Whitepaper: How to turn the Superpower of “Knowledge” into PR Power

What do Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne and the good old Whitepaper have in common? That’s right, they have superpowers. The former swings through the street canyons as Spiderman with his spider threads, while Batman impresses with his own strength and ability to fly. And the Whitepaper? This has the superpower “knowledge”. How much power it can have for PR and what to look out for:

High Effort and Good Planning for PR Power: Know-how attractively packaged

Simply writing a Whitepaper and hoping that it will be read is the wrong approach. It starts with the concept and planning. It should therefore be clarified in advance what is possible and what resources are required.

Here is a selection of the most important questions that project managers should answer at an early stage:

• Who is responsible for the Whitepaper (management, organization, coordination of implementation)?
• What size should it be?
• What is the focus of the content (e.g. case study with best practice examples, checklists or instructions)?
• What is the target group?
• What are the aims of the Whitepaper?
• Who supplies the content?
• Which channels (e.g. website, newsletter, social media) are used to promote the Whitepaper?
• Where is the download offered (e.g. landing page)?
• To what extent is your own corporate design adopted?
• Is there a style guide for inbound products?
• Who is responsible for layout and design?
• Deadline: When should the Whitepaper be published?

It is important that the Whitepaper provides added value for the target group. A three-page article on why digitization is so important is not necessary. save yourselves. But the three sustainable pillars that boost digitalization and how companies approach them are more likely to hit the nail on the head. If it is then well visualized and corresponds to your corporate design, the work is complete. So as soon as it is graphically appealing and promises a practical benefit in terms of content, the path to collecting e-mail addresses and ultimately generating leads is not far away.

Whitepapers as a PR Tool: Written Once – Used several Times

You should ensure that your content is also suitable for PR right from the design stage. Ideally, the Whitepaper fits perfectly into your topic plan or you align the content with it. Once you have written a white paper, the second one is not far away. Especially when the feedback is positive and the expectation has at least been confirmed.

However, using this document solely to obtain new business partners, or more precisely their contact addresses, is too short-sighted. Whitepapers also offer enormous potential for your own press work. This allows you to reuse the content that has already been formulated without having to ask your colleagues for the next brainstorming session.

Work through the content step by step and create short topic teasers for addressing the media. If you are accepted, it is then up to you whether you deliver a text 1:1 to the medium or whether you write individual contributions based on the original article. And if you don’t want to address the media, you can also use suitable networks or community platforms such as LinkedIn to place selected articles there with a reference to the original source. And that’s not all: be creative to increase the visibility of the Whitepaper.

Using the Superpower of “Knowledge” for your own PR

The Whitepaper has enormous potential, both from a marketing and a corporate communications perspective. The big advantage is simply the multiple use. After all, if you are already dealing with experts on a focused topic, it is also possible to support your own PR with it when there is no hot company news on the horizon. Knowledge paired with your experience creates enormous trust, not only in the person behind it as the author, but also in the company as a brand.

If you use the document unilaterally for lead generation, you will lose these superpowers. Therefore: find relevant topics for your target groups, coordinate the white paper with PR managers and utilize the content further – this way your Whitepaper will not only find readers, but also strengthen your visibility in the media world.

What can a Whitepaper look like? For our client Concardis, we have created a Whitepaper on the topic of “Digital payment”. Take a look at it here.