A white paper is a costly piece of content to produce, so why not get the most out of yours? With a little creativity, you can re-purpose each paper into multiple pieces of content to use on your website, as lead magnets, for email campaigns, and for social media.
- Turn the problem section into a checklist by identifying the characteristic issues of your target customers (like server farm size or pervasiveness of attacks on their industry). Add a call to action about how your offering is built to serve needs like theirs. Then use it for an email campaign.
- Create a worksheet by defining the problem in steps (re-use the checklist here) and then adding the steps to solve it. This should just be a numbered list of sentences with space for readers to write their responses. The point here is simply to help a prospect see that his company is a good candidate for your solution. Worksheets make good email campaigns, too.
- Turn your white paper into a tweet farm. Tweet the best sentences from each section, as well as any interesting charts, statistics, and quotes. Link the tweet to either the white paper itself or to a section of your website.
- Convert the paper into a blog series. Write a few sentences describing the series, then break the paper into sections, add a brief introduction to each one, and you’ve got content to populate your website blog and your LinkedIn blog for a few weeks.
- Review the entire paper for cited statistics you can use in other collateral or on your website. Statistics can make good calls to action: “37% of CEOs don’t have a strong security strategy. Join the 63%.” If you have knowledge base software for internal use, consider creating a searchable bank of juicy quotes and stats. If you don’t have knowledge base software, you could do this in a spreadsheet.
If you already have white papers, start extending your ROI today by pulling out some tweets or organizing a quick checklist. And the next time you plan a white paper, think in advance of all the ways you plan to use it so the writer can structure the content in a way that makes these activities easier.
