Strategies: Community Building and Repeat Traffic.
White Papers
Your businesses expertise is highlighted and demonstrated by quality white papers. The white paper shows the depth of your knowledge and builds confidence in your prospects as well as serving as a promoter of word of mouth referrals.
As with many other tools, white papers are often misused. A quality white paper's authorship should only be detectable by style and by by-line. The content of the White Paper should not be biased towards any company's product or service, however it is acceptable for a White Paper to take a controversial stance regarding Thought Leadership.
The purpose of a White Paper is neither to market nor sell but to demonstrate expertise. As an example, any person or company involved in graphic design, could write a white paper on the most common Color Modes: RGB, CMYK, LAB and Grayscale. But the degree of depth of substance demonstrates whether the writer has a complete grasp of his/her topic.
When you provide unbiased reference material on your website, you are making your website more valuable to the visitor.
White Papers should be saved in a platform independent format. One example of an unacceptable format is a Microsoft Word document. It is unacceptable because many Web users do not own a copy of Microsoft Word. A more acceptable format is the PDF format. Almost every computer is able to open a PDF document and there are free PDF viewers available for download. The most accessible format is the plain text format. However, it is less visually readable.
Your goal in creating a white paper should be widespread dissemination for the purpose of raising your company's visibility in the marketplace. For more information on spreading your message, see Syndication. For more information on developing Repeat Traffic, see Newsmastering.