"Since white papers are among the most popular pieces of content for [many] buyers," notes Cheryl Goldberg at the High Tech Communicator blog, "you'll want to create a lot of them. But coming up with new ideas for white papers can be a daunting task." To ease your brainstorming efforts, she has created a list of 14 common categories—each of which holds appeal for potential customers in the market for your product or service.

You might, for instance, write a whitepaper that:

• Demonstrates thought leadership. Identify pain points, explain how available solutions fall short and educate prospects on new solutions that better address the problem. "These white papers should not actually discuss the vendor's product," she writes, "but they should point to its capabilities as they describe the ideal solution."
• Shares original research. You can woo buyers with insights to which they wouldn't ordinarily have access. "[O]ne client," she says, "commissioned a study from an analyst that looked at regulatory compliance, asking questions about the number of companies that were sanctioned due to lack of compliance, the average costs of these sanctions, and what operational issues were keeping the companies from improving their compliance."
• Answers a common customer question. One company responded to frequent inquiries about RFID (radio-frequency identification) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by creating whitepapers to explain both topics.

The Po!nt: Mix up your lead-generation content with whitepapers that cover a spectrum of buyer interests.

Source: High Tech Communicator. Click here for the full post.

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