Saturday, October 17, 2015

Interwebs White Paper Bombardment

The Internet's marketing gurus are on white paper production overdrive. I download a few guides every so often to stay current on how content marketers think. A few white papers aren't worth the digits it takes to publish them, but most are okay. The biggest unknown is estimating their shelf lives.

Internet marketing advances at light speed. Tactics that worked last year may be counterproductive today. A white paper describing old best practices may be a waste of time to execute now. Every marketer now rides the content marketing trend. Any think piece that doesn't address how content fills out every layer of the marketing funnel comes up short.

Marketing guidelines that depend too heavily on text are also suspect in an age when Pinterest and Instagram make images central to communication. White papers are fine for deep dives into topics that require step-by-step instructions. Marrying them to infographics that grab attention keeps them relevant.

I have plans for tons more white papers here at Alfidi Capital. The clean look of my main website's new design makes me want to put up a whole bunch more research publications. I challenge myself to write for an audience that I will never personally meet. White paper readers are global. They also exist in the far future. Whatever I write must translate into formats that someone has yet to invent. Publishing grants vicarious immortality.