The Rise of the White Paper Explainer
It’s your life’s work: painstaking research, late nights and unfaltering focus. A white paper is your tool to make a difference in your field. It can impact society and provoke positive change. But as everyone around us becomes busier, attention spans become shorter and the online world becomes more saturated with information, you might find you need to add another tool to your belt. Get more eyes on your work and increase research exposure with an animated white paper explainer video.
Video will never replace the trusty text format, but can work as a reinforcement. Visual content complements its written counterpart, and here’s how…
Whet the appetite
A short animated explainer can lure in prospective readers. Reading a white paper can be a lengthy task, so giving a little taster can reassure your audience that it’s worth the time investment. We’ve all been guilty of downloading a document to read later and forgetting all about it – a video can be a little nudge to encourage a revisit.
Accelerate action
Video abstracts allow your audience to absorb your ideas much more quickly than a white paper. The sooner they get to grips with your message, the sooner they can act upon it.
Encourage sharing
If you want your accomplishments to get noticed, video is the way to go. According to LinkedIn research, members are 20 times more likely to share a video than any other type of post. Use video as a vehicle to increase research exposure and drive traffic to your research.
Analyse engagement
You’ll get plenty of feedback from peers, but don’t second guess what the rest of your readers think of your work. With an animated white paper, you can use online audience insights to understand who is watching: demographic data can help you hone in on the types of audience most receptive to your content. Not only can you analyse who is watching, but you can get a pretty good idea of what they think of it: if high volumes of viewers are dropping off at a specific point during the video, you can adapt and improve your white paper accordingly.
Follow up
Disseminating your research through video will better your chances of success, whether your goal is to be published in a prestigious academic journal, to encourage stakeholder participation or to influence policy makers. You want to change the world, and we want to help: visit services page to find out more about our work.
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