Gordon Graham (writer)

Gordon Graham is an expert on B2B content writing who has worked on more than 235 white papers. as well as hundreds of other B2B writing projects since the late 1990s. Graham has earned numerous writing and service awards from the Toronto and Montreal branches of the Society for Technical Communication and the Professional Writers Association of Canada, of which he is a former president. He has also taught business writing at both Concordia University in Montreal and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. He is widely acknowledged as one of the world's leading experts in white papers.

Career

In his teens, Graham began writing for his CEGEP and university student newspapers. He worked as Ontario fieldworker for Canadian University Press in 1976, and became full-time editor of the Centennial College student newspaper in 1977. In 1981, he was a co-founder and first managing editor of NOW, the alternative weekly newspaper in Toronto. Since then, Graham has worked as a technical writer, freelance magazine writer, marketing executive, and independent copywriter.

Graham is widely acknowledged as an expert in white papers, which are now used by more than 7 out of 10 B2B content marketers. He has been described as “the reigning guru of white papers” by author Peter Bowerman and as "the leading expert in that field" by Canadian business writer Steve Slaunwhite Graham has written white papers for Fortune 500 companies including 3M, Google, Oracle and Verizon as well as many other smaller firms, and taught marketing writing at firms including Cisco, Ericsson and Sprint.

In 2013, Graham wrote a book, White Papers For Dummies, which Amazon reviewers have called, “a must-read… an invaluable resource… a real treasure… terrific… outstanding… the best book of its kind… required reading… excellent in every way.”

In his book and on his blog, Graham has defined the three most common types of white papers, what constitutes a white paper, and his observation that white papers have become shorter and more colorful over the past 15 years. He believes that white papers will continue to evolve, but their essential goals—to help a business person understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision—will continue to be fundamental to B2B content marketing for many years to come.

Works

• White Papers for Dummies, part of the For Dummies series. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2013. 1st ed., 384 pages. ISBN 9781118496923