Amp Up Your Whitepaper Quality
An Inclusive Publishing Model
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Background
In addition to podcasts, blogs, webinars, and videoblogs, businesses showcase their expertise with whitepapers. These whitepapers summarize research findings, provide customer education, and share a visionary perspective.
What is a whitepaper, and how do you write one? Hubspot has an excellent blog that describes whitepapers and offers free templates.
Why make them? Businesses usually exchange whitepapers for email addresses for capturing marketing leads. They also hope to attract prospects who inquire about their services (passive marketing).
A different publishing model
To date, I’ve been involved in two whitepapers that do not collect downloader data (no email required).
Leadership-development whitepaper
The first one was authored by my graduate students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As part of a leadership course, the students interviewed leadership-development experts and published their findings. You can download the Reflections on Leadership Development whitepaper from the HPT Treasures website.
HRBP whitepaper
I wrote the second whitepaper based on my interviews with HR Business Partners. My intent is to help readers rethink what success is for the HRBP role. You can download The 2022 HRBP Report from my website. Like the first whitepaper, I do not collect emails in exchange for the download.
Two challenges with whitepapers
Most whitepapers use color, photographs, and infographics. However, they tend to have two substantial problems. These whitepapers are:
- Not print-friendly (heavy on the use of color ink)
- Not friendly to people who happen to have visual disabilities
What makes the 2022 HRBP Report unique
With my HRBP Report (and future whitepapers), I overcome these problems by publishing the report in three PDF formats:
- Interactive, full color, not printable PDF
