Why Your White Paper Title Needs a Subtitle

Why Your White Paper Title Needs a Subtitle:rom White Paper Pundit by Jonathan Kantor

When you come right down to it, your white paper title carries some pretty big responsibilities.

Think about it. One single line comprising perhaps five or six words must engage a reader within a few seconds. That small amount of time will determine whether or not a reader will subsequently click on, and download your white paper. That line also has to do the same on search engines, syndication sites, and referenced articles just as much as it does on the front cover of your document.

Get it wrong and the potential to close that lucrative sale or influence your target audience with strategic thought leadership principle disappears just as fast as the last site they clicked away from. That’s a heck of a lot of responsibility for just a few words!

That’s why it’s almost impossible to perform such a task using only five or six words. Rather than merely applying a short title, your white paper also needs an additional subtitle to ensure that your engage that special reader.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you are writing a white paper on the topic of network security with the title, “10 Ways to Bullet Proof Your Corporate Network”. At first glance, the average reader would think the white paper presents a solution story covering beefing up the physical hardware and software of your network to prevent penetration such as hackers.

But adding the additional subtitle, “How you can avoid the most common online scams”, refines the content by educating your reader that the paper covers issues such as phishing schemes, false identities, and email fraud, very different from what the initial perception was based solely on the title.

Why is this important?

Your reader doesn’t have a lot of time to reader pages of content in order to fully comprehend your complete solution message. The faster that you can deliver a refined message with a title and subtitle that accurately educates that time and attention-challenged reader, the greater the probability will be that they will want to download and read your primary white paper content.

So for your next white paper, add a subtitle to your title. In fact, the addition of a subtitle can even improve the often maligned “Best Practices” white paper title, but don’t get your hopes up.