A colleague and I just put together a talk about white papers that are presented as videos and slide shows.

Apryl Parcher is a white paper writer and social media expert from WhitePaperResults.com.

Apryl and I made this presentation in response to the non-traditional formats for white papers we’ve seen cropping up, especially videos and slide shows.

We present a few samples of so-called “white papers” formatted as videos and slide shows, and make some observations about their effectiveness.

Click on the screen below to watch it (9:47 minutes).

A video white paper usually involves a talking head delivering content at a fixed camera angle for about seven to nine minutes. There can be extra text or a transcript of what the person is saying to the side of the screen.

A slideshare-based white paper looks like PowerPoint. But instead of short paragraphs or bullet points, all the content of a white paper is included on the slides.

What’s the point?

A video or slide show format can benefit marketers in one way. If you repurpose a white paper in these formats and attach a transcript populated with plenty of SEO keywords, that will be indexed by search engines.

Aside from that, it’s hard to see any benefit.

Do these formats work?

Ultimately, I don’t believe that video and slide-share white papers are as effective as white papers distributed as traditional PDFs.

The slide show white papers I’ve seen look like complicated text dumped on to slides. They are tough to read, tough to scan and tough to search.

And from the samples I’ve seen of video white papers, the video medium adds nothing to the effectiveness of a white paper. Not to say that it never could.

But what B2B marketing team has the budget or the skills to make a fabulous production like you might see on the History channel or Discovery? More likely, we’ll be stuck with talking heads.

Will videos and slide shows replace white papers?

When executives meet around a boardroom table, they need to have informative documents on hand to share with one another. The video and slide formats just don’t cut it.

I don’t think either format is effective for communicating the complex information that prospects want to see in a white paper — especially when they need to back up a costly business decision.

I think it’s more likely that videos and slideshares will find their place as interactive introductions to the deeper content of a full white paper.

So visitors to Youtube or a slidesharing site will be able to find relevant white papers by searching, viewing some introductory content. . . and then deciding if they want to download the entire related white paper.

What do you think?

It will be interesting to see if video and slideshared white papers evolve to become more effective, or simply fall by the wayside.

What do you think? Will these non-traditional white paper formats stick around?