Transferring the white paper and additional content to the hosting company may be performed by email, file transfer protocol or the use of stored media formats. Regardless of the transfer method, it is important to uniquely identify the file name and to provide the white paper media in a usable format.

File Name - The file name of the white paper may include the contributing company’s name followed by the white paper title or an abbreviated form of the title. It can also be helpful to include the origination date in the file name if there are, or will be, multiple revisions of the white paper. For example, the file name “Althos_Social_Media_Marketing_Measurement_2010_06_14 uniquely identifies Althos as the contributing company of the Social Media Marketing Measurement white paper that was released on June 14th, 2010. The use of reverse date format (year, month and day) allows for sequential listing of revised documents.

Format - A common format used for white papers is portable document format (PDF). White paper documents that are submitted in other formats including word processor format (such as MSWord) will likely be converted into PDF form. In some systems, white papers may be presented in a format suitable for display on web browsers (HTML) format.

Transfer Method - The file transfer methods for submitting white papers can include FTP, email and stored media. It may be necessary to setup an FTP access account with the listing company. The hosting company may provide a user ID and a password for a user specific FTP account, or simply provide login instructions for a shared FTP account. Most web browsers may use the FTP protocol by simply entering ftp:// in place of the traditional http://. Additionally, it may be necessary to choose an FTP page option when using Internet browsers (page, open FTP site in Windows Explorer).

White papers may also be sent as email attachments. Sending white papers via email may be challenging if the file is large (above 10 Mbytes). Another alternative to sending white papers is to use stored Media such as CD Rom, DVD or Memory Sticks.