What are some of the biggest content marketing mistakes marketers are making today?

I agree with Michael's #1.
Prioritizing tactics over message: One of our newest clients has been pretty good at churning out content in multiple formats, but what they consider "thought leadership" is actually void of much value because they don't know enough about the topics they're trying to be thought leaders in, or because their topics are only interesting to them - not to their audience.

So they've created quite a lot of content including video, white papers, emails etc. But their videos get fewer than 20 views (and I'm betting most of that is internal). They send out emails promoting content that get little response, partly because the content in the email is uninteresting, and partly because the target audience is the wrong audience for that topic. Just because you build it doesn't mean they'll come...

Well done thought leadership content needs to address issues of importance to the target industry and audience and needs to come from experts who really know their subject matter.

#2 Creating single "monolithic" pieces of content like white papers or single webinars and expecting them to carry a program. We find that you can't get heard above the noise unless you create multiple pieces of content around a specific topic or program to create buzz. The most successful programs multiple related pieces around a topic including long form content like white papers, blog posts and articles, press releases and pitch content for PR, online and live events on the subject, web pages built into the site's navigation, and video/rich media.

All of the answers have valid points that I agree with.

I'd add that most companies fail to use their content to build a story over time. Their content is mostly one-off pieces, not constructed to emphasize ideas and progress a prospect's thinking about how they solve a problem. Part of this happens due to the fact that marketers know too much about their products, part of it because they don't do the research involved to really understand their prospects and part of it, as Rick states, because they don't have a process.

But I'd also add that before you can have a process, you must have a strategy to guide the process development.

Another mistake is trying to do too much with one content asset. Prospects are busy. They've told surveys they want shorter, more valuable information. They can only ingest and identify with so many ideas at once. I recommend that marketers think very carefully about the "takeaways" that they want prospects to get each time they engage. Which goes back to the idea of building a story over time - not going for the whole enchilada at once.

And that goes back to strategy, process and appropriate goals and expectations.

Emphasizing quantity to the detriment of quality is a huge and very commonly made mistake. I am constantly hearing things like "our executives are too busy to blog, but we have an intern/outsourcer who puts up 3-5 posts per week" - with little attention to what those posts actually contain.

Far too many company blogs contain garden-variety social media platitudes and/or unsophisticated product-feature pitches that have little to no differentiation or regard to why a customer should CARE.

The companies that are, in the long term, most effective with content marketing will be those who deliver the most powerful core messages to market. I.e. it is a key strategic initiative with top management's attention - not a production line handed off to low-paid employees, contractors and interns.

I see 3 problems:

1. The topics of the content are too generalized. This leads to people glancing at content but not really being engaged because it doesn't speak to a specific enough pain. This is done out of fear of being "too niched down" and losing potential readers/prospects, even though it does the exact opposite.

2. Too many topics. The best internet marketers will tell you that you should build a list of people who care deeply about one specific topic. EX: in Sales you can talk about cold calling, presentations, compensation plans, hiring, training, social media, closing tactics... far too many topics. The person who focuses on, say, presentations and only presentations will be the expert and his list will be the most responsive.

3. Content without a CTA. A lot of content is beginning to be like marketing material: It makes noise but then doesn't tell you how to follow the music. Ultimately, before anyone creates content and distributes it they should think about what outcome they want from their activities and offer a helpful CTA to readers to help the reader and thereby help themselves.

If you focus your content creation on these 3 questions, you can't really go wrong.

1. Who is visiting your site?
2. What do you want them to do?
3. What to they need to know in order to do this?

Now, question #1 can have multiple answers. Just narrow it down to the top few that you would really want to get involved with the other two questions. Rinse. Repeat.

I think the biggest challenge for many folks is lack of a well-defined process. You can see this when a company's marketing efforts don't have any consistency in message or style.

A solid process helps to insure that when any content is created, there is an organized effort to get the most benefit possible. The biggest component is determining the best method of re-purposing content.

This is often done poorly because of the ability to automatically syndicate your content across several platforms at once. Very little thought is given to determining if having identical entries in all the right places.

Once, messaging is agreed upon, there has to be further decisions made as to where the resulting content piece is displayed - and what format it will take in each iteration.

Here's one example

Does every blog post warrant being blasted out on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn as well as the many syndication sites? If so, should the actual verbiage in the blast about the blog post be the same on Twitter and on your FB page or your LinkedIn?

If you decide that it's not worth the time and effort to rewrite your tease and link to the blog, then you'll have to follow the restrictions that apply to the toughest place. In this example, that's Twitter. The copy for the tease can't be more than 140 characters.

I don't want to ramble on (probably too late) but one of the other shortfalls is not having a content calendar that everyone follows. For example: there's a technical paper being written about the new design of a certain product. This paper will be available for publication on or about the first of December. If your marketing folks also have some kind of product newsletter to clients, each month focusing on specific products, it may be that you'll get much more impact from having December's newsletter focused on the same product being covered in the technical paper.

Who does the blogging or the tweeting? Shouldn't they also be writing about the same product in December as well?

Should there also be a push in the sales department to talk the product up?

Just some food for thought.

1. Lack of alignment between the content and the customer buying process and/or internal selling process

2. Too much information, make it shorter

3. It's not about the product (yes, this is still an issue)

4. No objective measures of content effectiveness and little to no content auditing

5. As Adrath said, tell and build a story

For me, what should come first (and so often doesn't) is a real and abiding interest in people's problems - call them challenges, if you will.

A content marketer who starts his or her day asking "how can I get enough webinars, blog posts and white papers out there" will make all of the mistakes I see listed here. A content marketer who starts his or her day asking "how can I help people - my customers - solve their greatest nagging problems, and how can information help them do it."

A lot of valid and interesting points. I find the number 1 issue stems from lack of clarity when it comes to the target audience. Who are your writing FOR? A compelling message starts with a clear understanding of the target, their problems and potential solutions. A lot of content out there is simply not targeted -- it's too general, states the obvious and fails to provide enough value to get the target to take action.

Hi Craig,

Content may be king but marketers today are somewhat failing to identify who are their real target market is and addressing their pain points. It is important to first identify who are the people you want reading your content. This goes with the next important thing that most have overlooked - the medium/tool that you use in promoting. When you choose microblogging sites or social networking sites, it is important to keep these as updated as possible so you would be able to build on the hype that your previous content has created.

I hope this has proven to be of use in answering your question.

The Infinit-O Strategic Solutions Team

Don’t overthink your content marketing strategy. It’s more important to have a bias for action and get rolling. That said, when getting started with content marketing for your organization or brand, there are a few things to make sure you’ve thought through up front. Here are five mistakes I see organizations making most often.

1. Not having a plan up front
Before you start any marketing activity (no matter how strategic or tactical), you have to know why you’re doing it. What does success look like? How does this activity translate to immediate or eventual sales and revenue?

2. Writing for the company instead of for the customer
Too many content programs focus on new features, chest-beating on company milestones, and otherwise weaving strong product tie-ins into every new piece of content created. That content has its place, but your readers (customers and prospects) will gravitate towards content that independently provides value. What are your customer’s issues? What do they need help with, right now? That’s the content that will spread like wildfire for you.

3. Not encouraging and participating in two-way communication
Creating content isn’t enough. To really accelerate your audience and impact, you must devote time to responding, commenting, engaging questions and so on. If you’re just a one-way communication channel, even with good content, your prospects will go elsewhere for the interaction they crave.

4. Not promoting, aggregating and curating great content from others
It’s not all about you. And frankly, you can drive significant audience volume (and accelerated awareness and positive brand impressions for your business) by simply aggregating and promoting great content from others. By doing this, you’ll create awareness and interest from other content originators as well as demonstrate to your growing audience that you’re filtering great content from numerous sources for them.

5. Only producing written content
Written content may be the core of your content strategy, but don’t forget video. Or podcasts. Or short, embedded slide presentations. Or whatever other formats your audience naturally gravitates towards.

I think the biggest mistake perhaps is thinking of social media as purely marketing. It's not; it's about building relationships and nurturing it through commitment to delivering quality content that your audience care about.

The second biggest is a lack of a better judgment - like, you can't be everywhere targeting everyone with your promotional message and no, social media isn't a free billboard for you to use either. And just because you can use many tools to 'set it and forget it' doesn't mean your audience is not smart enough to know that an automated bot is sending out posts, tweets in your behalf... and the list goes on.