Whitepapers, eBooks and guides: how to make long-form content that works

Sookio writes:

Copywriters like to write; this is catastrophically unsurprising. A good copywriter, however, will rein in their literary pretentions and give you only the words that pull their weight.

Sometimes that means a killer six-word title. Sometimes it’s circa 280 characters of Twitter brilliance. But once in a blue moon, the right number of words is… lots.

So, how many? Here today, we concern ourselves with long long-form content. Stuff like:

• eBooks

• whitepapers

• landing pages

• blogs over 1750 words

If you’re thinking about writing something of that scope and your millennial knee-jerk kicks in all like, ‘nobody’s going to read all that,’ think again. People will read all that, they’ll enjoy it (as might Google), and it’ll form a worthy part of your marketing mix if you follow a few simple steps.

Something written for its own sake isn’t going to do you much good. Both yourself and your audience need to be enriched from the experience, and that end goal needs to be built into your strategy from the outset.

That goal could take many forms:

Perhaps you’re working in cutting-edge tech, pushing the frontiers of science. Mayhap you’ve found a niche topic that, somehow, nobody has explored in detail before.

In either of these scenarios, producing a researched, authoritative piece creates a valuable resource which others can use to benefit from your knowledge. Whitepapers really come into their own here.

This positions you as a credible authority. I often find myself referencing reports from the likes of McKinsey & Company who regularly produce wonderful papers which make my life as a researcher much easier.

You too can reap that same level of goodwill, and if the finished piece is useful enough, it becomes the kind of investment which will keep paying dividends years into the future. Few tweets can say that.

Generating leads

Lead generation has to seriously step up its game post-GDPR. People have woken up to their data having real value; if you want that data, you’ve got to make it a fair deal.

Offering something like an eBook with insider knowledge for your audience sounds like a fair deal to me. If you’re in B2B, you might want to pick a topic adjacent to your core competency, helping readers without giving away your own trade secrets for free.

This, with robust data capture, gives your audience a reason to enter your brand’s universe. But the value you offer doesn’t have to stop once you’ve got their data, in fact it’s better that it doesn’t.

The Royal Society of Chemistry keeps its huge membership updated and engaged with regular series of whitepapers to ensure the audience doesn’t drop out and unsubscribe once they’ve got their free content.

With such a huge scientific discipline to cover, they go to town providing something for everyone even tangentially connected to their space. We know, because we happen to have written and designed some of those beautiful whitepapers. Just sayin’.

Take a look at the Sookio blog to discover more on long-form content