The White Paper

Now that we're used to the modern utility of the internet, it's easy to forget that the Internet was originally created as a medium of technical and intellectual exchange. Believe it or not, it still is.

The term 'white paper' in a business context is a technical document aimed at an audience of a specific vocation or specialty. In business, it's the document used to explain the workings or business trends of a product or product category.

Large corporations, such as Eastman Kodak, use white papers to communicate techincal, strategic, and market information to the appropriate people in partner or client firms without the taint of sales. The content of a white paper must be purely academic in order for the document, and the people creating it, to have any credibility.

Interestingly, the white paper serves as one of the strongest marketing tools in a company's arsenal. A good paper places the firm as an authority on its subject, cementing not only the competence of its technical staff but also its understanding of potential customer needs. It enables potential clients and suppliers to begin discussing solutions without the skewed interest of a sales department. When it's finally time for the sales guys to go in, the technical people on the prospect could already be sold on the product as the ideal solution to their needs.

This is common knowledge, so gigabytes of white papers get churned out each day. This huge repository of information is one of the most useful features of the Web, and one of its most frequently written types of content.