After writing or producing more than a half dozen whitepapers this year, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about the process.
If you’re not familiar with the term, “whitepaper” is a fancy name for “business report.” A whitepaper could be a case study, trend report or paper based on a survey or scientific study. Regardless of length or look, putting one together involves certain phases or steps, and the more planning that goes into each, the better the end product will be.
The first post in this series examined essential steps in the pre-production process.
This installment shares the steps involved in getting a whitepaper written and designed.
Whitepaper Production Steps
During the pre-production phase, you determined the concept and subject for the whitepaper you’ll be creating, mapped out a timeline, identified experts and other sources who’ll be interviewed or provide other input, found writers, graphic designers and other contributors and made assignments.
Here’s are the next steps in writing, editing and designing a whitepaper:
1. Share information – As with any type of writing assignment, the more information you have up front the fewer problems you’ll encounter on the back end. If you’re writing the whitepaper yourself, schedule as many meetings or phone calls with your client as necessary to make sure you understand the scope of the project, what sources you absolutely must interview, the subject to be covered, etc. Repeat meetings and calls are good, and inevitable in projects like these, but spend too much time on them or you’ll end up with a lower hourly rate for your work. To get the most done in the shortest amount of time, prepare questions or talking points beforehand to cover everything you need. Use email, instant messages, texts, etc., between times when little things come up. If you’re editing the project, share anything and everything you get from the client with the writer and other contributors so they have as much information as you do.
2. Troubleshoot problems – Inevitably, things come up. A source doesn’t pan out. Corporate has design guidelines that your client failed to mention during initial discussions. A logo has to appear in a certain spot on every page but nobody told that to the designer. Or, God forbid, someone higher up the food chain decides to switch the subject of the whitepaper from A to B after you’ve already put in weeks of work. I dealt with nearly all those and other situations on the reports I produced. The best way to deal with unexpected developments is to know they’ll happen, stay calm, be flexible, talk about everything, and build extra time into your timeline.
3. Review the first draft. Eventually the day will come: you’ll finish the first draft of the report, or if you’re editing, you’ll get the draft from the writer. Although you’ll feel like celebrating – and you should, look how much you’ve accomplished! – your work is far from finished. Whether you’re editing the draft or someone’s editing you, this review will include the usual editorial checks for grammar, spelling, sentence construction, language usage, typos, links, etc. It should also include checks for:
- Organization – The report should be easy to follow and touch on all the points it was supposed to.
- Length – Individual sections and the overall report should meet required lengths without going over or under the word count significantly. What’s significant? I can live with word counts that are over or under by 10 percent, so 250 words either way for a 2,500-word report. Anything more or less and I’ll ask a writer to trim, or do it myself.
- Conformity – The whitepaper should stick to the client’s whitepaper style. Depending on what that is, it could include an introduction, executive summary, conclusion, features and benefits section.
- Case studies – Break out case studies should be organized to highlight a problem and solution in a pre-determined manner.
- Footnotes – If the report uses footnotes, they should conform to the client’s footnotes style. If you’re using links instead of footnotes, double check that they work.
- Jargon – I’m find with reports being written in the vernacular of the industry it’s being written for. But that’s no excuse for cramming something full of acronyms, jargon and corporate double speak.
4. Create a template. Depending on how you and your client are working on a particular project, this step could take place while the whitepaper is being written, after the first draft is turned in, or after a manuscript has been edited and approved. Regardless of the timing, the design needs to fit the content and the client’s need. If it’s a magazine planning to hand something out at a conference, the report needs to be print ready. If they plan to post it online as a .pdf, it needs to be web ready. If the organization you’re working with produces reports on a regular basis, they might already have a design template with rules about colors, logo placement and other design elements that they want you to use or adapt. Sometimes your graphic guru can create a mock up with placeholder copy you can use to fine tune the design before the real text is ready.
5. Put the report into the template. If my experience is the norm, this step isn’t as simple as it sounds. One graphic designer I work with says fitting a report into a design template – whether existing or new – is like putting together a puzzle. The pieces have to fit just right or it doesn’t look good. Even if the publisher or client doesn’t have an existing whitepaper template, a good designer will create a style sheet so fonts, colors, type sizes, pull quote styles and other graphical elements remain uniform from page to page, and if you’re doing a series, report to report. Although you’ve already edited the report, proofread it again – and ask someone else to proof it to – once it’s been laid out to catch any typos that escaped notice the first time around, and also to check for pull quotes that are too long, widows and other elements of the report that might be out of place or not look right.
6. Circulate the whitepaper for review and revised accordingly. The report’s written, edited, laid out and proofed. You’re so close to being finished you can taste it. But there’s still one big hurdle to clear before you’re there, circulating the report to anyone and everyone at the publisher or client who needs to review it. Depending on the client’s policies, you or they may also send it to any case study or expert sources who were promised a chance to review the document before publication. Either way, put one person in charge of the review. Have them collect all comments and change requests, and funnel them back to you, the better to manage the process. Once all feedback is in, determine what you need to act on and make revisions accordingly.
Once all parties involved have signed off on the revised final whitepaper, it’s time to share it with the world. I’ll discuss different ways to publish and promote whitepapers in the next installment of the series.
If you’ve produced whitepapers, what are your go-to sources for learning about the process?