White Papers vs. Blogs – Your Opinion?
Jun 27th, 2009 | By Karl Rohde | Category: Discussion, OpinionBusinesses are in a dilemma. People’s attention spans are shortening, and they want information now.
Here’s the scenario:
You are the marketing strategist of a start-up selling niche software to IT professionals.
Your marketing plan already has all the basics. It has the web site, direct e-mail marketing, auto-responders and even free trials.
In this common start-up situation, there are two additional tools you can use to promote your product.
However, cost, time and results are king, and you are restricted to only one.
The choice is either publish a series of white papers or us a technical blog.
Which would you opt for? Why?
I guess the issue lies in resources.
Start-ups are often stretched. They may not be able to integrate a blog into their existing site without substantial effort.
A white paper can be submitted in a lot more locations than a blog post.
Ideally though, you are right, and doing both is the best option.
False choice imo… a series of white papers can become a blog in almost an instant… and a free white paper is one of the best ways to build a good email list so do both, but plan on the white paper being online in a pdf rather than print… that way you can afford to do both.
So do a blog and an online wp series.
How’s that?
[...] this hypothetical question, the Writer’s Block Blog, asks readers for their opinion by using the analogy of a startup [...]