What I learned about writing ICO white papers — by writing white papers

First things first, it’s white paper and not whitepaper. According to search terms used by people, white paper beats whitepaper.

Coming back, writing an ICO white paper is something that most ICO companies dread.
Answer this, if you, even after building the product, years of industry experience, are outsourcing the drafting of your white paper to agencies/freelancers like me, can the white paper be as detailed as it could have been? Will you trust your intern to run your company, even for an hour?
I know exactly what we writers pitch to you to bag your project. I’ve done it quite a few times too. We start with the number of white papers we’ve already written. Anything more than 3 and you’re already impressed. I am tempted to reveal my number but that would defeat the purpose of this article.

Next, we bedazzle you with our knowledge of the crypto-verse and that of the ICO processes. Mind you, I’ve had clients take my advice on certain business aspects of the ICO, despite the fact that it is out of the scope of the white paper writer.
So, the deal gets finalized and we go to our drawing board. Well, at least some of us do. Sadly, many of us have templatized the entire process. This leads to similarities in phraseology, image placement, fonts, and God knows what all. I know why I got into writing because I loved it. For me, templatized white papers are as bad as using content spinners. If I know that my next work is going to bear a striking resemblance to my previous work, the fun of writing would just vanish.

Our storyboarding process takes 1–3 days, depending on the complexity of the project. It is a best practice to have a SPOC (Single Point of Contact) within your client’s company, to ensure that the messaging stays in tune. While all clients expect to be delivered a phenomenal white paper, one that would raise $100 million, in twenty-four hours, they only want to pay a measly $100 for that paper. The RoI becomes a million dollars for a dollar spent. Ask yourself this question, does your product give your consumers a similar RoI? No? Then work closely with the writer on the white paper to tighten the messaging as per your learnings from the industry.

Another best practice, loaned from the finance industry is that the client provides the executive summary, and the writer expands it and builds the white paper. I know, the ICO white paper writing is quite different from academic research papers. Providing the 3–4 page executive summary to the writer will ensure that the messaging is easier to grasp, as well as make the writer accountable for the messaging of the white paper. Do you seriously think that the writer has in-depth knowledge of the gaming industry, the finance industry, the media industry, the housing industry, and now, even the porn industry? The writer is a wordsmith, let’s be satisfied with that, and provide him with links to actual sources, figures you want to use, and/or think that they are authentic.

The images and infographics will sometimes take as much time to create and polish as the entire text portion of the white paper.
It is a good practice to conceptualize and draw the images by hand and get them designed by a graphic designer. It is never professional to leave word arts, smart arts, and clip arts hanging on the white paper. Moreover, with graphic designing, all the images and infographics can adhere to the same color scheme and the same fonts.

Lastly, the white paper is a marketing document. All portions of the white paper must channel the reader through the marketing funnel, from generating a lead to converting. For those out of the marketing domain, a funnel consists of 4 stages, Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

The white paper must :

1. Make the reader aware of both, the problems of the industry and the existence of your product.
2. Once aware, generate the interest of the reader by highlighting the key differentiators of your product.
3. An interested reader will conduct some research of their own and desire answers for a few questions. Put yourself in the shoes of the reader and answer them in the paper itself.
4. An interested reader is highly likely to buy your product, so think of intuitive actionable items and CTAs.

A bonus segment of the funnel is advocacy. The PC master-race and the apple fanboys are the product advocates.
Based on these and similar observations, I have devised a checklist of items to ensure that the white paper quickly passes through the iterative process and starts performing its intended activity.

The check-list is :

1. Client drafts Executive Summary
2. Create a message planner
3. Divide the white paper into deliverable sections of not more than two pages. Get each section reviewed by the client.
4. While collating the sections, add page numbers to gauge the flow of content.
5. Create hand-drawn diagrams and put them on the white paper to see how they look and what is their utility in that particular page.
6. Keep the page count to under 30 pages max. Anything more than that and even the most seasoned of readers will begin to skim some sections.
7. Contractions are okay in the white paper. So, add a personal touch by using you’ve, you’re etc.
8. Add the tokenomics sheet at the front because that is one of the first things a reader wants to see.
9. Add color to the white paper by using multiple examples and use cases.
10. Adding appendices and then explaining what is Blockchain, and what are smart contracts is a useless filler material. Those who are reading it are not the target demographic of the white paper.
11. Add images just before formatting.

So, there you go, that’s your go-to guide for ICO white papers.
If you have any suggestions or think that I’ve missed something, do drop a comment below, I’m always glad to learn more.
For more information and/or help in writing ICO white papers, reach out to me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or email.

Note: I’m not taking orders for writing white papers until the end of April 2018. Please keep this into account while requesting the drafting of your white paper.