In my talks about content marketing with vendors in the document print and mail industry over the last few months, I have run up against some misconceptions that seem to be fairly prevalent. The statement I hear most often is something along the lines of "We already have a marketing department. We've got it covered."

I expect most of my prospects who might be interested in publishing informational content to have some sort of marketing functionality, either in-house or outsourced. The message that is difficult to get across to them is that content marketing is something different. In fact, the marketing people are usually are not the right folks to be generating the kinds of articles and other content that their audience finds to be useful, engaging, and share-worthy.

Don't get me wrong. The selling mentality is important. Marketing collateral is critical to the overall success of the company, and that content definitely has its place. But pitching products under the guise of helping people can have a serious backlash effect. Especially in the newer communication channels that we all want to use to our advantage!

The goal of content marketing is to achieve a top-of-mind presence with prospective customers. You want to keep in touch and develop an attitude in them that gives you a chance at their business through the development of a relationship based not on sales pressure, but on trust.

Customers Control Your Access to Them

Today, prospective customers can actively tune you out! They can easily unsubscribe from your newsletter or RSS news feed, they can un-follow or un-friend you, and they can filter your emails right to the trash folder. With the electronic channels, prospects who become disenchanted with your company because of infomercial-like content will be difficult to re-acquire. Once they tune out they may not see your messages at all. Even worse, they have the means to spread negative comments about your company to their own networks of business professionals.

And it is so hard not to slip in a dose of self-promotion! I've done it and I have seen individuals who are considered experts at content marketing do it too. I attended a webinar last week that started off with really great information and interesting observations about trends and markets. But the speaker mentioned his company's products on every slide of the last half of the presentation. That made me feel a little snookered. I will think twice before I spend more of my valuable time with their content.

Informational content gives your audience what they want - not what you want to tell them. That distinction seems subtle but it is a huge difference. Some organizations, particularly those that rely on their marketing people to create all their content, never realize the benefit of becoming a trusted and respected resource. They single-mindedly continue to push features and benefits that highlight their particular brand. This is a strategy that is becoming less-effective as customers exert more control over what content warrants their attention.

Every Post Affects Your Professional Brand - Positively or Negatively

Some self-promotion is more appropriate in certain channels. We usually sprinkle references to a client's products in articles we create for the newsletters they produce themselves. Customers expect that. But you have to be more careful if you are posting to a blog, placing an article in a trade publication, publishing a white paper, or linking with others on social networks. For example, I used to follow an individual on Twitter that had posted some interesting links and thoughts. But he also posted plenty of ads for his company's services. It finally got to be too much trouble to wade through all those self-serving tweets to find the helpful information. I eventually dropped him from my list.

Be sure you are clear about where to draw the lines between pure marketing and informational content publication. Injecting product marketing into every article can actually have a negative effect.