How to Write a Whitepaper for Your Blockchain Project

As you’re building blockchain marketing operations, whitepapers become incredibly important. It’s your moment to share the vision with newcomers; you’re chance as a first impression maker. Readers will learn about your project, its direction, and how team members plan to further create the proposed technology.

But writing technical documents like this doesn’t come easy. In fact, even as a seasoned freelance writer, I still face challenges when developing this type of content.

In today’s article, I’m going to share some tips to overcoming each issue you face. By the end, you’ll have enough information to finally start that whitepaper draft. Or, ya know, finally realize it’s probably time to just hire a professional for the job. ;-)

Gain a Solid Understanding of the Proposed Technology

I’ve written plenty of articles over the years, from Hawaiian helicopters to health insurance tips and everything in between. This formed me into a skilled researcher, but the technical aspects of blockchain technology is a whole new type of dragon to slay.

Make sure you’re comfortable with the understanding your writer and editor has of the technology. It’s incredibly important to grasp how each facet of the technology works, otherwise, you won’t properly communicate the project with your audience.

If you aren’t writing the whitepaper yourself, make sure to invest in a solid freelancer who knows how to properly understand, simplify and communicate your technology.

Developers Use Jargon; Writers Simplify for the Audience

Any writer worth their salt knows when to use jargon and when to speak in lay terms. Can you incorporate jargon into the whitepaper? Absolutely. However, it’s important to…

1. Use it sparingly. Do you know why people don’t read the Terms of Service on websites? Because it’s full of too much jargon. If you use it, do so sparingly.

2. Define it through context clues. Surrounding sentences and words should give the readers enough context to define the jargon for themselves. If they can’t, choose a simpler word.

To really succeed, you likely want technical AND non-technical people to believe in your project. After all, you need the assistance of marketers, customer support, and the users themselves. A lot of the time, these people won’t read a boring whitepaper.

Remember the K.I.S.S. strategy… Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Understand the Correct Terminology to Avoid Future Issues

Building on the idea of jargon, it’s also important to be careful of the terminology used to promote the project. Always make sure it’s up-to-date and accurate because you don’t want to find yourself in a precarious position, with regulations or otherwise.

Terminology like ICO, tokensale and crowdsale haven’t yet been clearly defined. This has generated some unwanted attention from ambitious regulators.

Shareholder, investor, share and other technical terms have also garnered attention.

With so much scrutiny revolving around the blockchain industry, it’s important to be wary of these regulation attempts. And, if you do decide to use those words, make sure to keep an eye on industry updates and new regulations because you may find yourself need to make edits.

Format the Whitepaper for Easy Readability

As someone who spends a lot of time formatting content for the web, trust me when I say it’s important. No one wants to read huge blocks of text -- it’s not easy or convenient.

Proper formatting can mean the difference between your audience reading, skimming or ignoring your whitepaper altogether. And that’s not even to mention communicating in a way that helps people retain what they read.

Here are a few of my personal tips for formatting your whitepaper:

Whitespace: Technical documents require a lot of brainpower. Give your readers’ eyes and brains a break by giving them some space. This means using proper margins, but will also happen by implementing the rest of these tips.

Headings: Not only do headings break up the content into a digestible format, it also makes the document easier to skim and refer back to in the future.

Paragraphs: Make your paragraphs three to five lines, with a few one to two liners in there. No one wants to trudge their way through a gigantic wall of groupspeak and technicalities. No one.

Sentences: Keep sentences less than 25 words long. Ideally, closer to 15-20. Too many compound sentences or semicolons is distracting, hinders flow, and exhausts the mind.

Readability: Aim for a 5th- to 6th-grade readability. You can use a tool like Hemingway App to check the grade level of your whitepaper.

Balance the Technical With Engagement Elements

Most whitepapers are of a very technical nature. After all, you’re attempting to explain the intricacies of your innovative vision… That’s not an easy task for any writer.

However, it’s equally important to accurately communicate the technicalities while making it accessible. If you haven’t yet picked up on it, this is the theme of the article… Yes, it needs to be technical, but you also need people to read and care about it.

Infographics, sketches, mind maps, diagrams and charts are all great visual elements. Consider including a few of them throughout the whitepaper.

If done properly, it will help keep readers engaged AND help more simply explain your project.

Make it Personal to Your Project, Company and Vision

Finally, consider how you can sprinkle your company’s culture and vision throughout the document. Without a personality, the whitepaper will fall on deaf ears. It will get lost in a sea of poorly written explanations of blockchain projects.

You don’t want to face that fate, I know.

Keeping a clear focus while letting your brand shine through is the balance you want to achieve. It will help people connect with your project, which is especially important for bounty campaigns.

Conclusion

Taking the whitepaper live is a huge accomplishment for blockchain marketing departments. These documents aren’t easy to create, but they’re more than worth the effort.

Are they challenging? Absolutely. And the blockchain industry is in desperate need of seasoned writers who know how to simplify complex topics. It could make your break your projects, so why not invest the time or money into making sure it’s remarkable?

Are you working on a whitepaper for your blockchain project? Tell us more about it in the comments below!