens the arguments and offers readers empirical evidence to support the presented information.

Engaging Imagery: The inclusion of relevant images and diagrams aids in visualizing the concepts discussed. The visuals are not only explanatory but also break the monotony of continuous text, making the reading experience more engaging.

Bad Points:

Generalized Statements: At times, the document can be a bit broad in its statements, lacking specific details that might be beneficial to the reader.

Heavy Text: The document leans heavily on text, with fewer visual elements like charts or infographics, which might make it denser for some readers.

Lack of Actionable Insights: While the paper provides a broad overview of the future landscape, it could benefit from more actionable recommendations for businesses to apply immediately.

Lack of Summaries: While the content is well-structured, there's a missing element of concise summaries or key takeaways at the end of major sections. Providing these could aid readers in recapping the essential points discussed.

Missing Call to Action: The document provides valuable information but lacks a clear call to action, guiding the reader on the next steps or how to further engage with the topic or the organization.

Google Cloud white paper

Google Cloud's white paper emphasizes its commitment to privacy in Generative AI. Targeted at enterprise customers, it belongs to the cloud computing and artificial intelligence industry.

Google short technical white paper

Detailed Explanations: The document provides thorough explanations of how user data is treated, ensuring transparency.

Relevance to Current Trends: Addressing privacy in AI is timely and crucial, making this paper highly relevant to current industry concerns.

Repetitiveness: Some points, especially around data ownership and privacy, are reiterated multiple times, which might make the content feel redundant.

Lack of Practical Examples: While the commitments are clear, real-world examples or case studies would help readers understand the practical implications better.

Visual Enhancements: While the design is clear, it could benefit from more engaging visuals or infographics to highlight key points or statistics, adding an extra layer of engagement.

Interactive Elements: Given the digital nature of the topic and the platform (Google Cloud), the integration of interactive elements or links to online demos, tutorials, or related resources could further enrich the reader's experience.

Amazon AWS white paper

This document from AWS provides a framework for designing and operating machine learning workloads using best practices. It's intended for solution architects and ML practitioners in the tech industry.

Amazon technical white paper

Depth and Breadth: AWS dives deep into each of the five pillars of the Well-Architected Framework. It provides thorough explanations, ensuring that readers understand each concept.

Use of Case Studies: Real-world examples and case studies are included, which offer readers practical insights and relatable scenarios.

Relevance: The document clearly understands its target audience. By providing specific AWS service recommendations for different ML scenarios, it offers actionable insights.

Technical Jargon: While it's aimed at professionals, the language can sometimes be overly technical, which might make it less accessible to newcomers.

Length: The document is quite lengthy. While it covers a lot, it might be overwhelming for some readers, especially those looking for quick solutions.

Assumed Prior Knowledge: The document sometimes assumes the reader has prior knowledge of AWS services, which might not always be the case.

Engaging Design Elements: While the document is informative, it could benefit from more design elements, such as infographics or pull quotes, to break up the monotony and highlight key points.

Apple white paper

This document by Apple introduces ProRes RAW, a new video codec, detailing its features and benefits. It's crafted for video professionals, filmmakers, and content creators in the multimedia sector.

Technical Mastery: Apple showcases its technical prowess, diving deep into the intricacies of the codec, which will be appreciated by professionals in the field.

Benefits Highlighted: The document effectively underscores the advantages of using ProRes RAW, making it clear why it stands out from other codecs.

Practical Use Cases: Apple includes scenarios and cases where ProRes RAW can be best utilized, providing context and clarity to readers.

Assumed Knowledge: The white paper assumes a certain level of technical expertise from the reader. While this is okay for its target audience, it might alienate novices.

Limited Comparisons: Although the document does a great job explaining ProRes RAW, it could benefit from direct comparisons with other existing codecs.

Dense Terminology: There's a heavy use of technical jargon without sufficient explanations, which could be challenging for those not deeply versed in video codecs.

Lack of Interactive Elements: Given the brand and the nature of the topic, incorporating interactive elements like QR codes leading to video demonstrations or tutorials could have added significant value.

Missing Call to Action: While the document provides a plethora of information, it doesn't guide the reader on the next steps, whether that's purchasing a product, joining a workshop, or any other related action.

IBM white paper

Market Connections' white paper focuses on enhancing data utility and management. It caters to business leaders, data analysts, and professionals in the data-driven decision-making realm.

IBM research white paper

Engaging Visual Design: The document uses a vibrant color palette, dynamic shapes, and appealing graphics, which make the content pop. This design approach draws the reader in and keeps them engaged.

Relevance to Current Trends: In today's data-centric world, the paper's focus on supercharging data is timely and resonates with the needs of modern businesses.

Concrete Recommendations: The document provides specific strategies and tools for improving data utility, making it actionable for readers.

Case Studies & Testimonials: The inclusion of real-world examples and testimonials lends credibility and offers a practical perspective on the discussed topics.

Lack of Technical Depth: While the paper is informative, it doesn't delve deep into the technical aspects of data management, which might leave some tech-savvy readers wanting more.

Generic Advice: Some sections offer generalized advice that can be found in many other resources, making them less unique.

Potential Bias: The paper occasionally comes across as promotional for Market Connections' services, which might detract from its objectivity.

Oracle White Paper

This document from Oracle delves into the integration of Oracle Content and Experience with Oracle WebCenter Portal. Targeted at IT professionals, it belongs to the tech and software industry.

Oracle corporate white paper

Clear Structure: The paper is well-organized with distinct sections, making it easy for readers to navigate and find specific information.

Visual Aids: The use of diagrams and flowcharts helps in understanding complex processes and integrations.

Technical Depth: The paper provides in-depth technical details, ensuring that IT professionals can grasp the intricacies of the integration.

Jargon-Heavy: While it's intended for IT professionals, the heavy use of jargon might alienate readers who are not deeply familiar with Oracle's suite of products.

Lack of Real-World Examples: The paper could benefit from real-world use cases to illustrate the benefits of the integration.

Aesthetic Appeal: The design is quite basic, and a more modern and engaging layout might make the content more appealing to a wider audience.

SAP white paper

SAP's white paper delves into digital manufacturing within regulated environments, emphasizing quality and compliance. It's designed for manufacturing professionals, quality assurance teams, and regulatory compliance officers.

SAP business white paper

Industry-Specific Insights: SAP offers valuable insights tailored to regulated manufacturing environments, ensuring the content is highly relevant to its target audience.

Holistic View: The document covers a wide range of topics, from digital transformation to compliance challenges, offering a comprehensive overview.

Expertise on Display: SAP's deep industry knowledge is evident, lending credibility to the information and recommendations provided.

Complexity: The document, at times, delves into intricate details which, while valuable, might make it challenging for readers unfamiliar with the topic.

Promotional Tone: There's a noticeable push towards SAP's solutions, which, while understandable, might come off as less objective to some readers.

Lack of Practical Examples: While the paper is rich in information, it could benefit from more real-world examples or case studies to illustrate the discussed concepts.

Lack of Visual Summaries: While the document is rich in content, it misses out on visual summaries (like infographics) that can quickly convey complex information. Given the technical nature of the topic, such visuals would be beneficial for comprehension.

Pfizer white paper

This white paper by Pfizer delves into the significance of community engagement in diversifying clinical trials, particularly focusing on the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine trial.

It aims to address the healthcare disparities highlighted by the pandemic and the urgent need for diverse representation in clinical trials.

The target audience includes healthcare professionals, researchers, and policymakers in the medical and pharmaceutical industries.

Pfizer research white paper

Comprehensive Structure: The document is well-structured with clear headings, subheadings, and a table of contents, making it easy for readers to navigate and understand the content.

Relevant Data and Citations: The white paper provides relevant statistics, data, and references to support its claims, enhancing its credibility.

Clear Objective: The paper's goal is evident from the beginning, ensuring that readers understand its purpose and the importance of the topic.

Lengthy Content: Some sections are quite detailed, which might be overwhelming for readers looking for quick insights.

Lack of Visuals: The document could benefit from more graphs, charts, or infographics to break the monotony and present data in a more engaging manner.

Repetitive Emphasis: While the importance of diversity in clinical trials is a crucial topic, the paper occasionally reiterates the same points, which could be condensed for brevity.

AT&T white paper

This white paper delves into the importance of mobility in the modern collaboration era. It's intended for business leaders, IT professionals, and teams looking to enhance collaborative efforts in the digital age.

AT&T company white paper

Well-Structured: The document is organized in a logical manner, with clear sections and subheadings, facilitating easy navigation.

Actionable Advice: It provides concrete strategies and recommendations on enhancing mobility for collaboration, ensuring readers can take immediate action.

Potential Overemphasis: While mobility is essential, the document occasionally seems to overstate its importance, which might come across as a bit unbalanced.

Lack of Diverse Case Studies: While there are some examples, the paper could benefit from a broader range of case studies across different industries.

Assumed Context: The paper sometimes assumes readers are fully aware of the current collaboration landscape, which might not be true for everyone.

Tesla white paper

Dell Technologies' ESG report showcases their commitment to driving human progress through sustainable technology, emphasizing their efforts in advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion, transforming lives, and upholding trust.

Tesla consumer white paper

Highly Specialized Content: The paper zeroes in on a niche topic within the energy sector, providing deep insights that are valuable to a specific audience.

Clear Explanations: Complex concepts related to net billing tariffs are broken down and explained in a comprehensible manner.

Data-Driven Arguments: The use of charts, figures, and empirical data adds weight to the points being made and supports the document's claims.

Narrow Focus: While the specialized content is a strength, it also means the paper might be too narrow for a general audience or those looking for a broader overview of the energy sector.

Stylized Language: At times, the document uses language that's a bit too stylized or technical, which might make it less accessible to some readers.

Potential Bias: The paper seems to advocate for specific tariff structures, which might come off as less objective to some reader mmunities.

CitiBank white paper

This white paper delves into the transformation and disruption in financial market infrastructures, focusing on the evolution of securities services. Intended for financial professionals and industry leaders, it belongs to the banking and financial services sector.

CitiBank financial white paper

Comprehensive Coverage: The document provides a holistic view of the securities services landscape, touching upon various aspects like settlement transformation, digital assets, and the role of Central Securities Depositories (CSDs).

Data-Driven Insights: The paper is backed by quantitative data, with surveys involving 483 individuals globally, offering credibility to its findings.

Complex Jargon: The document uses industry-specific terms that might be challenging for readers unfamiliar with the financial sector.

Lengthy: While comprehensive, its extensive coverage might be overwhelming for someone looking for quick insights.

Lack of Visual Aids: More charts, graphs, or infographics could have made the data more digestible and engaging.

General Electric white paper

GE's white paper discusses the evolving landscape of global power markets. Intended for energy industry decision-makers. The document provides a holistic view of the energy market, touching on various aspects from production to consumption

GE thought-leadership white paper

Comprehensive Overview: The document provides an in-depth exploration of power markets, encompassing historical data, current trends, and future projections. This thorough approach offers readers a holistic perspective on the subject.

Effective Data Visualization: The use of charts, graphs, and tables is commendable. They present intricate data in a digestible format, allowing readers to quickly grasp key trends and insights.

Segmented Content Approach: The content is divided into distinct sections, each addressing specific facets of power markets. This segmentation aids in navigation and allows readers to delve into areas of specific interest.

Dense Text: Some sections are text-heavy, which might be overwhelming for some readers. Breaking up the content with more visuals or bullet points could improve readability.

Design Uniformity: While the document is rich in content, there's room for improvement in terms of design consistency, particularly in the color schemes and visual elements used.

Static Design: Given the technical and extensive nature of the topic, integrating interactive elements or links to supplementary multimedia resources could enhance the reader's engagement and understanding.

Clarification of Technical Aspects: The document occasionally uses industry-specific terms and concepts. Including a glossary or providing side notes with explanations would ensure accessibility for readers not deeply familiar with power markets.

ExxonMobil white paper

A comprehensive exploration of ExxonMobil's commitment to the energy transition, focusing on innovative solutions for lower-emission marine fuels. Targeted at stakeholders in the marine industry and those invested in sustainable energy solutions.

ExxonMobil business white paper

Relevant Data: The white paper provides specific data points, such as projected energy consumption and emission reduction targets, which lend credibility to the content.

Engaging Visuals: While I couldn't directly view the visuals, the structure suggests the inclusion of charts or images, which can help break up the text and provide visual context.

Lengthy Content: Some sections could benefit from concise writing to ensure the reader remains engaged throughout.

Call to Action: While the document provides valuable information, it could benefit from a clearer call to action, guiding readers on the next steps or how to get involved.

World Economic Forum (WEF) white paper

The World Economic Forum's white paper delves into the emerging concept of the industrial metaverse. It's crafted for industry leaders, technologists, and policymakers keen on understanding the future intersection of industry and virtual realms.

WEF financial white paper

Cutting-Edge Topic: The WEF addresses a novel and emerging trend, making the paper a valuable resource for those looking to stay ahead in the tech and industrial sectors.

Expert Contributions: The document includes insights from industry experts and thought leaders, lending credibility and depth to the content.

Global Perspective: As expected from the WEF, the paper provides a global view, considering the implications and developments of the industrial metaverse across different regions and cultures.

Infographics and Visual Aids: The use of charts, graphs, and other visual aids complements the text and provides a break from long passages. This not only makes the content more engaging but also aids in quicker comprehension of complex data.

Conceptual Density: The topic, being new, is also complex. The paper sometimes delves into highly conceptual discussions which might be challenging for some readers.

Potential Overhype: While the industrial metaverse is undoubtedly exciting, the paper occasionally might come across as too optimistic, without sufficiently addressing potential pitfalls or challenges.

Lack of Practical Guidance: The document is rich in forecasting and analysis but could benefit from more actionable insights or steps for businesses to start their metaverse journey.

Lack of Interactive Elements : For a topic like the metaverse, which is inherently interactive and dynamic, the inclusion of QR codes or links to interactive demos, videos, or web pages might have enhanced the reader's experience.

Siemens white paper

Siemens explores the transformation towards smart manufacturing, emphasizing the integration of digital and physical realms. Aimed at manufacturers, it belongs to the industrial automation and digitalization sector.

Siemens business white paper

Holistic Approach: The paper offers a comprehensive view of the smart manufacturing journey, from challenges to outcomes, ensuring readers get a full picture.

Use of Models: The introduction of concepts like the Digital OODA Loop provides readers with actionable frameworks to apply in their operations.

Human-Centric Focus: Beyond just machinery and processes, the paper emphasizes the importance of human-centric outcomes, highlighting the balance between technology and worker well-being.

Assumed Familiarity: The paper dives deep into specific Siemens solutions without always providing sufficient background, which might be challenging for those unfamiliar with Siemens' offerings.

Limited External Perspectives: The paper heavily focuses on Siemens' solutions. Incorporating third-party testimonials or case studies might have added more credibility and a broader perspective.

Verizon white paper

This white paper emphasizes the importance of network resilience in the face of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Targeted at C-level executives, it belongs to the telecommunications and cybersecurity industry.

Verizon thought-leadership white paper

Practical Recommendations: The document offers actionable steps for C-level leaders to enhance network resilience, making it a hands-on guide.

Relevance to Current Threat Landscape: By focusing on DDoS attacks, which are prevalent today, the paper addresses a pressing concern for many businesses.

Promotional Content: The inclusion of Verizon's own solution (DDoS Shield) might come off as promotional, potentially detracting from the paper's objective tone.

Lack of Case Studies: Real-world examples or case studies could have added more weight to the paper's arguments and made it more relatable.

How to design a white paper for engagement

White papers are essential tools for businesses, especially in the B2B sector, to establish authority, inform potential customers, and influence their decisions.

But beyond the content, the design of a white paper plays a pivotal role in capturing the reader's attention and ensuring the message is effectively conveyed.

Best practices for white paper design

Readability is Key: Ensure that the text is easy to read. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and subheadings to break up the content. The choice of font and its size also plays a crucial role in readability.

White Space: Don't clutter the design. Proper use of white space can make the content more breathable and aesthetically pleasing.

Mobile Optimization: With many users accessing content on mobile devices, ensure that your white paper design is responsive and looks good on all screen sizes.

Interactive white paper design

Engage with Multimedia: Modern digital platforms allow for the integration of videos, GIFs, and animations in white papers. These multimedia elements can make the content more dynamic and engaging.

Clickable Elements: Incorporate hyperlinks, clickable infographics, and call-to-action buttons. This not only provides additional resources to the reader but also encourages them to explore related content or take desired actions.

Feedback Loops: Allow readers to leave comments, ask questions, or even participate in polls within the white paper. This interactivity can provide valuable insights into what your audience thinks and feels about the content.

Here is what a static white paper looks like compared with an interactive white paper:

Designing White Papers for Storytelling

Narrative Flow: Just like a compelling story, a white paper should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Start with an introduction that outlines the problem or challenge, delve into the details in the main content, and conclude with a solution or call to action.

Visual Elements: Use graphics, charts, and images to break the monotony of text and illustrate complex ideas. These visual elements not only make the content more engaging but also help in explaining intricate concepts in a digestible manner.

Consistent Branding: While the white paper should be informative, it's also an opportunity to subtly reinforce your brand. Use consistent colors, fonts, and logos that align with your brand identity.

Here's an example of storytelling white paper design:

Business white paper interactive storytelling templates

With traditional PowerPoint slides, your content may blend into the crowd. Storydoc's interactive white paper templates elevate your content, making it dynamic and memorable.

Unlike static slides, Storydoc's animated, annotated, and narrated templates engage readers, making them twice as captivating as standard reports.

Moreover, they're cost-effective and let you quickly produce your white paper.

I am a Marketing Specialist at Storydoc, I research, analyze and write on our core topics of business presentations, sales, and fundraising. I love talking to clients about their successes and failures so I can get a rounded understanding of their world.

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• How to Write ____

How To Write a Whitepaper Document

Table of Contents

A white paper is the perfect format to compile and share your business’s deep knowledge of the industry. It’s a useful product that can highlight your company’s expertise, and it’s also a valuable marketing tool. But how exactly do you transform your knowledge into a cohesive white paper?

White papers and business reports are similar, yet still distinct from one another. To write a successful white paper, it’s necessary to understand the difference and cover various key elements. This article will help you determine whether a white paper is for you, as well as how to prepare and produce one. 

What Is a White Paper?

A white paper is an authoritative document. It’s meant to fully inform the reader on a specific topic by combining expert knowledge and research into one document, which argues for a specific recommendation or solution. White papers allow the reader to either understand an issue, make a decision, or solve a problem.

White papers are focused on data, and they’re very text-heavy business documents. Because of their large amount of data and research, they are deep reads with a generally formal tone.

Use and Value

There are two main reasons that businesses write white papers: to market themselves and to record expertise. Usually, white papers are written for an audience outside of the business, so they’re a tool to attract readers to the company with their top-quality industry knowledge.

A white paper is not a sales pitch, however. It doesn’t bid for business; instead, it sells the company by highlighting valuable recommendations and internal expertise. 

Sales Pitch:  10 Ways XYZ Marketing Will Save Money in Your Advertising Budget

White Paper:  Advertising: Matching Marketing Platforms and Needs

How to Select a Topic for Your White Paper

If you want people to read your white paper, then you have to choose the right topic. There are three major factors to remember:

1. Audience

The audience should always be your first consideration. Every white paper needs to be written with your target reader in mind. The audience could be prospective buyers that are new to the field, or it could be long-time customers who have familiarity with the industry. 

Focus on the reader’s major questions or pain points. Look for topics within these that haven’t yet been fully investigated, or for which the available information would benefit from an update. 

2. Expertise

A white paper should highlight and match your company’s expertise, providing a complete investigation with both internal knowledge and external research. The content included and the way it’s put together is informed by your business’s own know-how. 

3. Problem-Based and Solution-Focused

White papers identify and address specific problems. The particular problem you choose for your white paper should be timely and relevant in your field. It may focus on issues like new trends, changing techniques, industry comparison, and common dilemmas. Your white paper should have a proposed recommendation or solution that answers the problem. This solution is formulated through a thorough examination of the problem and its possible solutions. 

White Paper Preparation

You always need to do comprehensive research on your selected topic before writing your white paper. Use information from internal documents, industry resources, and online references. Remember that white papers are data-focused, so they need to be supported by a significant amount of research.

Although there’s no exact rule regarding the number of required citations, you’ll need to cite any information that isn’t public knowledge and that you weren’t aware of before conducting your research. Still, you should be aware of the fact that your reader’s confidence in your white paper is likely to increase the more cited references you have. All resources must come from authoritative sites if you want to write a valuable document. Look for research materials that have credible and reliable sources. 

Read Other White Papers

If there are already white papers that cover your area or topic, read them so you can identify the knowledge gaps and opportunities to build on content that already exists. This also ensures that your white paper isn’t redundant and introduces new ideas.

Use a Mind Map

There are many ideas, sources, and content involved in preparing a white paper, and it can be a challenge to keep track of everything. A mind map is a helpful organizational tool that helps the writer catalog and connect all of the pieces into one visual overview. The free tool  FreeMind  is a great way to organise your content, and it’s simple to use. 

Related: Learn about better organising your ideas to serve your audience needs:  How thinking small can improve your writing

White Paper Format

There is a standard document format that white papers generally follow. The order of the content is similar to other business reports, but the major difference is that the conclusion is placed at the end of the white paper. Often, you’ll see business communications like proposals and technical reports put the main conclusion at the beginning of the document. This is a way to cater to readers’ desires and their preference to receive the information as quickly as possible.

The content and research in a white paper inform the reader and continue to increase their understanding of the issue throughout the entire document. In the final section, the reader receives the solution, which is supported by all of the evidence put forth in the document. 

The journey and preferences of the reader are different for white papers and business reports. The major findings follow suit. But regardless of the journey, the white paper must include informative headings and be easy to understand.

Choose an Accurate Title

A good title is crucial. The title should be enticing and indicate exactly what the reader will learn from reading the white paper. 

Bland Title Example:

White paper on Law 567.8 Referencing Environmental Impact Assessments

Enticing Title Example:

The Rules Are Changing: White Paper on the Environmental Impact Assessment Legislation Proposals in 2021

It’s not necessary to include the phrase “white paper” in the title. While some audiences are looking for that type of authoritative indicator, others may shy away from valuable content simply due to the use of the term. Always consider what your audience would prefer.

The abstract is the first portion of the white paper. It offers readers a short overview of the white paper’s main points and shows the reader whether the document is relevant for them. After reading the abstract, the reader should know whether they’re “in the right place.”

Problem Statement

Next, the problem statement identifies the issue that will be addressed within the white paper. The problem should be well-defined and contextualized so that it is understood by the reader. 

The background section of a white paper provides the background information that’s needed for the audience to understand the problem and the solution. Depending on your topic and audience, the content could be technical and detailed, or it could be broad and high-level. If you complete original research for the white paper, be sure to communicate the methods. 

The solution is the “ta-da” moment of the white paper, and it’s based on the preceding information. This solution is developed and argued through the use of the gathered evidence, as well as the author’s and company’s expertise. 

The conclusion of a white paper summarizes its major findings. Recommendations based on the solution are also presented here. 

Within the references section, you’ll need to collect and cite all of the sources that were used to develop the white paper. This adds validity to your document while also providing the reader with further research materials. Depending on the industry, you’ll need to follow either MLA or APA citation formatting rules. 

Final Thoughts

It’s not a simple task to write a white paper. But if you put in sufficient time and skill, you can produce a valuable document that shares your company’s knowledge and expertise. It can contribute to the overall education and progress in your industry. Finally, a good white paper can also increase your business opportunities. 

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How to write a white paper that inspires a year-long content strategy

Written by by Katherine Kim

Published on  November 11, 2020

Reading time  7 minutes

When it comes to establishing one’s brand as an authority, few resources get the job done like a data-driven white paper.

Longer than your typical blog post and more in-depth than an ebook, a white paper is a well-researched piece of content designed to educate readers on a specific topic. It allows you to position your brand as an expert in your field and demonstrate you have a solution to your audience’s problems. And because marketers often gate white papers behind an email form, these reports can help support goals like lead generation and sales.

But with a little foresight, a white paper can do more than capture leads. It can also fuel an entire year’s worth of content and support teams across sales, customer success and even design. From developing social media content to webinars to workshops, there are a number of ways you can extend the life of your white paper.

In this article, we’ll walk you through how to write a white paper as well as how to turn those data and insights into new content for the entire year.

What makes a white paper valuable?

Traditionally, a white paper is defined as an informational document to promote a product or service and is used by marketing and sales to persuade buyers to purchase from one brand over another. In marketing, a white paper can be used to provide in-depth research on a particular subject (like the state of social marketing) and gives brands an opportunity to build credibility with their audience.

Consider this data-driven white paper example: the Sprout Social Index™ . The Index™ is our annual 30+ page white paper filled with unique data based on consumer and marketer surveys. We look specifically at the state of social marketing, and offer insights on topics like consumer behaviors, marketers’ social goals and what differentiates one brand’s social presence from a competitor.

This is our ninth year of #trend forecasting with the Sprout Social Index: Social Media Trends for 2022 and Beyond We surveyed over 1,000 U.S. consumers and 500 U.S. social marketers to understand how social has transformed. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/6XgNkv64ps — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) May 17, 2022

It takes roughly three months and collaboration across marketing, design and sales for the Index™ to come to life. On the other hand, this blog post you’re reading took me about one week to complete. To illustrate how to plan and develop a white paper with legs beyond its initial launch, we’ll share how we create the Index™ and the various assets that come from our annual report.

Phase 1. Planning for success

Before diving into topic ideation, establish the goals and objectives you want to achieve with your white paper. Goals can include everything from raising brand awareness in your target audience to fueling new business acquisition by generating leads. And determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to track your progress toward your goals, like net new users and content downloads. From there, develop a project plan with clear expectations around responsibilities and due dates, like when to expect a first draft or design assets for social promotion.

Once your goals and project plan are in place, then you can focus on narrowing your white paper to one specific topic. When in doubt, start by identifying your audience and brainstorming the different problems you can help them solve.

For the Sprout Social Index™, we look at a couple of factors to inform our direction:

• Our audience’s needs. Think about who is going to read your white paper and what problems they’re hoping to solve with the information provided. For the Index™, we know we’re speaking to social media marketers of all industries and experience levels, from solo practitioners to directors managing a team. So the data we offer needs to help our audience advance their careers, strengthen their strategies and sharpen their skill sets. We’ll consider things like top goals and challenges for social marketers, how social is viewed within an organization and what skills marketers hope to develop.
• The state of the industry. In addition to specific audience needs, we also look at what’s happening within the industry at large. Are there emerging trends our audience wants to understand? How are other brands responding to industry changes and what can readers learn from these examples? To ensure the Index™ is relevant for social marketers of all industries, we’ll look at big trends in the overall social marketing landscape like which platforms are most popular among consumers and what types of content generate the most engagement.

If you plan to use your white paper to inspire a year’s worth of content, take a moment to evaluate if the topic will be relevant a year from now. Timely data, while it can be extremely valuable as part of your content strategy, gives you less runway to develop content six, seven or eight months post launch. Additionally, you’ll need to have enough data to work with in the future. Keeping the topic broad enough will enable you to drill down into specific angles for future content.

Phase 2. Writing a white paper from start to finish

With a plan in place, it’s time to conduct your research, develop your white paper structure and deploy any surveys for data collection.

With the Index™, we use a platform like SurveyMonkey to conduct two different surveys: one for 1,000 consumers and one for 1,000 social marketers. We ask consumers questions like which social platforms they use the most and what actions can turn them off to a brand’s social presence. In the marketer survey, we ask them how they use social data, what their greatest challenges are and what factors influence their approach to social.

If you’re unsure how to analyze the data , try creating a separate Google Doc or spreadsheet to house your key findings, organized by question number. When reviewing the Index™ data, we look at things like:

• Responses to all questions without any filtering or comparisons
• Results when we narrow our focus to one particular subgroup (e.g. marketers at companies with only 1-50 employees)
• Responses that contradict our original hypothesis
• Contrasts between the two audiences (e.g. marketers versus consumers)

Remember: you won’t use every single data point in your actual report. Instead of tossing unused data to the side, consider using that information as inspiration for a future piece of content.

With your data in hand, it’s time to put pen to paper. Writing a white paper can take several days, or even weeks, and it’s helpful to start with a comprehensive outline to plan out the report flow. In the outline for the Index™, we include examples of the quantitative data to highlight and brand examples discovered during the research stage. Allocate about one week for outlining and drafting, which should include chart mockups of the data you plan to use.

For reviews, ask for feedback from your key stakeholders, including those who don’t work in content directly. Index™ feedback from our social team ensures we’re giving our target audience what they need while our PR team can recommend future storylines inspired by the report.

Phase 3. Bringing the data to life with creative

Another facet that distinguishes a white paper from a blog post is that white papers are often packaged as a designed PDF.

In addition to creating the PDF version of the Index™, our design team creates graphic assets and charts for use in content, on social and beyond. One of the reasons we ask our social team to review the final draft of the Index™ is to get feedback on which stats and insights will make for compelling graphics on social.

For example, one of the charts included in the Index™ talks about actions consumers take when they follow a brand on social..

Using the feedback from social, we identified one standout data point from this graph, and the design team turned it into a separate social graphic.

Fact: Fewer people are using hashtags for social discovery. Find out where consumers are turning their attention instead in this year's Sprout Social Index. https://t.co/YuWeXmiWBk pic.twitter.com/rcdzFDJNpx — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) May 18, 2020

Developing a unique design system and color palette for each white paper creates a consistent visual identity so every asset looks like it belongs to the Index™ campaign. This also gives designers the flexibility to create new assets like GIFs throughout the entire year because they have a wide range of colors and motifs to pull from.

With your report ready to launch, remember you still need to track your progress toward your goals. Tracking not only shows you if you’ve achieved your goals but also if you need to adjust your distribution strategy to make up for lost ground.

Phase 4. Giving your white paper longevity

So you’ve officially published the final white paper PDF and all of your design assets—congratulations! But just because you hit that publish button doesn’t mean the work behind the scenes suddenly stops.

To kick off the Index™, we published a teaser post for  an executive audience . The article preview some of the salient data points and highlight how the report will address marketers’ challenges, ultimately encouraging readers to download the Index™.

50% of consumers say they’re most likely to use social media during a major personal milestone. Create messages that consider your audience’s future plans and show how your brand can help them get there. https://t.co/ov3g4vd8fg — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) May 5, 2020

To keep that momentum going, our social and creative teams collaborated to create the #DataDance, a series of short dance moves inspired by findings from the Index™. We encouraged our followers to both learn and share their own #DataDance with us on social.

How to #DataDance : a thread👇 pic.twitter.com/CfwlOJKDXR — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) May 4, 2020

We also created new content like webinars and articles with industry-specific benchmarks months after the publish date. We also repackaged the Index™ as part of a larger toolkit for marketers as they begin planning for 2021. Finally, we included data from the report in our Data in Action workshop for social marketers, five months after the Index™ launched.

Takeaway #1: Tell people about your product! #SproutDataInAction pic.twitter.com/BUWe7XhBf5 — Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) October 15, 2020

When you can repurpose the data and insights from your white paper, you stand to reach new audiences, reinforce your original argument and demonstrate your expertise in a particular topic.

Breathe new life into your white paper

White papers are not only a great resource for brands to establish their expertise and build authority with their audience, they also can inspire entirely new pieces of content post launch. By repurposing your report and turning it into new content, you can extend the longevity of your data and ensure your white paper continues to drive traffic for the entire year.

Looking for more inspiration for your content strategy? Check out what marketers and consumers say makes a brand’s social best in class and other content insights in the Sprout Social Index™ today.

• Leveling Up
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Executing a successful demand generation strategy [with examples]

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• Other Platforms

SMS marketing 101: What is SMS Marketing (+ examples)

• Now on slide

Build and grow stronger relationships on social

Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.

7 steps on how to write a white paper for business.

Why learn how to write a white paper? White papers are an excellent way for businesses to demonstrate their expertise and knowledge. These reports share information on niche topics and offer solutions to potential customers’ problems.

Writing an engaging white paper is an art form, but it gets easier when you know the basics.

How to write a white paper

Writing an engaging white paper is an art form, but it gets easier when you know the basics. Read on to learn how to write a white paper in seven steps.

• Pick a topic. When it comes to writing a business white paper, good planning is a must. Choose a topic for which you can give detailed expert insights.
• Determine your audience. Think about your target audience to determine relevant information.
• Do research. Investigate your topic thoroughly and find credible sources and references.
• Write the body copy. Draft the main part of your paper using concise and informative language.
• Create an introduction. Tell the reader what they can expect without giving too much away — but craft your introduction after writing the body copy so you know exactly how to lure in the reader.
• Include a headline. Give your white paper an attention-grabbing, brief headline. It’s also good practice to include a subhead that explains your topic in slightly more detail.
• Conclude your white paper. Finish your piece with a brief conclusion summarizing the main points. Also, include a call to action inviting the reader to contact you.

How to write a business white paper that’s engaging.

When crafting a business white paper that’s engaging, it’s crucial to understand how to write an executive summary effectively, capturing the essence of your document concisely and compellingly. To create a white paper that captures readers’ attention and provides valuable insights without overwhelming them, follow these best practices:

• Know your audience. Understand the needs, interests, and knowledge level of your target audience. Tailor the content to their preferences to engage them effectively.
• Compelling introduction. Start with an attention-grabbing introduction that clearly presents the problem or challenge your white paper addresses. Use a hook or intriguing statistic to pique readers’ curiosity.
• Clear and concise structure. Organize the white paper with clear sections, headings, and subheadings. Employ bullet points, numbered lists, and visual aids to enhance readability and help readers find relevant information easily.
• Valuable insights and solutions. Provide data, research, case studies, or expert opinions to support your claims. Offer practical tips and actionable steps that readers can implement in their business or industry.
• Conversational tone. Adopt a conversational tone that is approachable and easy to understand. Avoid excessive technical language and use clear, concise sentences to foster engagement.
• Visuals and examples. Incorporate visuals such as charts, graphs, and relevant images to enhance readability. Use real-world examples or case studies to illustrate points and make them relatable.

When should you write a white paper?

Deciding when to write a business white paper requires careful consideration of your objectives and the specific needs of your industry or audience. Here are some key questions and tips to help you determine when a white paper can be an effective tool:

• Complex topics or industries. Are you addressing a complex, technical, or specialized subject that requires in-depth explanation and analysis?
• Innovative products or solutions. Are you introducing a new product, technology, or solution that demands a detailed explanation to showcase its benefits and advantages?
• Thought leadership and expertise. Do you want to establish your business as a thought leader by sharing your insights, expertise, and unique perspectives?
• Industry trends and challenges. Are there significant trends, challenges, or disruptions in your industry that require analysis, predictions, and strategies?
• Common misconceptions. Do you need to correct any misconceptions or provide clarity on a topic to educate your audience?
• Lead generation and conversions. Do you want to attract qualified leads and convert them into customers by offering valuable insights through a gated white paper?

By considering these factors, you can determine when writing a white paper will be most beneficial for your business, allowing you to effectively demonstrate expertise, educate your audience, and achieve your goals.

Share business white papers as PDF files.

After writing your white paper, you’ll want to get it to your audience in the quickest way possible. Sharing your paper as a PDF document ensures readers will be able to open it securely and read it on any device, anywhere.

With Adobe Acrobat online services, you can convert your white paper to a PDF file . You can also compress the PDF file to a smaller file size and make it faster to share.

Transform your white papers into PDFs effortlessly and discover what more you can do with Acrobat online services today.

Discover everything you can do with Adobe Acrobat to create accessible documents today. You can edit PDFs , fill PDFs and forms, combine PDFs into a single file, and much more.

The 2024 Ultimate Guide: How to Write and Format a White Paper

The step by step guide to succeeding with white paper marketing.

• 1 What is a white paper?
• 2. White paper examples
• 3 How to write a white paper
• 4 Mistakes a white paper should avoid
• 5 White paper Format
• 6 Gating your white papers
• 7 White paper distribution
• 8 Handling your white paper leads
• 9 Choosing the right white paper template
• 10 Final thoughts

Introduction

White papers are a popular and powerful tool for content marketers. They can be used to position your company as a thought leader and authority on a particular topic by presenting useful and persuasive research findings and technical information about your products and services.

White papers can also be used as a powerful asset to generate more leads when the information is valuable enough for readers to submit their personal details in order to access your findings. This ultimate guide will teach you everything you need to make white paper marketing a formidable addition to your content marketing strategy . 

1. What is a white paper and why is it important?

A white paper is an in-depth report or guide informing readers about a specific topic and its problems. It is meant to educate readers and help them to understand and solve an issue. It is important as it helps establish a company as an expert in its field, educates customers, and influences decisions. 

In the world of marketing, a white paper is a long-form piece of content , similar to an eBook . The difference between the two is that white papers tend to be more technical and in-depth. The facts and opinions expressed in white papers are often backed by original research or statistics that the publisher has aggregated from reliable sources. They often include data visualizations such as charts, graphs, tables, and more.

The term "white papers" originated in England as government-issued documents. One famous example is the Churchill White Paper , commissioned by Winston Churchill in 1922.

Today, the term is most commonly applied to “deep dive” style publications for marketing purposes. Businesses — especially in the consulting, financial, or B2B sectors — use them to communicate their organization’s philosophy on a topic, make the case for the superiority of their product, or simply to present important points related to their field.

White papers are no less editorial than other forms of content, but the depth of research lends them an authoritative tone. For this reason, they are good candidates for promoting thought leadership .

Who uses white papers?

In the past, white papers were most often produced by governmental agencies, NGOs, think tanks, consultancies, and financial institutions that needed to present the findings of their ongoing research in a succinct format.

With the widespread growth and adoption of content marketing (the creation and distribution of non-promotional content intended to generate interest in a business and its offerings), white papers have become more common in other industries as well. Any organization that engages in content marketing can benefit from producing white papers.

Their popularity across industries is due to their versatility. While all white papers have certain elements in common, a B2B startup will use them differently than a large consultancy, and both will use them differently from a governmental organization.

Types of white papers

There are numerous types of white papers a business might publish.

• One type is the backgrounder , in which the benefits of their product, service, or methodology are explained in depth.
• Another is a problem-solution approach, which walks the audience through the solution to a problem that is common in their industry.

Other types of white papers simply present a summary of useful statistics and information about the state of a particular field or industry. An example of this would be the Content Marketing Benchmarks Budgets and Trends from the Content Marketing Institute.

Whatever type you produce , the contents of your white paper should serve to showcase your expertise in a given area. Your audience is searching for an information document and will look for an authoritative source — a business they perceive as having in-depth knowledge of a subject.

The contents of your white paper should serve to showcase your expertise in a given area.

How can a white paper benefit businesses or organizations?

White papers enable you to build trust with your audience. They show readers that you're reliable, experienced, and adept in a given domain. When potential customers search for an informational document to help them understand a problem or opportunity they're facing, and you provide them with a quality white paper that helps, they'll turn to you again in the future.

This perception of authority can also serve to boost sales in an organization. More than half the respondents to the Eccolo Media B2B Technology Content Survey reported having read a white paper before making a buying decision. Buyers prefer to purchase from vendors they trust and see as experts in their field.

Finally, white papers are extremely useful for lead generation . The Content Preferences Survey from DemandGen found that more than three-fourths of survey respondents were willing to exchange personal information for a white paper — more than for eBooks , case studies, analyst reports , podcasts, brochures , or infographics.

With all of these potential benefits, utilizing white papers in your content marketing strategy can produce great results.

More than three-fourths of survey respondents were willing to exchange personal information for a white paper.

2. White paper examples

When you think about white papers, you probably think of PDF articles with thousands of words. But times are changing and so is the way we produce and consume content.

Nowadays, every marketing collateral (including white papers) needs to be well-written, well-structured, and designed for every type of visitor. 

Here are some great examples of white papers doing exactly that. 

This unique one-pager presenting findings from the Developers at Work Survey demonstrates how a white paper should be done. The animated, interactive data charts show off just what's possible with our embed feature .

Open white paper example #1  

Privacy and the GDPR - BDO

This well-produced special edition produced by BDO and creative agency Monte Media does an incredible job of turning a conventionally dull topic into a piece of content that's engaging and comes to life.

Open white paper example #2

This white paper is a step by step guide to succeeding with content marketing.

See more  white paper examples

Start creating white papers with Foleon

3. How to write a white paper

Starting a white paper can be a daunting task. So much information and research are required that it’s easy to get lost in that portion of the work and let it become a roadblock to actually putting things on paper.

Even after the writing itself has begun, white papers are tricky to do well. Simply listing statistics without some form of narrative arc is a surefire way to keep your white paper from ever being read. Luckily, following a few simple guidelines can help keep a white paper engaging and make the process of finishing it much easier.

Pick the right topic

This might seem obvious, but without a topic that resonates with your audience, your white paper is not likely to be read. When choosing the right topic, you should consider three important criteria:

• It should be something you are qualified to write about.
• It should be something your audience is interested in.
• It should address a topic around which little content has been written already and thus fill a " content gap ."

Naturally, finding a topic that brings points 1 and 2 together is vital. White papers are meant to be authoritative pieces of content based upon the author's experience and expertise, so it's important to write about what you know . But you must match this to the interests of your readers if you're to produce something they'll be eager to engage with .

Don't be afraid to crowdsource information from within your organization. If the topic of a white paper is related to engineering, why not interview an engineer or have them look over what you’ve written? The same goes for other roles. Crowdsourcing knowledge means having the power of a true expert in many fields.

Finally, filling a "content gap" will help your white paper get noticed and gain traction. By addressing a topic no one else has written about definitely, your white paper will be more likely to rank highly on search engines and even be featured elsewhere on the web.

Pro tip: You can even ask your audience what they would like to see in your upcoming white paper. You'll get ideas, make your topic more relevant, and you'll generate buzz around your content even before it's finished. In fact, we used the same method for this guide!

Define your audience

Defining your audience goes hand in hand with choosing the right topic. But moving beyond your audience's interests, it’s important to think of the kinds of people who will be reading your white paper.

• Are they fellow professionals, well versed in your subject?
• Are they likely to be reading something they are relatively unfamiliar with?

Knowing this helps establish the voice you should use and whether industry-specific jargon is appropriate. It also narrows the scope of the research you should include. It’s always important to ensure all arguments are logically sound and well supported, but the stats and information presented should be relevant to the specific audience you're targeting.

Part of defining an audience in the age of Google centers around how people will find the white paper. This means thinking about which platforms specific personas use for research and what search terms they put in. Not only will this help a white paper get found by the right people, but it is useful when outlining the white paper later on.

Optimizing for keywords is important, but remember to write for people, not for search engines. Google is getting better all the time at understanding and matching search intent with relevant content . This has become particularly important with the advent of AI-powered language models which can produce long-form content at scale. 

Wrap it in a great intro and outro

Ad with all good writing, your intro should serve to captivate your audience, pique their curiosity, and entice them to read further. It's good practice to provide a brief summary of what they'll find in the white paper and to emphasize exactly what benefit they'll get from reading it.

Your outro is equally important, especially if you're using your white paper to market your products or services. You should avoid any self-promotion in the body of your white paper, but you can certainly mention your relevant product offerings and how to obtain them — perhaps using a compelling call-to-action — at the end.

Pack it with value

White papers are not meant to be advertisements for your company, and you should avoid any overt promotion. Instead, you should provide plenty of useful information that will be valuable to readers even if they don't become customers. Emphasizing value is the key to a great white paper that will get shared and widely read.

Remember, white papers serve to showcase your expertise as a company or brand in a given field. Your readers should come away having learned something useful and with the impression that you're a reliable source of expert information. As pointed out earlier, generating this kind of reputation will lead to greater business success as buyers are more likely to purchase from companies they trust.

Emphasizing value is the key to a great white paper that will get shared and widely read.

Don’t be scared of multiple drafts

No first draft is ever a finished work. Elizabeth Bishop, the renowned and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, wrote seventeen drafts of her poem “One Art” before it was completed. It’s now considered one of the best villanelles ever written .

While a white paper may not need seventeen drafts, there will undoubtedly be points missed and logical inconsistencies in the first version. Finishing a draft, stepping away, and coming back to it with a fresh mind is the best way to ensure quality. If there’s another good writer at your company, getting another set of eyes on it is even better.

Keep it interesting

White papers should be more detailed and thorough than blog posts or eBooks . This may cause them to be more dry and formal, but this doesn't mean they have to be boring.

A trap that white papers easily fall into is using statistics as a crutch and not maintaining interest throughout. Technical as it may be, you still want your white paper to be read. To make this happen, it’s useful to borrow techniques from fiction and creative nonfiction writers.

There are lots of resources for learning about a plot, but generally, it has five parts, as illustrated in Freytag’s pyramid:

These won’t always correspond perfectly in a factual piece of writing like a white paper, but they can get you thinking about how to create and hold interest. Use those ideas to keep readers’ attention until the very end.

4. Mistakes a white paper should avoid

There are some pitfalls and common mistakes to avoid when writing a white paper. Each of these has the potential to make an otherwise stellar piece of content into a wasted effort. Here's a brief list of things to look out for.

Sounding like a sales pitch

When white papers are used as part of a marketing campaign where businesses showcase their product, a common mistake is to make them sound like a sales pitch . Don't let this happen; it will immediately turn your readers off. In a white paper, your audience is seeking unbiased, educational information that will help them, not try to persuade them. Save the sales pitches for other content, like product brochures .

Lack of adequate research

As previously mentioned, white papers should be well-researched documents. Conducting lengthy original research may indeed be outside a marketing team’s budget, but merely including a few stats from the first page of a Google search simply won’t cut it.

Aggregating statistics and searching through scholarly work may take time, but the result will be worth it. For your white paper to achieve its intended effect, It’s important to establish your content as an authoritative source to which the audience would want to return.

Poor design

We'll go in-depth into design in the next section, but it's worth mentioning here. The written content of a white paper is what matters most, but neglecting design is a big mistake. Design makes your salient points stand out and helps the reader understand what they're reading. Using visuals (like images, animations , videos, charts, and graphs) that support your arguments is crucial.

Check out this white paper example built with Foleon!. Open the white paper

Not telling a story

White papers are informative and factual. We’ve driven that point home already. That doesn’t mean they should be boring. Backgrounders, problem-solution white papers, and research findings all have a story to tell, and the reader is far less likely to make it through the entire piece without some form of narrative to keep them engaged.

Setting up a problem, elaborating on a solution, and including some type of success story is a proven formula for making any type of content more story-like.

Leaving it abstract

Because most white papers will involve sharing research findings, it can be easy to leave them in the realm of theory without explaining how to utilize those findings on a practical level. This is true more of backgrounders but can be the case with problem-solution white papers as well.

A good example is the abundant amount of content on employee engagement. Many B2B cases have covered the importance of employee engagement and the pitfalls of getting it wrong. Too little of this content goes further and gives concrete examples of what companies in specific verticals can do to alleviate the problem.

5. White paper format

Before addressing anything else, we first need to talk about the format you'll use.

A picture is no longer worth a thousand words. Today, its value is in the number of eyeballs it can keep glued to your content and the ratio of those viewers it convinces to click through to other sections of your website.

Your carefully crafted copy and painstakingly gathered statistics won’t earn those clicks on their own. The average human attention span is now less than that of a goldfish . And with 3.3 million Facebook posts, 448,800 tweets, and 149,513 emails sent every minute , competition for your readers' attention is intense, to say the least. Long form mediums like the white paper need serious sparkle just to compete.

How to format a white paper

You'll need more than just black text on a white background. Your design choices regarding things like color, typography, and the use of visuals will play a prominent role in the success of your white paper. Here are a few important principles to keep in mind for creating a quality white paper design.

Keeping mobile visitors in mind

More than 54% of internet traffic is now mobile , and web designers have adapted to this trend by creating what's known as responsive design . Before this, web pages simply scaled according to the size of a user's screen, retaining their layout. Naturally, this made most pages both unreadable and unnavigable on smaller devices.

Responsive design solved this by allowing elements on a page to rearrange, resize, or be completely hidden from view in response to the size of the screen. When a smaller screen is used, font-sizes increase, buttons become larger for touch screens, and the entire layout adjusts to make the page mobile-friendly.

But while this has become standard for web designers in a mobile-first world, producers of other digital content assets like white papers have generally not adapted . Surprisingly, most companies that offer white papers and eBooks on their websites still use PDF format .

The problem with PDFs is that they're unreadable on smaller screens . They're fixed-layout documents — they can't adjust or adapt to different screen sizes. Reading them on a mobile device requires excessive zooming and panning around, which is a terrible experience for users.

Mobile traffic is ever-increasing. If you decide to produce your white paper as a PDF , you risk excluding this vast segment of your audience. It's a design mistake that will cost you views and conversions.

See examples of responsive white papers

Emphasis and readability

Because in-depth white papers contain lots of text and visuals, as well as supplementary information like footnotes, figures, logos and copyright info, the danger is that your design becomes cluttered. Clutter accumulates before you realize it. You may choose a clean layout and color scheme, to begin with, but as you continue to add content, things can get crowded. Often, you must make tough choices about what not to include to strike the right balance between completeness and readability.

Good design makes bold choices and prioritizes important information. These choices and priorities affect layout, placement, color, font size, page order and more.

Use these design elements to create emphasis on vital pieces of information. But be careful. Emphasizing too many pieces of information — or too few — will cause readers to struggle to discern what’s important.

Good design makes bold choices and prioritizes important information.

Have a look at what's trending

Bold fonts and color schemes are in. If you look at the hippest tech companies right now, you’ll see lots of pastels and color gradients. Of course, all that might change tomorrow. But still, a great way to get inspiration when you're just starting is to take a look at what design trends are currently popular.

U2's frontman, Bono, sings "every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief." And he's right. Good designers are always drawing inspiration from other designers.

The best way to create a successful design is to spend a lot of time looking at what others are doing successfully. Use Evernote , or a bookmarking service to save white papers and other exceptional designs that you encounter for future reference.

Don’t know where to start looking? Dribbble and Behance are two networks where great designers share their latest work. They consistently have material that’s on the cutting edge of what’s trending.

Design for your audience

While trends may inspire you, it's more important to align your design with your audience and your subject matter.

• Will you be addressing suit-and-tie financial executives or blue-collar management at construction firms?
• Are you writing about changes to privacy regulations in the tech industry, or about the effects of farming on biodiversity?

Your design should support and strengthen your topic. The colors and typography should be consistent with what you're writing about, the tone you've chosen, and the audience you've defined.

Writing a white paper for a funeral parlor? Hot-pink headlines might be a bad choice. Taking color psychology into account can help you achieve the look and feel you're after.

Brush up on the basics

No prior knowledge of design? No problem.

If you don’t have a designer working with you in-house, you can still teach yourself the basics of design and check work against those principles. A big part of the battle is knowing the search terms that will get you the knowledge you need. Luckily, good primers on basic graphic design are abundant.

After doing a bit of reading, start creating. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. If you create a white paper and don’t like the design, try to pinpoint what it is about the design that needs improvement.

After the reading you’ve done, you’ll have the tools to critique your own work and the work of others. This is the best way to improve and create well designed white papers.

Choosing the right tools

At Foleon, we pride ourselves on providing a tool that makes creating responsive digital white papers easy, even for those with no prior graphic design experience.

Choosing a tool like this, which takes the guesswork out of design, will shorten the time it takes for you to produce great white papers. There is a vast ecosystem of tools out there, each of which is geared toward a different purpose and skillset. The right one will enable you as both a designer and a writer.

See how you can scale engaging content creation .

6. Gating your white papers

For most companies, lead generation and growing lists of contacts for the sales and marketing teams are important activities. Attracting visitors to your site and offering them something of value in exchange for their contact information is a proven method for filling the top of your funnel.

But for this type of inbound marketing to work, two things are needed: exceptional content that visitors are eager to acquire, and a method for gating (or walling off) that content behind a form.

Many brands skip the first part and move straight to the second. They quickly produce something mediocre and put it behind a form. This might work in the short term for generating lists, but keep in mind that users expect more from content they “pay” for. The quality of your gated content serves as an indicator of the quality of your brand will affect your ability to turn prospects into customers down the road.

So how do white papers fit into your b2b content marketing funnel ? They may act either as lead generation tools themselves or can be used to direct readers to other parts of a website that captures lead information.

What is gated content?

Walling expert content off behind a form designed to capture personal details is one of the most common techniques for generating leads. Gated content is any content that a reader cannot access until after they input some personal information, such as their name and email address. White papers and eBooks are two of the most common types of content used for this purpose.

Typically, a company will create a landing page that includes a description — and perhaps a preview — of what information readers can expect to find inside. The landing page will include a form for visitors to enter their personal information and thus gain access. After entering the required information, visitors are either presented with a download button or receive the gated content in their inbox.

There are plenty of variations on this formula, but the basic technique of providing “free” content and asking readers to “pay” by providing their personal information has been very important part of content marketing for a long time.

To gate or not to gate

While gating your best content is great for lead generation, there are some drawbacks as well. Walling off your white paper will mean it gets read by fewer people as not everyone is willing to give away their contact details.

An open-access white paper will be read by a wider audience. If it’s in-depth and authoritative, it may also do well organically and improve your search rankings. Gating it behind a form, however, will prevent search engines from indexing it.

It’s important to consider what the primary goal of your white paper is: disseminating information and gaining brand awareness or generating leads. If the latter is more important, then gating is a great option.

Semi-gating

Another variation on gated content — and one that’s growing in popularity — is semi-gating . This can give you the best of both worlds by allowing your white paper to reach a wider audience while still retaining the ability to generate leads.

Semi-gating gives readers a taste of your white paper without requiring them to give up any info. You can, for example, make the first few pages of your white paper open access, and then make visitors fill in a form to read more. This works well because digital content is so abundant and brands must offer more for free or risk visitors turning elsewhere.

Allow your white paper to reach a wider audience while still retaining the ability to generate leads.

Offering more content for free also builds trust and brand loyalty among your readers. Let them know your white papers are valuable and helpful, and they’ll be more interested in giving you their personal information. You’re also more likely to gain qualified leads if readers have a chance to sample your white paper before converting.

Of course, semi-gating doesn’t mean giving away your entire white paper. Typically, there’s at least one section of the white paper that is exclusive to those who go through the gating process. Semi-gating can help reach a wider audience, build trust and loyalty, increase lead quality, and still help you capture the contact information you need.

There’s a concept in marketing and design known as friction . Friction is anything that causes the sales process to slow down. It’s like a roadblock that makes it less likely prospects will convert, sign up, download, or purchase. It can be caused by a multitude of things including poor design, confusing navigation, subpar copy, too many form fields, and more.

Your ability to generate leads with a gated white paper will largely depend on how much friction is involved. Asking for more information than you really need is one common and unnecessary source of friction that can lead to losing potential readers.

The entire field of conversion rate optimization is geared toward removing friction — or making user interactions easier. CRO specialists make forms simpler, navigation more intuitive, and design CTAs that are more likely to be clicked. Optimizing your landing page for conversions is a vital part of any lead generation campaign.

But the reality is, asking for personal information will always be an obstacle for a large number of people. So the key here is to make the process easy and noninvasive as possible.

An excellent way to do this is by reducing the number of form fields to the bare minimum and using mid-gating to ensure your ask is timely and yields immediate value for the reader: "Fill out this form to get access to the rest of this white paper, we've saved the best for last!".

Create white papers and eBooks that integrate with your favorite CRM or marketing automation platform. Get started

7. White paper distribution

So, after following the tips in this guide, you create an engaging, informative white paper that inspires readers to take action and deepen their relationship with your company. You mid-gate (or semi-gate) it to capture readers’ information and gain valuable insight into the interests and demographics of your consumer base.

Now, you publish it on your website, sit back, and wait for your Pulitzer.

Only, the traffic never comes… Where did you go wrong? You didn't think about your white paper distribution strategy . 

The importance of distribution

The internet isn’t the same as it once was. Thanks to the massive amount of content produced every day for and an ever-growing number of channels, it’s a lot harder to get noticed. Unless you’re Gabriel García Márquez back from the dead, simply writing something and posting it online doesn’t guarantee readership.

To get eyes on your white paper, you need to be smart not only about writing and design but distribution as well. Some content marketing thought leaders go so far as to claim that you should spend 20% of your time on content creation and 80% on promotion.

Distribution is all about identifying traction channels where your ideal customers consume content and making your white paper highly visible on those channels. Depending on the audience you defined in the beginning, some will be more relevant for you than others.

Social promotion

If you’re at all familiar with marketing, advertising, or online media, chances are you’re aware of how important social media is to visibility. People from all walks of life, and from all over the world, are on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Ensuring that you share your content regularly on these platforms will give you a solid base of promotion on which to build.

But it's not enough to simply write a post and tweet it into the void. Try to find communities like Facebook and LinkedIn groups where your target audience is likely to congregate. Search for relevant hashtags on Twitter and Instagram . Find subreddits relevant to your industry.

Once you’ve found your audience, it’s much easier to connect with them. If you contribute to these spaces regularly, you’ll have an easier time keeping their attention and distributing your white paper.

Influencers and earned media

Public relations isn’t what it once was; influencer marketing has taken its place as the way to get noticed by the masses.

These days, influencers — people with large, engaged followings on social media and newsletters — are better equipped to amplify your content than traditional journalists. They play a growing role in shaping public opinion and even in setting business trends . Shares from an influencer can even help you land spots in major publications the way press releases used to.

Social media is the best place to find influencers in your vertical. When you investigate the best communities in which to promote your white paper, look for the content that people are already referencing and sharing. Eventually, you’ll start to get a picture of who’s putting out content that’s getting widespread traction. These are the people whose voices can amplify your brand.

Start by interacting with them. Begin a conversation, comment on their pieces with regularity, and give them feedback on their work. There are great tools, like Voila Norbert and ContactOut , to help you quickly track down email addresses.

After building enough rapport, try offering to collaborate on future white papers or other types of content. This process can take some time because your goal here is to build a relationship.

Eventually, you can ask an influencer to share your white paper. You might even consider quoting them in the white paper itself — anything that gives them an incentive to share your work is helpful.

Pro tip: Try to find an expert in your white paper related subject and interview them. It will add value to your white paper and you'll increase the chance that the expert shares your content with his or her extensive network.

Email marketing

The jungle of online content may thicken daily, but there are a few places you can still get readers’ attention. Email distribution has stood the test of time in this regard. It provides greater ROI than social , and it shows no signs of weakening.

If the purpose of your white paper is lead generation, email marketing will not be applicable. But for boosting sales, building trust, and establishing your brand as a trustworthy source of information, it's important not to neglect your existing contact base.

Although email may not have the appealing viral possibilities associated with social media, it does have other advantages. Namely, anyone who subscribed to your email list chose to be there. This means you can expect a higher level of engagement from this audience than those who come in via other channels. Capitalize on their loyalty and engagement by encouraging contacts to share your white paper with their networks and thus multiply your distribution efforts.

This was discussed in the previous section, but it's worth mentioning again here: another big advantage of Foleon's gating features is that when your existing contacts share your white paper with their contacts, those people will be confronted with a login form that will allow you to capture their info and expand your email list further.

Going beyond the basics

The techniques discussed above are essential items in your white paper distribution toolbox. However, they’re not the only ones. The best way to distribute your white paper depends largely on your target audience and the industry to which your content speaks.

Take some time to critically evaluate and research how knowledge is shared in your industry. Every industry will be slightly different. Reaching people in these places is the best guarantee of effective distribution.

8. Handling your white paper leads

As we've discussed, white papers can serve a variety of objectives. They’re commonly used for thought leadership and to disseminate important research, relevant to a specific industry.

When it comes to content marketing, however, the most common use for white papers over the last several years has become lead generation. In chapter 6, we discussed how to bring readers to your white paper and capture their information.

Once you've properly gated your white paper and set up a solid distribution strategy, it's time to think about how you'll handle the leads that come in. If not properly tracked and nurtured, leads will quickly become cold and won't lead to increased sales for your company. So how do you follow up with leads and maximize the opportunity you’ve created with your white paper?

How to track your white paper leads

The buyer’s journey outlines the steps a person goes through, from becoming aware of a problem they have, to learning about different solutions to that problem, to eventually purchasing a product or service (hopefully yours) that solves their problem.

To maximize the chances your new leads become paying customers, you must take the abstract concept of a buyer’s journey and map it to your specific content ecosystem. The actions your prospects take on your website can be indicative of what stage of the journey they're in.

For example, you may see someone read a blog post on your site, then come back a day later to get your white paper, and then finally sign up for a free trial or an email list. After that, they might decide to make a purchase. As patterns begin to emerge around the journey your customers take, you'll learn what actions on your part can help them to advance.

There are many tools available to help you analyze this journey for yourself. Google Analytics is probably the most widely used. It lets you track and compile data regarding user behavior on your website. You can define goals and generate reports that will show you steps users tend to take before completing those goals.

Targeting stages of the buyer’s journey

As it becomes more clear what actions visitors take before purchasing, you'll better understand where to use your white paper in the buyer's journey.

The question you should seek to answer is, where does it provide the most value to your potential customers? Do you see greater success when accessing your gated white paper is a prospect's first interaction with your company? Or is it perhaps more effective to use it as an offer once visitors have returned a second (or third) time to your site?

You can see that white papers don't exist in isolation but act as a member of an ecosystem. The related blog posts, landing pages, emails, social messages, and follow up sequences must all be carefully orchestrated and properly timed.

This process takes practice. It takes trial and error, and you must be a keen observer of trends . However, that effort will pay off.

...white papers don't exist in isolation but act as a member of a content ecosystem.

Following up with your leads

Depending on where in the buyer's journey you use your white paper, the way you'll want to follow up with leads will be different.

• If, for example, your white paper targets the awareness stage and the leads you gather are relatively unfamiliar with your company, it might be smart to enroll them in an email sequence that highlights other pieces of content on your site such as blog posts that are relevant to the topic they showed interest in.
• Suppose your white paper is for people in the consideration stage, and leads are already familiar with what you have to offer. In that case, you might consider following up by sending them special offers or exclusive deals — again, closely related to the topic of interest.
• If you're taking a highly targeted approach to distribution and using your white paper to generate hot leads that you think are already close to making a purchasing decision, the best way to follow up might be for a sales representative to reach out directly by phone.

This is what it means to nurture leads. By proactively keeping in touch with leads and offering them more relevant content, you maximize the likelihood of them becoming a customer.

9. Choosing the right white paper template

In 2021, Hubspot reported that 82% of marketers actively invest in content marketing. Thus, the need to create interactive content experiences that stand out amongst your competitors has never been more critical in your content marketing strategy as the volume of published white papers grows yearly. 

For this reason, the visual representation of your white paper has become increasingly crucial for retaining your audience's interest. In addition to the value your white paper content provides your audience, the single most significant factor at your disposal to maintain content engagement is how your white paper is visually presented. 

For whitepapers, the white paper template you opt for to present your content can significantly influence the success of your publication. The template is more than just a matter of aesthetics; it represents a strategic decision that affects user engagement, experience, and even how your brand is perceived.

Below are some factors you should carefully weigh when choosing your white paper template .

Target audience and content

The two biggest influences that will determine the selection of your white paper template are your target audience and the purpose of your content. 

For example, if you create an annual report that provides Financial Services information or a research piece exploring trends in Software & IT salaries, you’ll want to use a template that easily represents data-rich elements such as tables and eye-catching statistics. In contrast, visually-oriented templates containing hi-res imagery or videos are better suited for online catalogs or digital magazines . 

Think about your target audience's needs and how your template's layout can optimize your content's engagement. 

Creative control with flexible features 

You’ll get the most value out of your interactive white paper with a content creation platform that allows you to harness professionally designed white paper templates that are easy to use and fully customizable with a drag-and-drop interface. This will allow everyone in your team to create content quickly with no coding experience required. 

Custom templates set your white paper up for success by providing a starting foundation to help guide the layout and structure of your content. Custom features allow you to design your white paper any way you like by quickly changing blocks, fonts, and colors according to your brand guidelines with the added ability to add or remove sections. 

Mobile experience and device responsiveness

As of September 2023, over 55% of website traffic is from mobile devices. Therefore, it is essential that your white paper is responsive across all devices. 

Most content creation platforms have integrated tools that automatically adapt your content to different screen sizes. However, to ensure the best possible user experience, you should always test your white paper on multiple devices as part of your content creation process before publishing.

Finally, website speed is one of the most significant factors influencing user experience and playing a pivotal role in organic rankings. According to section.io , 32.3% of visitors bounce from a webpage if it takes more than 7 seconds to load. Ensuring that your content creation platform and hosting services are optimized for website performance is critical in maximizing your readership when choosing your white paper template.

10. Final thoughts

Be prepared to write a lot more content.

By this point, you should have all the ingredients you need to make your white paper a rousing success. However, you’ll notice by now the reality that your white paper fits into a larger ecosystem of marketing actions and content.

In today’s business world, producing quality content is one of the best ways to get your target market's attention. But not everyone will be ready for the same piece of content at the same time.

From white papers to blog posts, to podcasts, the type of content that will drive conversions for your business is something you'll discover over time. What’s certain is that one type won't satisfy all your audience's needs. Because of that, you should be prepared to fill the rest of your buyer’s journey with other appropriate content.

This means lots of writing. There’s no way around that. It means coming up with content ideas, creating them, distributing them, and measuring their success — then rinsing and repeating. After this primer, you should be fully equipped for success writing not only white papers but whatever content you choose along your journey.  

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How to Write a White Paper (With Help From AI)

Table of contents

Meredith Sell

The white paper might be the most labor-intensive weapon in a content marketer’s arsenal — but there’s a reason businesses rely on these heavily researched documents to slyly win the trust of potential customers.

Usually available as downloadable PDFs, white papers are chock-full of reliable information. The best ones are written in a way that maintains your interest and interprets the facts in a clear, authoritative manner. No eyes glazing over as the text drones on and on, and no tacky sales pitch at the end that makes you doubt if the white paper is trustworthy. 

‍ At first, white papers can seem intimidating to write. All that information, the authoritative, branded language, the crisp design. It’s enough to spark imposter syndrome in even an experienced writer. But like all written content, the white paper writing process can be broken down into a series of manageable steps.

Before we get there, though, let’s make sure we understand exactly why white papers are so valuable to businesses.

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What is a white paper — and why do businesses like them so much?

The simplest definition of “white paper”: A brief, but detailed, document explaining the ins and outs of a particular topic, problem, or solution pertaining to an organization’s work, but written for people outside of that organization.

A white paper is more in-depth and authoritative than a blog. It’s generally not focused on marketing a particular product or service (though such white papers exist), but rather describes the factual context that may create a need for a product or service.

White papers serve businesses in three typical ways:

• White papers build brand recognition and credibility. The fact that white papers are not explicitly sales or marketing documents makes them great tools for both sales and marketing. Because the best white papers lack a sales pitch and focus on verifiable facts, they engender trust among readers. They present the company as an authority that readers can turn to for reliable information.
• White papers help companies obtain lead contacts. Many white papers can only be accessed after submitting a landing page form that collects an email address — and in some cases, information like company, role, and location. Because white papers often provide information that’s of interest to people who are actively looking for a product or solution (and may have decision-making power in their organizations), the white paper audience is often further down the “marketing funnel” than, say, a casual visitor to the company blog. This makes their email contact and other information especially valuable in building a list of potential leads.
• ‍ White papers can be used to share independent research findings. Did your organization conduct its own survey or research study? You’ll likely be publishing findings in a series of blog posts, but a white paper is a great way to collect all of those findings in one place, add the necessary narrative and context, and publish your research in a format that’s more respectable, whether to your customer audience or journalists and researchers writing about your industry.

These three uses are the main reasons that white papers are so beneficial to businesses. They support your marketing and sales goals by showing your audience that your business knows its industry inside-out.

3 types of white papers

White papers come in a variety of forms and lengths, but most fall into one of these three categories:

1. Problem/solution

The most common kind of white paper, this type takes a reportorial approach to dig into a particular problem or paint point. It provides relevant context, facts and figures, and then explains potential solutions (often including a natural tie-in to the company product). Some white papers will focus more heavily on the problem, while others go into detail on various solutions and how they compare to each other. 

2. In-depth report / research findings

This type of white paper reports on a particular topic of interest to the audience and relevant to the company’s products or services. Some share independent research conducted by the organization. Others simply compile existing facts and figures from trustworthy sources for a comprehensive, three-dimensional understanding of the issue in question.

3. Guide to product or service

This type of white paper pulls back the curtain on a company’s offerings — but cuts out the marketing-speak. The paper serves as a technical guide written in an objective tone to make clear what the product/service does, how it works, and what it offers to customers. No cutesy marketing copy trying to win customers’ hearts. Just the cold, hard facts.

How to write a white paper

Time to tackle writing your own white paper. You’ve probably figured out that you need to do a bunch of research — and that’s right. But don’t start there. Instead:

1. Identify your audience and topic.

Who are you trying to reach with your white paper? Where do your audience’s interests and/or pain points overlap with your company’s industry, product, or services?

Do some brainstorming to answer these questions, as well as the following:

• What would my target audience want to learn more about?
• What is my target audience googling about our industry?
• How can my white paper answer their questions or address their concerns?

Try on your audience’s shoes (and thinking cap) and look at things from their perspective. Create a list of topics — and angles — that would be interesting to them. Then focus on the one(s) your business is most equipped to cover.

2. Conduct research (with the help of AI).

Now do your research. Scour existing research studies, reports, official documents. Interview subject matter experts. If you have the resources, conduct your own studies/surveys. Answer the questions your audience is asking. 

White papers can take a bit of time to research, so if you need to speed up the process, enlist Wordtune Read to help you skim documents for relevant information.

3. Outline and write your white paper in sections.

White papers are often organized like scholarly articles: 

• Abstract/Summary
• Introduction
• Background information/context
• Main body (with visuals/charts/graphs and a written analysis)

The abstract helps readers figure out quickly if this paper is useful to them or not, while the rest provides substantial information for those who want a deeper understanding.

To outline your white paper, I recommend focusing on your intro, background, main body, and conclusion sections first. Write your abstract or summary after those pieces are complete, once you know exactly what your white paper’s main takeaways are.

Here’s what to think about for each of those sections:

Introduction – engage

How do you engage the reader's attention? What is an interesting insight or discovery from your research that is central to the focus of the white paper? Use the intro to both hook your readers and give them a preview of what’s to come in the rest of the white paper.

Background information/context – Set the scene

What does your reader absolutely need to know about the topic before you dig into the main content? Use this section to set your readers in a particular time and place with regards to your topic. Give them a view of the literal or figurative landscape.

Main body – explain (and keep things interesting)

This is the bulk of your white paper. Here you’ll dive deep into the relevant details of your topic and explain things to your audience. 

Whatever type of white paper you’re writing, you’ll want to organize the information in a logical way. To do this, look for connections between different subtopics or ways to break up the main body into different sections. For example, for problem/solution white papers, you’ll generally have a section that goes in-depth on the problem and another that similarly focuses on solutions. 

‍ Find a hole in your research while writing this section? Wordtune Spices can help you fill in those gaps. Simply highlight your text, hit the spices button, and choose one of the “fact” prompts from the dropdown.

As you write, look for opportunities to add visuals, like charts or graphs that map out reliable data or diagrams that illustrate concepts. This will help your design team later on make the white paper look like more than giant blocks of text.

Conclusion – send-off!

What’s the main takeaway, or takeaways, of your white paper? Reiterate it here using fresh wording ( Wordtune Editor can help you say it a new way!) and send your readers off with their newly gained knowledge. 

Depending on the length of your white paper, your conclusion could be a single meaty paragraph or a full page of final words and insights. As with all content, though, make sure it’s not empty fluff. Your readers’ time is valuable.

Abstract/summary – sum it all up

Once the main content of your white paper is fully written, your next step is to write a meaningful paragraph that sums up the main contents of your paper. This is your abstract or summary, and it’s essentially your white paper at a glance . You’ll want to mention some of the background context, as well as the questions your paper answers and its main takeaways here, for a quick, bird’s-eye view of the paper.

‍ Not sure where to start? Paste your main text into Wordtune Read and use the summarized content to start crafting your abstract.

Appendix – the bonus info bucket

An appendix is not required, but it’s a useful thing to add if you’re trying to keep your white paper concise but still want your audience to be able to reference more detailed information. What information doesn’t quite fit in the paper, but would be beneficial to your readers and/or provides added context or support to your main points? Stick it here.

Get the most out of your white paper

A lot of work goes into producing a deeply-researched, well-written white paper — and your paper is probably brimming with useful information. Don’t let that information just sit in your white paper!

Take advantage of all the work you’ve already done by repurposing your white paper content into other forms:

• Slides decks for webinars or conference presentations
• YouTube videos (and short-form videos for TikTok and Instagram)
• Eye-catching infographics
• Social content

As a first step, you can use Wordtune Read to summarize your white paper and come up with bite-sized pieces of content to be tailored for different platforms. You can also pull out individual subsections and use Wordtune Editor to rephrase paragraphs in less formal language so it better fits your company’s brand voice for different collateral.

A white paper is only the beginning! Put your insights and discoveries to work in all the different forms of content marketing — and use those efforts to drive traffic to your company website and the white paper itself. Before long, you’ll have a multiplying list of leads and your company will enjoy its reputation as a reliable, trustworthy source.

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How To Write White Papers In 7 Steps

How to write white papers for your business or organization can be wonders especially if you’re trying to promote your products or services. Depending on which source you gather information from, a white paper’s definition might vary. Most will say it’s a technical document and some will say it’s mostly a product pitch. All of them would technically be correct but a white paper is so much more than just a way to market your product or service. In essence, a white paper is a versatile document that can help build trust and credibility in your organization or brand.

In this blog, you’ll learn the white paper format so you can create one yourself and you’ll also know where to get white paper copywriting done professionally if you want to save yourself the time researching and creating one from scratch.

What Is A White Paper

The definition of a white paper might sound a little complex, but it’s not that complicated. According to The University Of Arizona , white papers are deeply researched reports that present a solution within a specific industry.

 A white paper is a comprehensive technical document that helps the reader understand a certain topic or product. It is a form of informational material produced by a company, a non-profit organization, or even governmental bodies. The primary purpose of a white paper is to showcase or promote a solution, product, service, or government policy.

Purpose of A White Paper

• Driving Traffic and Lead Generation White papers are a great way of driving traffic to your site when done right. Because white papers are a great source of information, they can teach your readers a lot about your organization. And learning is followed by persuasion which can be followed by conversion. Well-written white papers can give your organization a high-quality lead pool, streamlining the development of a dependable mailing list. White papers can even function as effective conversation starters because they cater to the interests of your leads. 
• Trust Building and Increasing Sales White papers are generally intended to show how adept a certain organization is at a topic. By demonstrating reliability, expertise, and proficiency in a specific field, white paper writing builds trust. When brands and organizations offer quality content that addresses the needs of their target audience or readers, they successfully establish a foundation for future engagement and repeat business.
• Establishing Thought Leadership and Creating Brand Visibility Learning how to write white papers if you’re a company or non-profit organization will benefit you if you’re goal is to establish thought leadership in your industry. When effectively written, white papers can showcase your organization’s distinct insights while enhancing public trust and the credibility of your brand. This document is an opportunity to exhibit expertise and differentiate your organization while establishing authority in the industry. It’s a great way to represent your brand strongly and will significantly increase trust and respect which can influence consumer purchasing decisions. 

Types of White Papers

White papers have several different purposes as well as different types. According to TechTarget , there are seven different types of white papers. To know how to write white papers , one must first be acquainted with its various formats.

• Thought Leadership White papers that are meant to establish thought leadership are crafted especially to put the organization that produces it as credible and in a forward-thinking stance. This type of white paper delves into contemporary topics and even debates to elucidate the organization in a manner that educates, informs, and enlightens its readers. This type of white paper offers unique perspectives and insightful analyses that aim to position the organization as a trusted authority in the field. This type of white paper succeeds in fostering trust and engagement with its audience.
• Backgrounder A backgrounder type of white paper as the name suggests provides its readers with in-depth assessments and highlights key insights while advocating for an organization’s product or service. This white paper format provides readers with a comprehensive understanding of features, benefits, and the organization’s unique value proposition. It can also be a type of white paper marketing since it can emphasize promotional aspects that aim to persuade the readers of a product or service’s superiority and relevance in addressing certain needs or challenges.
• Numbered List In this blog on how to write white papers , a numbered list type is one that follows a structured format. It is comprised of headers and bullet points that accentuate the primary attributes of an organization’s product or services. This is done so that information is written in a concise and digestible manner. For example, in a white paper entitled “The 7 Different Types Of Whitepapers”, each numbered point would talk about the format and how it differs from the rest. Of all the white paper templates , the numbered list type facilitates quick comprehension. It allows the readers to get a better grasp of the information more efficiently making it very effective for highlighting key selling points.

How To Write White Papers

• Know Your Audience In learning how to write a white paper , one of the most crucial steps is understanding who your reader is. White papers aim to provide value to a certain demographic and knowing who to cater to is very important. Knowing your audience may involve customer segmentation, a process that entails categorizing the audience based on factors like demographics, interests, and needs. White paper writers can then tailor the content to resonate with readers better. This step ensures white papers are relevant, engaging, and impactful. Once writers identify their audience, they can address their concerns, interests, and knowledge levels effectively.
• Choose Your Topic The second step, selecting a topic involves choosing a subject that aligns with the interests and needs of your target audience. Writers must typically focus on topics that are related to their field or issues about their organization’s product or service. For example, a company that specializes in renewable energy solutions can write about sustainable energy practices, highlighting eco-friendly initiatives and innovations. Choosing a relevant topic ensures that the white paper does what it’s supposed to which is address the audience’s concerns, offer insightful solutions, and establish the producing organization as a credible expert in the field.
• Do Your Research Conducting research involves a thorough investigation to get a deeper understanding of what the target audience stands to gain when they read the white paper. The research will give the writer a better read on what the audience is interested in and what their queries are. The research will also entail the technical aspect of how to write white papers and whether they will be made available online and also include Search Engine Optimization (SEO) research. By doing this step, the white paper author can ensure the content addresses the audience effectively, guarantee the accuracy of the content, and optimizes the white paper’s reach and impact.
• Create An Introduction Crafting a captivating and compelling opening in learning how to write white papers is an essential step. To do this, it is advised to state the problem very early on. The introduction should grab the reader’s attention and draw them into the topic. A good introduction will set the tone for the paper and will aid in establishing authority on the subject. When the problem statement is presented concisely early on, it’ll inform the reader of the white paper’s purpose. The combination of an engaging introduction and a clear problem statement will lay the foundation for an effective and impactful white paper.
• Illustrate Data and Analysis The fifth step, presenting data and analysis, involves incorporating vital information, data, and original analyses into the white paper. Original research, alongside existing market, scientific, and technical studies will be a part of the white paper. A great way to enhance the paper’s credibility is by drawing from a range of sources. Adding engaging visuals such as graphs and charts can also be utilized to present data more effectively. Having a comprehensive and visually appealing way of conveying data analysis persuades the audience of its validity and significance.
• Propose A Solution This step in how to write white papers offers a distinctive resolution to the problem statement written early on in the white paper. The proposed solution should also be accompanied by recommendations for future actions. Built upon the analysis conducted earlier, the proposed solution is tailored to address the identified issue. It is best to provide actionable recommendations to the readers that they can implement. This step ensures the white paper is both informative and actionable and will motivate the reader to take proactive action toward resolving the issue.
• Conclude With A Call To Action A call to action is a clear directive for the reader to take a specific action. It should be a tangible and achievable action like consulting with an expert, subscribing to a newsletter, and other similar actions. The call to action is the primary purpose of the white paper. It encourages readers to engage further with the organization and its products or services. A clear next step added to the white paper not only informs but prompts action and drives reader engagement and conversion. 

White Papers With The Write Direc tion

When you choose The Write Direction , you get a professional white paper writer in your arsenal. The Write Direction fully understands the importance of well-written technical, professional, and business documentation, and white papers are one of our offered services. 

Discover more of our professional writing , business documentation , and technical writing services when you visit our website and start your journey to success only with The Write Direction!

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5 Top Tips on How to Write a White Paper for Your Business

4-minute read

• 1st February 2020

A white paper is an in-depth guide or explanation about a specific topic or problem. And this can be a great way for businesses to establish credibility among customers and clients. But how can you create white papers that people want to read? Our top tips include:

• Pick a topic that reflects your audience and expertise.
• Find an angle where you can offer a solution to a problem your readers may face, with a strong emphasis on value creation.
• Use a clear, coherent structure. This will include a short executive summary at the beginning of the paper, plus bookending your main argument or research with a strong introduction and conclusion.
• Maintain a professional tone throughout. This should be fairly formal, almost academic sounding, compared to most content marketing.
• Proofread your white paper to ensure it is easy to read and error free.

For more information on how to write a white paper, read on below.

1. Select a Topic

There are two key factors when selecting a topic for a business white paper:

• Your Audience – Who are you writing for? What problems do they face? It is worth researching your clients, customers and other stakeholders .
• Your Knowledge – What does your business specialize in? What are your areas of expertise? Try to think of subjects where you are an authority.

It is also worth reading existing white papers to see what others in your industry are writing about and where you could offer something new.

2. Offer a Solution and Emphasize Value

The aim of most white papers is to do one of two things:

• Provide in-depth information about a product, service or methodology.
• Identify a problem your audience may face and explain the solution.

In both cases, the key is to give the reader something of value .

If you’re explaining a product or service, stress its benefits. If you’re discussing a problem, explain why your solution is the best one available. This doesn’t mean you should directly promote your business. Rather, the value lies in building trust with the reader by giving them useful information.

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3. White Paper Structure

Most white papers use a basic structure along the following lines:

• Heading – A title that clearly sets out what the reader will learn.
• Executive Summary – A summary of what your paper is about (around 200 words). Treat this like a “pitch” for why someone should read the rest.
• Introduction – A section that provides the information needed to follow the paper, including the problem you’re addressing and how you’ll solve it.
• Main Body – A series of paragraphs offering a detailed description of your research or argument. Use subheadings to guide the reader, with each section covering one main point. You may also want to use illustrations, charts, or text boxes to emphasize key points and keep readers engaged.
• Conclusion – A final section where you summarize the key conclusions from your white paper, possibly including a call to action if it is relevant.

There is room for variation here (e.g., some include a bibliography or reference list at the end). But make sure to plan the structure before you start writing so the finished paper has a clear through line.

4. Maintain a Professional Tone

Tonally, white papers are closer to academic writing than blog posts or other forms of content marketing . They should sound formal, authoritative and professional. This means you should:

• Use technical language where necessary, but not overuse jargon .
• Avoid informal terms such as slang and contractions .
• Be as clear and concise as possible, keeping your audience in mind.
• Sound confident rather than hedging everything you say.
• Not sound too “salesy” (the aim is to establish trust with the reader so they will use your company in the future, not to sell something to them directly).
• Avoid unnecessarily gendered or otherwise biased language .

This “academic” writing style will help you communicate a sense of authority.

5. Proofread Your White Paper

Finally, don’t forget to have your white paper proofread ! A document filled with typos or errors will undermine the expertise you’re trying to project, so you need to make sure your paper is perfect before making it public.

And while you can do this yourself, it makes more sense to have a business writing expert – like the editors at Proofed – handle this work for you.

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What Is a White Paper?

Purpose of a white paper, how to write a white paper.

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What Is a White Paper? Types, Purpose, and How To Write One

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Investopedia / Michela Buttignol

A white paper is an informational document issued by a company or not-for-profit organization to promote or highlight the features of a solution, product, or service that it offers or plans to offer.

White papers are also used as a method of presenting government policies and legislation and gauging public opinion.

Key Takeaways

• A white paper promotes a certain product, service, or methodology to influence current and prospective customer or investor decisions.
• Three main types of white papers include backgrounders, numbered lists, and problem/solution white papers.
• A white paper provides persuasive and factual evidence that a particular offering is a superior product or method of solving a problem.
• White papers are commonly designed for business-to-business marketing purposes between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. 

White papers are sales and marketing documents used to entice or persuade potential customers to learn more about a particular product, service, technology, or methodology.

White papers are commonly designed for business-to-business (B2B) marketing purposes between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer. It can provide an in-depth report or guide about a specific product or topic and is meant to educate its readers.

The facts presented in white papers are often backed by research and statistics from reliable sources and can include charts, graphs, tables, and other ways of visualizing data. A white paper can communicate an organization’s philosophy or present research findings related to an industry.

Types of White Papers

A startup , large corporation, or government agency will use white papers differently. There are three main types of white papers, including backgrounders, numbered lists, and problem/solution white papers.

Backgrounders detail the technical features of a new product or service. Designed to simplify complicated technical information, they are used to:

•Support a technical evaluation

•Launch a product

•Promote a product or industry leader

Numbered lists highlight the key takeaways of a new product or service, and are often formatted with headings and bullet points such as the following familiar format:

•3 Questions to Ask

•5 Things You Need to Know

Problem/solution papers identify specific problems faced by potential customers and suggest a data-driven argument about how a featured product or service provides a solution to:

•Generate new sales

•Educate salespeople on product characteristics

•Build industry interest.

White papers differ from other marketing materials, such as brochures. Brochures and traditional marketing materials might be flashy and obvious, but a white paper is intended to provide persuasive and factual evidence that solves a problem or challenge.

White papers are commonly at least 2,500 words in length and written in an academic style.

A white paper should provide well-researched information that is not found with a simple internet search and have a compelling narrative to keep the reader's attention. The author of a white paper should:

• Research and fully define the topic.

• Create an accurate outline of information.

• Write an attention-grabbing introduction.

• Format the paper for easy reading.

• Revise and proofread.

What Is an Example of a White Paper?

All of these documents, publicly available on Microsoft’s website, focus on aspects of the company's suite of cloud services. In contrast with brochures, these white papers don’t have a clear sales pitch. Instead, they dive into relevant topics, such as cloud security, hybrid clouds, and the economic benefits of adopting cloud computing.

• An AI-First Infrastructure and Toolchain for Any Scale
• Moving your Mission Critical Mainframe Data to Azure
• Mesh and hub-and-spoke networks on Azure
• Backup and recovery overview for Azure users
• Backup and recovery overview for users new to Azure

How Have New Industries Used White Papers?

Cryptocurrencies have also been known to publish white papers during initial coin offerings (ICOs) and frequently issued white papers to entice users and "investors" to their projects.

Bitcoin famously launched a few months after the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto issued its famous white paper online in October 2008.

Why Is It Called a White Paper?

White Papers may have developed from the use of “Blue Papers” in 19th century Britain, where a Parliamentary report cover was blue. When a topic for the government was less serious, the blue cover was discarded and published with white covers. These reports were called White Papers. In the United States, the use of government white papers often means a background report or guidance on a specific issue.

A white paper is an informational document issued by a company, government agency, or not-for-profit organization to promote the features of a solution, product, or service that it offers or plans to offer. The facts presented in white papers are often backed by research and statistics from reliable sources and commonly written in one of three formats that include backgrounders, numbered lists, and problem/solution papers.

Copy Engineer. " The 3 Types of White Papers and When to Use Each One ."

Master Class. " How To Write a White Paper ."

Microsoft. " White Papers on the Cloud and Azure ."

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Stephen L. Nelson

Author. Accountant. Aspiring Apiarist.

How to Write a Business Plan

May 18, 2015 By Stephen L. Nelson Leave a Comment

One of the more common subjects that new business owners ask about is “how to write a business plan?” To help you with this task, let me first clarify what business people usually mean when they use the term business plan and then provide some suggestions and point you to resources that you can use to make the work of writing a business plan easier and more successful.

Defining Three Types of Business Plans

People use the term business plan to refer to three distinct items: a firm’s overall strategy and roadmap (which I’ll call here a “strategic plan”), the 20-, 50-, or even 100-page document that a new business owner uses to prove to him- or herself and others that he or she has thought carefully about starting or growing a business (which I’ll call here a “white paper plan”), and the 10- to 20-page document that entrepreneurs use to promote a new venture to investors and other key stakeholders (which I’ll call here a “new venture plan”).

Strategic Plans

I talk about business strategic planning in another short article , so I won’t repeat that discussion here. Let me note here, however, that a strategic plan is something quite different from a new venture business plan or white paper business plan.

White Paper Plans

If you want to write a white paper plan, know that this process is well documented elsewhere. You can get a detailed outline for a white paper plan, for example, from the United States federal government’s Small Business Administration Web site at www.sba.gov .

If you have access to Microsoft PowerPoint, you should also know that PowerPoint’s AutoContent Wizard supplies a detailed template for creating a white-paper-style business plan presentation.

Note that white paper plans would typically need to include a business pro forma such as you might produce with the business plan workbook (Excel workbook download).

New Venture Plans

If you want to write a new venture plan, you take a different approach. New venture plans, boiled down to their very essence, answer the following five questions that prospective investors need to answer in order to decide whether they should invest:

• Is a firm’s product or service feasible? For example, can the technology really be developed? Is the necessary legal and regulatory approval obtainable? Does the process work in practice? Obviously, if a firm is already operating, this question doesn’t need to be asked and answered. But for many types of new ventures—especially technology companies—the question does need to be discussed.
• Do customers want the product or service? In other words, is there true demand? This might sound like a silly question, but potential customers ignore many interesting and seemingly useful products and services.
• Is the basic transaction profitable? In other words, will people pay a price that produces a profit? Customers might want products and services at a price that firms can’t afford to provide.
• Is the return on investment adequate? Even profitable businesses might not be feasible if they require too much capital relative to the profits they generate. New ventures not only need to be profitable, but they also need to produce acceptable returns on investments. This return on investment measurement might be measured with either an internal rate of return, which is probably most common, or a net present value, which is most accurate. Note that an input to any return on investment calculation—the investment required to start the venture—is also an important factor in any prospective investor’s deliberations.
• Can the management team operate the business? Even if you can answer “yes” to the first four questions, that’s not really enough. A new venture will probably fail if the management team lacks the skills to successfully run the business. So the last part of a new venture plan needs to describe the management team and why the’re likely to succeed. The ideal answer to this question is, of course, to be able to show through past performance that the management team has successfully run a similar business.

I think you could use these questions as the highest level headings in a new venture plan. The only other headings you might want to add to such a new venture plan would be for an introduction and an executive summary.

Here are three final observations about new venture plans: First, it’s very unlikely that an entrepreneur can honestly answer “yes” to all five questions.

Many new venture plans do, of course, give yes answers to all five questions. But I suggest that an honest answer such as, “we don’t yet know,” or “it depends on future developments,” will attract better and more sophisticated venture investors and increase your chances of success.

I also note here that in the recent dot-com hysteria, many new ventures were funded even though they could honestly answer yes to only the first question. (Of course, many shouldn’t have been funded, but that’s another topic.)

Second, answering “no” to any of the five questions means the new venture won’t work. Each of the five questions is a link in the chain of success. Break a link and the chain breaks, too.

Third, a business pro forma, such as you might build using the business plan workbook (see link above) needs to be part of or an appendix to your new venture plan. By creating a detailed five- or ten-year forecast, you back up your answers and provide more detail to the people reading, and potentially funding, your new venture plan.

If you’re interested in getting help with writing a business plan, feel free to contact our office for a consultation.

About Stephen L. Nelson

Stephen L. Nelson is the author of more than two dozen best-selling books, including Quicken for Dummies and QuickBooks for Dummies .

Nelson is a certified public accountant and a member of both the Washington Society of CPAs and the American Institute of CPAs. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, Magna Cum Laude, from Central Washington University and a Masters in Business Administration in Finance from the University of Washington (where, curiously, he was the youngest ever person to graduate from the program).

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How to write a white paper for my business proposal

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A white paper is a business marketing and informational tool used to educate the intended audience and provide assistance for important decision-making. When learning how to write a white paper, it’s important to first understand its origin to get a better grip on its use.

In the first part of the twentieth century, short but important government research and policy reports targeted to the British Parliament were printed on white paper, and the covers were also white. Longer, more detail-oriented reports were bound with blue covers and were called “blue books.”

Because “white papers” were shorter and contained information needed before members of Parliament voted on particular issues, they were termed “white papers.” Today, most blue books are used in academia for informational and testing purposes, while white papers are used in business situations. The purpose of a white paper is to give the reader important information needed before making a business decision of some kind.

White papers have evolved into one of the most important and effective marketing tools that businesses can use to inform readers, assign credibility to the white paper issuer, and gain trust between the white paper issuer and reader.

A white paper is essentially a mix of an informational article and a glossy brochure. White papers can be distributed in hard copy, as part of a larger document such as a business plan, or available digitally as an attachment to an email, a newsletter or as a page on a website.

The purpose of a white paper is to educate and to sell to the end reader.

Now that you understand what a white paper is, we need to cover what it isn’t before we learn how to write a white paper.

What a white paper is not

It is very important that what you present as a white paper actually is a white paper, not something else.

• A video  is not a white paper, as it is not printed and narrative text.
• A short two- or three-page article is not a white paper because it is not long enough to contain enough useful and substantive information to educate the readers and help them make a necessary decision.
• A sales pitch is not a white paper, as the white paper is intended to help the reader make a decision and find a solution to a problem or challenge — not to necessarily choose only one option as the “right one.”
• Product guides, installation instructions, user manuals, etc. are not white papers. These documents are intended for the user after a sale is made. A white paper is intended to be read before a sales decision is made.
• An opinion piece is not a white paper, it is an editorial. A true white paper is a factual document with supported quotes from industry experts, references, credible statistics, figures and graphs.

There are places and spaces for those other types of documents and media, but don’t identify them as white papers. Even the term “white paper” means that the information must be presented on white paper, including a white cover, when applicable.

How to write a white paper

A true white paper offers solutions to a problem or challenge, does not just praise or discuss one solution, piques the reader’s curiosity, and includes a call-to-action that encourages the reader to do further research and seek more information.

White papers are not easy to write — they must be both concise and the right length to convey the right information; they must contain easy-to-comprehend ideas and use uncomplicated language, not industry jargon; and they must be “non-salesy” and focus on the benefits of of the topic for the reader.

Like formal business plans, white papers follow a specific format, and always include a front and back cover, even if it is intended to be distributed digitally. A white paper is five to 25 pages long (not including covers) and generally has the following components in the following order:

The introduction. This is a one-paragraph overview of the white paper to give readers a general idea of the content in the document and entice them to read further.

The problem or challenge . White papers are intended to give readers possible solutions for a problem or challenge they are facing, so this section is intended to state the issue in a way the readers can easily relate to and feel their issues are being addressed.

The solution. This is the section where you propose your own solution to the identified problem or challenge, but not with forced sales language. Your goal is to give your readers enough information to encourage them to make their own decisions.

The benefits. Here is the section where you talk about your product or service, but only after you have presented a real solution set. While discussing the benefits — you, your product and/or your services offer — you must also include supporting evidence and information.

The conclusion. This section is a one-paragraph summary of everything included in the white paper, including why your product or service is the best option. It is very effective to include the advantages of using your solution, as well as the disadvantages of not using your solution. Again, this section should include references, citations and links.

Contact information. Make sure to include how you can be contacted, as well as the best way and time to get in touch with you.

When completing and formatting your white paper, you should include case studies, charts, diagrams, graphs, tables and photos as appropriate  to get your point across. These elements help with the credibility of your white paper and improves the reader’s perception of you and your company as authorities on the topic covered.

Learning how to write a white paper that’s comprehensive and yet effective takes time, research and practice. Here’s a list of resources to assist you in writing a great white paper:

• Writing White Papers
• The Ultimate White Paper Template
• White Papers: Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices
• How to Write a White Paper — A White Paper on White Papers
• White Paper Structure
• White Paper Template

A well-researched, well-written and properly formatted white paper is an effective way to sell yourself or your topic without actually “selling.” Your white paper can be a stand-alone document, or it can be included as part of a larger document, such as a business or marketing plan. Just remember to provide the research behind your solution!

Business Plan: What It Is + How to Write One

Discover what a business plan includes and how writing one can foster your business’s development.

What is a business plan? 

Think of a business plan as a document that guides the journey to start-up and beyond. Business plans are written documents that define your business goals and the strategies you’ll use to achieve those goals. In addition to exploring the competitive environment in which the business will operate, a business plan also analyses a market and different customer segments, describes the products and services, lists business strategies for success, and outlines financial planning.  

How to write a business plan 

In the sections below, you’ll build the following components of your business plan:

Executive summary

Business description 

Products and services 

Competitor analysis 

Marketing plan and sales strategies 

Brand strategy

Financial planning

Explore each section to bring fresh inspiration and reveal new possibilities for developing your business. Depending on your format, you may adapt the sections, skip over some, or go deeper into others. Consider your first draft a foundation for your efforts and one you can revise, as needed, to account for changes in any area of your business.  

1. Executive summary 

This short section introduces the business plan as a whole to the people who will be reading it, including investors, lenders, or other members of your team. Start with a sentence or two about your business, development goals, and why it will succeed. If you are seeking funding, summarise the basics of the financial plan. 

2. Business description 

Use this section to provide detailed information about your company and how it will operate in the marketplace. 

Mission statement: What drives your desire to start a business? What purpose are you serving? What do you hope to achieve for your business, the team, and your customers? 

Revenue streams: From what sources will your business generate revenue? Examples include product sales, service fees, subscriptions, rental fees, licence fees, and more. 

Leadership: Describe the leaders in your business, their roles and responsibilities, and your vision for building teams to perform various functions, such as graphic design, product development, or sales.  

Legal structure: If you’ve incorporated your business, include the legal structure here and the rationale behind this choice. 

3. Competitor analysis 

This section will assess potential competitors, their offers, and marketing and sales efforts. For each competitor, explore the following: 

Value proposition: What outcome or experience does this brand promise?

Products and services: How does each solve customer pain points and fulfill desires? What are the price points? 

Marketing: Which channels do competitors use to promote? What kind of content does this brand publish on these channels? What messaging does this brand use to communicate value to customers?  

Sales: What sales process or buyer’s journey does this brand lead customers through?

4. Products and services

Use this section to describe everything your business offers to its target market. For every product and service, list the following: 

The value proposition or promise to customers, in terms of how they will experience it

How the product serves customers, addresses their pain points, satisfies their desires, and improves their lives

The features or outcomes that make the product better than those of competitors

Your price points and how these compare to competitors

5. Marketing plan and sales strategies 

In this section, you’ll draw from thorough market research to describe your target market and how you will reach it. 

Who are your ideal customers?   

How can you describe this segment according to their demographics (age, ethnicity, income, location, etc.) and psychographics (beliefs, values, aspirations, lifestyle, etc.)? 

What are their daily lives like? 

What problems and challenges do they experience? 

What words, phrases, ideas, and concepts do consumers in your target market use to describe these problems when posting on social media or engaging with your competitors?  

What messaging will present your products as the best on the market? How will you differentiate messaging from competitors? 

On what marketing channels will you position your products and services?

How will you design a customer journey that delivers a positive experience at every touchpoint and leads customers to a purchase decision?

6. Brand strategy 

In this section, you will describe your business’s design, personality, values, voice, and other details that go into delivering a consistent brand experience. 

What are the values that define your brand?

What visual elements give your brand a distinctive look and feel?

How will your marketing messaging reflect a distinctive brand voice, including tone, diction, and sentence-level stylistic choices? 

How will your brand look and sound throughout the customer journey? 

Define your brand positioning statement. What will inspire your audience to choose your brand over others? What experiences and outcomes will your audience associate with your brand? 

7. Financial planning  

In this section, you will explore your business’s financial future. Suppose you are writing a traditional business plan to seek funding. In that case, this section is critical for demonstrating to lenders or investors you have a strategy for turning your business ideas into profit. For a lean start-up business plan, this section can provide a useful exercise for planning how to invest resources and generate revenue [ 1 ].  

To begin your financial planning, use past financials and other sections of this business plan, such as your price points or sales strategies. 

How many individual products or service packages do you plan to sell over a specific period?

List your business expenses, such as subscribing to software or other services, hiring contractors or employees, purchasing physical supplies or equipment, etc.

What is your break-even point or the amount you must sell to cover all expenses?

Create a sales forecast for the next three to five years: (No. of units to sell X price for each unit) – (cost per unit X No. of units) = sales forecast

Quantify how much capital you have on hand.

When writing a traditional business plan to secure funding, you may append supporting documents, such as licences, permits, patents, letters of reference, resumes, product blueprints, brand guidelines, the industry awards you’ve received, and media mentions and appearances.

Business plan key takeaways and best practices

Remember: Creating a business plan is crucial when starting a business. You can use this document to guide your decisions and actions and even seek funding from lenders and investors. 

Keep these best practices in mind:

Your business plan should evolve as your business grows. Return to it periodically, such as quarterly or annually, to update individual sections or explore new directions your business can take.

Make sure everyone on your team has a copy of the business plan, and welcome their input as they perform their roles. 

Ask fellow entrepreneurs for feedback on your business plan and look for opportunities to strengthen it, from conducting more market and competitor research to implementing new strategies for success. 

Start your business with Coursera 

Ready to start your business? Watch this video on the Lean approach from the Entrepreneurship Specialisation on Coursera: 

Article sources

Inc. “ How to Write the Financial Section of a Business Plan ,   https://www.inc.com/guides/business-plan-financial-section.html.” Accessed April 15, 2024.

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*Please see evaluation details for setting and parameters with which these evaluations are calculated.

In the development of Llama 3, we looked at model performance on standard benchmarks and also sought to optimize for performance for real-world scenarios. To this end, we developed a new high-quality human evaluation set. This evaluation set contains 1,800 prompts that cover 12 key use cases: asking for advice, brainstorming, classification, closed question answering, coding, creative writing, extraction, inhabiting a character/persona, open question answering, reasoning, rewriting, and summarization. To prevent accidental overfitting of our models on this evaluation set, even our own modeling teams do not have access to it. The chart below shows aggregated results of our human evaluations across of these categories and prompts against Claude Sonnet, Mistral Medium, and GPT-3.5.

Preference rankings by human annotators based on this evaluation set highlight the strong performance of our 70B instruction-following model compared to competing models of comparable size in real-world scenarios.

Our pretrained model also establishes a new state-of-the-art for LLM models at those scales.

To develop a great language model, we believe it’s important to innovate, scale, and optimize for simplicity. We adopted this design philosophy throughout the Llama 3 project with a focus on four key ingredients: the model architecture, the pretraining data, scaling up pretraining, and instruction fine-tuning.

Model architecture

In line with our design philosophy, we opted for a relatively standard decoder-only transformer architecture in Llama 3. Compared to Llama 2, we made several key improvements. Llama 3 uses a tokenizer with a vocabulary of 128K tokens that encodes language much more efficiently, which leads to substantially improved model performance. To improve the inference efficiency of Llama 3 models, we’ve adopted grouped query attention (GQA) across both the 8B and 70B sizes. We trained the models on sequences of 8,192 tokens, using a mask to ensure self-attention does not cross document boundaries.

Training data

To train the best language model, the curation of a large, high-quality training dataset is paramount. In line with our design principles, we invested heavily in pretraining data. Llama 3 is pretrained on over 15T tokens that were all collected from publicly available sources. Our training dataset is seven times larger than that used for Llama 2, and it includes four times more code. To prepare for upcoming multilingual use cases, over 5% of the Llama 3 pretraining dataset consists of high-quality non-English data that covers over 30 languages. However, we do not expect the same level of performance in these languages as in English.

To ensure Llama 3 is trained on data of the highest quality, we developed a series of data-filtering pipelines. These pipelines include using heuristic filters, NSFW filters, semantic deduplication approaches, and text classifiers to predict data quality. We found that previous generations of Llama are surprisingly good at identifying high-quality data, hence we used Llama 2 to generate the training data for the text-quality classifiers that are powering Llama 3.

We also performed extensive experiments to evaluate the best ways of mixing data from different sources in our final pretraining dataset. These experiments enabled us to select a data mix that ensures that Llama 3 performs well across use cases including trivia questions, STEM, coding, historical knowledge, etc.

Scaling up pretraining

To effectively leverage our pretraining data in Llama 3 models, we put substantial effort into scaling up pretraining. Specifically, we have developed a series of detailed scaling laws for downstream benchmark evaluations. These scaling laws enable us to select an optimal data mix and to make informed decisions on how to best use our training compute. Importantly, scaling laws allow us to predict the performance of our largest models on key tasks (for example, code generation as evaluated on the HumanEval benchmark—see above) before we actually train the models. This helps us ensure strong performance of our final models across a variety of use cases and capabilities.

We made several new observations on scaling behavior during the development of Llama 3. For example, while the Chinchilla-optimal amount of training compute for an 8B parameter model corresponds to ~200B tokens, we found that model performance continues to improve even after the model is trained on two orders of magnitude more data. Both our 8B and 70B parameter models continued to improve log-linearly after we trained them on up to 15T tokens. Larger models can match the performance of these smaller models with less training compute, but smaller models are generally preferred because they are much more efficient during inference.

To train our largest Llama 3 models, we combined three types of parallelization: data parallelization, model parallelization, and pipeline parallelization. Our most efficient implementation achieves a compute utilization of over 400 TFLOPS per GPU when trained on 16K GPUs simultaneously. We performed training runs on two custom-built 24K GPU clusters . To maximize GPU uptime, we developed an advanced new training stack that automates error detection, handling, and maintenance. We also greatly improved our hardware reliability and detection mechanisms for silent data corruption, and we developed new scalable storage systems that reduce overheads of checkpointing and rollback. Those improvements resulted in an overall effective training time of more than 95%. Combined, these improvements increased the efficiency of Llama 3 training by ~three times compared to Llama 2.

Instruction fine-tuning

To fully unlock the potential of our pretrained models in chat use cases, we innovated on our approach to instruction-tuning as well. Our approach to post-training is a combination of supervised fine-tuning (SFT), rejection sampling, proximal policy optimization (PPO), and direct policy optimization (DPO). The quality of the prompts that are used in SFT and the preference rankings that are used in PPO and DPO has an outsized influence on the performance of aligned models. Some of our biggest improvements in model quality came from carefully curating this data and performing multiple rounds of quality assurance on annotations provided by human annotators.

Learning from preference rankings via PPO and DPO also greatly improved the performance of Llama 3 on reasoning and coding tasks. We found that if you ask a model a reasoning question that it struggles to answer, the model will sometimes produce the right reasoning trace: The model knows how to produce the right answer, but it does not know how to select it. Training on preference rankings enables the model to learn how to select it.

Building with Llama 3

Our vision is to enable developers to customize Llama 3 to support relevant use cases and to make it easier to adopt best practices and improve the open ecosystem. With this release, we’re providing new trust and safety tools including updated components with both Llama Guard 2 and Cybersec Eval 2, and the introduction of Code Shield—an inference time guardrail for filtering insecure code produced by LLMs.

We’ve also co-developed Llama 3 with torchtune , the new PyTorch-native library for easily authoring, fine-tuning, and experimenting with LLMs. torchtune provides memory efficient and hackable training recipes written entirely in PyTorch. The library is integrated with popular platforms such as Hugging Face, Weights & Biases, and EleutherAI and even supports Executorch for enabling efficient inference to be run on a wide variety of mobile and edge devices. For everything from prompt engineering to using Llama 3 with LangChain we have a comprehensive getting started guide and takes you from downloading Llama 3 all the way to deployment at scale within your generative AI application.

A system-level approach to responsibility

We have designed Llama 3 models to be maximally helpful while ensuring an industry leading approach to responsibly deploying them. To achieve this, we have adopted a new, system-level approach to the responsible development and deployment of Llama. We envision Llama models as part of a broader system that puts the developer in the driver’s seat. Llama models will serve as a foundational piece of a system that developers design with their unique end goals in mind.

Instruction fine-tuning also plays a major role in ensuring the safety of our models. Our instruction-fine-tuned models have been red-teamed (tested) for safety through internal and external efforts. ​​Our red teaming approach leverages human experts and automation methods to generate adversarial prompts that try to elicit problematic responses. For instance, we apply comprehensive testing to assess risks of misuse related to Chemical, Biological, Cyber Security, and other risk areas. All of these efforts are iterative and used to inform safety fine-tuning of the models being released. You can read more about our efforts in the model card .

Llama Guard models are meant to be a foundation for prompt and response safety and can easily be fine-tuned to create a new taxonomy depending on application needs. As a starting point, the new Llama Guard 2 uses the recently announced MLCommons taxonomy, in an effort to support the emergence of industry standards in this important area. Additionally, CyberSecEval 2 expands on its predecessor by adding measures of an LLM’s propensity to allow for abuse of its code interpreter, offensive cybersecurity capabilities, and susceptibility to prompt injection attacks (learn more in our technical paper ). Finally, we’re introducing Code Shield which adds support for inference-time filtering of insecure code produced by LLMs. This offers mitigation of risks around insecure code suggestions, code interpreter abuse prevention, and secure command execution.

With the speed at which the generative AI space is moving, we believe an open approach is an important way to bring the ecosystem together and mitigate these potential harms. As part of that, we’re updating our Responsible Use Guide (RUG) that provides a comprehensive guide to responsible development with LLMs. As we outlined in the RUG, we recommend that all inputs and outputs be checked and filtered in accordance with content guidelines appropriate to the application. Additionally, many cloud service providers offer content moderation APIs and other tools for responsible deployment, and we encourage developers to also consider using these options.

Deploying Llama 3 at scale

Llama 3 will soon be available on all major platforms including cloud providers, model API providers, and much more. Llama 3 will be everywhere .

Our benchmarks show the tokenizer offers improved token efficiency, yielding up to 15% fewer tokens compared to Llama 2. Also, Group Query Attention (GQA) now has been added to Llama 3 8B as well. As a result, we observed that despite the model having 1B more parameters compared to Llama 2 7B, the improved tokenizer efficiency and GQA contribute to maintaining the inference efficiency on par with Llama 2 7B.

For examples of how to leverage all of these capabilities, check out Llama Recipes which contains all of our open source code that can be leveraged for everything from fine-tuning to deployment to model evaluation.

What’s next for Llama 3?

The Llama 3 8B and 70B models mark the beginning of what we plan to release for Llama 3. And there’s a lot more to come.

Our largest models are over 400B parameters and, while these models are still training, our team is excited about how they’re trending. Over the coming months, we’ll release multiple models with new capabilities including multimodality, the ability to converse in multiple languages, a much longer context window, and stronger overall capabilities. We will also publish a detailed research paper once we are done training Llama 3.

To give you a sneak preview for where these models are today as they continue training, we thought we could share some snapshots of how our largest LLM model is trending. Please note that this data is based on an early checkpoint of Llama 3 that is still training and these capabilities are not supported as part of the models released today.

We’re committed to the continued growth and development of an open AI ecosystem for releasing our models responsibly. We have long believed that openness leads to better, safer products, faster innovation, and a healthier overall market. This is good for Meta, and it is good for society. We’re taking a community-first approach with Llama 3, and starting today, these models are available on the leading cloud, hosting, and hardware platforms with many more to come.

Try Meta Llama 3 today

We’ve integrated our latest models into Meta AI, which we believe is the world’s leading AI assistant. It’s now built with Llama 3 technology and it’s available in more countries across our apps.

You can use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the web to get things done, learn, create, and connect with the things that matter to you. You can read more about the Meta AI experience here .

Visit the Llama 3 website to download the models and reference the Getting Started Guide for the latest list of all available platforms.

You’ll also soon be able to test multimodal Meta AI on our Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

As always, we look forward to seeing all the amazing products and experiences you will build with Meta Llama 3.

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Biden's new student-loan forgiveness plan just began its 30-day public comment period — and anyone can tell the administration what they think of the relief

• The public now has 30 days to comment on Biden's new student-loan forgiveness plan.
• It's the next step in implementing a broader version of debt relief for borrowers.
• The proposals include relief for those with unpaid interest, along with those in repayment for 20 years.

The public has one month to tell President Joe Biden what they think of his new student-loan forgiveness plan .

After announcing details of Biden's second attempt at student-debt relief last week, the Education Department formally published the draft text of the new rules on the Federal Register on Wednesday. The publication of the rules officially kicked off the 30-day public comment, set to end on May 17. Comments can be submitted to the Federal Register here , which the Education Department will then review.

The draft text currently consists of nine rules "that permit separate and distinct types of waivers using the Secretary of Education's longstanding authority under the Higher Education Act," the Education Department said in a Tuesday press release.

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The rules address distinct types of borrowers that would qualify for relief under this new plan: those whose balances have grown due to unpaid interest, those who would be eligible for relief under certain repayment plans but have not yet enrolled, those who have been in repayment for at least 20 years, and those who have attended programs that left them with too much debt compared to post-graduation earnings.

The Education Department also said a separate rule to address relief for borrowers experiencing financial hardship will be released in the coming months.

"These historic steps reflect President Biden's determination that we cannot allow student debt to leave students worse off than before they went to college," Undersecretary of Education James Kvaal said in a Tuesday statement. "The President directed us to complete these programs as quickly as possible, and we are going to do just that."

The department aims to begin implementing relief as early as this fall. Still, as Business Insider previously reported , legal threats to the relief could imperil the department's timeline. While lawsuits have yet to be formally filed against Biden's administration, Missouri's Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote on X in response to Biden's relief proposals: "See you in court."

And some experts said a conservative Supreme Court could likely rule like they did with Biden's first debt relief plan, striking it down .

"The administration is certainly still facing a very skeptical Supreme Court," Cary Coglianese, an administrative law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told BI. "Even though it's a different statute, it's still a skeptical Supreme Court. It's still a pretty big program even though it's a smaller one."

Following the public comment period, the Education Department will review comments and could choose to adjust their proposals based on the feedback they receive. It will then finalize the rule and move toward implementation.

Watch: Why student loans aren't canceled, and what Biden's going to do about it

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