Many brands are finally having an “a-ha” moment when it comes to content marketing. Although we’re making great strides in changing mindsets from traditional old-school marketing, there are still many mistakes being made by big and small companies alike.  Here are the top content marketing missteps that are made most often.

It makes every marketing manager’s heart flutter: the notification email that your company or client has been the subject of an online review. If you’re promoting good products or service, chances are the post on Yelp, Trip Advisor, or Google is good, and you can breathe a sigh of relief. But negative reviews happen even to the best of companies. It’s how you handle them that can actually put you back on top. And if marketers ever needed a lesson on what NOT to do, Amy’s Baking Company Baking Boutique and Bistro demonstrated that this week.

There has been lots of talk lately about how B2B small businesses are making great content marketing efforts and experiencing significant results from them. A recent infographic by digital publishing software providers Uberflip (see below) showed that 91% of B2B marketers are engaged in content marketing in some way and that 68% of CMOs intend to increase their content marketing budget this year. (a content marketing budget horray!)

A newsroom is a bustling place with phones ringing, scanners relaying the latest emergency traffic and people scrambling to meet their deadlines. Change the scanner noise to a live webinar on your computer and this could be your marketing manager’s office. In the growing business of content creation, companies are becoming publishers and marketing managers are acting as news directors. They are tasked with putting out fresh, informative yet interesting content for their business on a regular basis. So, how do you keep up with it all? Whether you are managing a large mareting team or you are a one-person show, the Editorial Calendar is your best friend. 

In the content marketing world, we spend a lot of time talking to each other. When we launched SPROUT Content in 2009, we spent so much time talking to Junta42 (thank you Joe Pulizzi!), guest blogging and “participating” in the industry that we forgot most prospects we talked to had never heard of content marketing.  Our clients came to us because they needed website content or wanted to rank higher in search engines or to start a monthly newsletter, but not because they needed a “content marketing agency.”

Marketing managers are being asked to move the needle forward while resources are being pulled backward these days. Whether it’s staffing cuts or lack of buy in from the top, all marketers face challenges. In fact, producing enough content is the second biggest challenge to B2C marketers behind only lack of budget, according to data compiled by the Content Marketing Institute. It appears time is a luxury that marketers no longer have.

In-house marketing managers not only need to be whizzes at creative content, they have to pay attention to the bottom line. Once you’ve put your left brain to work on the budget number crunching and your right brain comes up with an ambitious, ingenious content marketing plan, how do you get your boss to buy in?

#SproutContent #howto #ContentMarketing vine.co/v/bpQzmWYwjrQ

Lululemon, the Canadian lifestyle brand known for its workout clothes and running gear, pulled 17% of its stock off the shelves this weekend after "realizing" the material is sheer to the point of being see-through, which is not the kind of transparency consumers crave. It announced the decision to the media in a press release targeting investors three days ago and to consumers in a blog post titled “A Letter to Our Guests.”  They also added this FAQ to the Press Room on their site.

Brand evangelists create the most authentic voice for a company. They have an unwavering dedication and emotional investment in a brand. They become company cheerleaders and recommend a brand’s products and services to friends, family and anyone else who will listen…even their tattoo artist. You just can’t fake brand evangelism.