Adhering to best practices may feel good, but wasting energy on creating pointless content may simply be a waste of time.
Why do White Papers suck? Let B2B marketers count the ways.
First, they sound dorky. Who wants to read some nerd’s homework assignment when the same information could be conveyed in a video or infographic in a fraction of the time? If you’re a business-to-business marketer trying to get some suit to give half a thought to your brand, why would you serve them content that will have them asleep and drooling on their tie before they finish the first page?
What’s worse — not only are White Papers the equivalent of serving someone one million shots of NyQuil, they’re not easy to write. In fact, they take a lot of effort. You have to do extensive research, depend on a writer to deliver the goods and the editing process can be brutal. Then you have to deal with the fact that the people you want to impress with your freshly written White Paper are likely to pack up and head home when they see it in their inbox.
So in effect, writing a White Paper means you’re putting a lot of energy into creating content that could make your intended audience hate you. Personally, if somebody is going to hate me, I want the hatred to be based on my overbearing personality and questionable tact.
But when it comes to content marketing and Facebook status updates, everybody wants to be liked. That’s why it’s time to admit the only thing a White Paper is good for is hiding your illegal narcotics and official Belieber ID card, because ain’t nobody ever going to be looking through it. Guaranteed, yo.
And this isn’t just an internet rant. It’s that, too, but it’s an internet rant backed up by data, which is the real lifeblood of shoving brands down consumers’ and/or businesses’ throats these days. Study, after study, after mother-loving study show that White Papers belong at the bottom of guinea pig cages, not in your B2B brand-building toolbox.
So go ahead and write that detailed, impenetrable research-heavy White Paper. That will just leave more money for the content marketers who know what they’re doing.
