Today’s post is about major content marketing mistakes, as revealed by 29 individuals who are experts from the worlds of b2b marketing, public relations, professional speaking, writing and communications.

These folks were interviewed by internet entrepreneur, Eugene Farber, who then summarized their answers to the question below in a post on his content strategy hub blog.

“What is a common content strategy mistake that business owners make?”

Here are five of the major mistakes I identified from the post:

1) Joe Pulizzi is right on the money when he states that: “we love talking about ourselves.” Joe goes on to say that aiming for expert status in your prospect’s mind by using a content strategy that’s big on educational marketing is going to win trust and therefore buyers, when the time’s right.

2) Forgetting that content can be re-purposed and published a number of times. This is Robert Rose’s assertion and it’s a good one. For example, not every new visitor will read (or even find) that ace blog post you wrote from two months ago.

But they might be an iTunes podcast subscriber.

They could be following you on Twitter, FaceBook or Google+.

You’ve therefore a marketing duty to circulate your content widely and frequently so that target audiences have a chance to read it.

3) Forget, “this will do. I’ll tidy it up later.” Ann Handley is one great writer and her admonition is to produce great content, even if it requires more work. People do notice the great from the merely average or downright mediocre.

4) And yet, even with great content, there’s no guarantee that people will show up to see it. There’s just too much competition and great content for visitors to find yours because of search engine optimization wizardry alone. Instead, you need to go where your audience is already hanging out. Let them see you on their terms and, in time, they’ll come visit your digital home.

5) A real simple one from Francisco Rosales. Create a content strategy editorial calendar and stick to it.
I can’t tell you how much ‘creative freedom’ a calendar can give a b2b blogger to get on with the tasks necessary to research, write and publish excellent content. It just works.

What did you get from Eugene’s post?

- Mark McClure

PS – This post was originally published on technologymarketers.com but is included here because of a change in business plans by the fine folks at technologymarketers. I very much enjoyed working with them and hope our paths cross again.

Some years ago a business acquaintance told me of her time as an expat product marketer in the newly established Tokyo office of an IT networking hardware company.

The branch grew like crazy, employees worked all hours (leaving at 11:30 pm to catch the last train connection home was not uncommon for the Japanese staff) and business flourished.

Two memories remain very clear for her.

The first was in response to a customer from the academic world who signed up as an early adopter of the firm’s ethernet NIC products. After some software driver incompatibility problems had been identified as the likely cause of a number of outages, the university’s IT engineering manager wanted it fixed, along with answers.

To cut a long story short, the US-based tech support specialists eventually had to bring their R&D software engineers into the conversation with the Japanese staff. Not only did they want detailed, written explanations of what my friend’s research boffins had found, they also (politely) demanded to see the driver source code changes, albeit under a signed NDA.

The R&D team had never experienced such a sustained thirst for proprietary detail from any US or European customers, and they were often stretched to provide appropriate failure analysis and correction reports.

The lesson my friend learned? Attention to detail and communication of same, is a natural cultural business trait between many Japanese businesses and their customers. (In 18 years of living here, I agree with her assessment.)

The second memory is of the time, effort and money expended in localizing the marketing collateral coming out of corporate HQ. At first, my friend and her team attempted to translate and self-publish data sheets, case studies and press releases by themselves. However, content was changing so rapidly that they could not keep up and were in danger of burning out.

Also, many Japanese customers (and some prospects) would complain that the translations were ‘rough’ and showed a lack of attention to detail! Even outsourcing the work to native Japanese-speaking translators was hit-and-miss because the assigned translator often didn’t have the specialized vocabulary and experience to satisfy locals that this foreign company was “serious about doing business in Japan.”

My friend understood how these two lessons explained why corporate org charts often had Asia divided into ‘North’, ‘South’ and ‘Japan’. For cultural, language and business reasons, the ‘Japan market’ was not only financially important but also uniquely different.

And what does this have to do with IT content marketing in Asia-Pacific?

For one thing, you need deep pockets if you are to succeed in Asia. The geographic scale means it takes the best part of a day to fly between countries here. There are multiple languages and cultures. Between India at one end and New Zealand at the other, there’s a 7.5 hour time difference!

These factors all translate into the almost Confucian-like mantra of “time, patience and money” as the traits most necessary for business success in much of Asia. (Australia and New Zealand being the ‘Pacific’ tag in the label, ‘Asia-Pacific’.)

For IT content marketers who were hoping to quickly and cheaply port existing white papers, case studies and other collateral aimed at English-speaking Western markets to the Asian equivalents, I’ve some bad news.

At best, it’s unlikely to work. At worst, it can damage your reputation as a self-styled, committed partner to Asian countries and customers.

There is some evidence of the above issues in an eleven page IDG Connect 2011 Global IT content survey. It’s well worth downloading their free report and pulling out the Asia-Pacific details. However, on second thoughts, you don’t even need to do that because Andrea Edwards, from the Singapore-based SAJE Communications, has already done so with this informative post: IDG Connect Survey – Local Vs Global Content in Asia Pacific.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, if you are an IT marketer with Asia-Pacific responsibilities, I encourage you to read Andrea’s post and then answer these three questions:

1) What type of white papers do your potential buyers want to see in Asia-Pacific countries of greatest profit potential for your company?

2) Where will you get the type of data that will satisfy these readers?

3) How many of your customer success stories feature Asian customers and how are you going to source more of them?

Finally, I’d like to wish all readers a successful and prosperous 2012, in this “year of the dragon”.

- Mark McClure

IT Case Study Writer to the Computer Networking Industry

PS – This post was originally published on technologymarketers.com but is included here because of a change in business plans by the fine folks at technologymarketers. I very much enjoyed working with them and hope our paths cross again.

An earlier post, “Need Input from IT Marketers Who’ve Hired Freelance Customer Success Story Writers ASAP“, introduced a project that fellow success story writer, Pamela DeLoatch (b2bstorytelling.com), were working on.

The idea was to create a series of video interviews for b2b marketers interested in how to get the best from a freelance B2B case study writer.

Today’s post is an update on that project.

Pamela and I got a list of questions together from responses kindly submitted by members of LinkedIn discussion groups, created a general interview script, and then took turns asking and answering the questions.

The videos were recorded on Skype using a $20 software tool from ecamm.com known as ‘Call Recorder‘.
Their product’s tag line is:

Transform your Skype audio and video calls into QuickTime movies. Completely automatic, easy to use Skype audio and video call recording for Mac user

And that’s exactly what it did!

Here’s a screenshot of  video 2 (of 6) that’s in my new ‘samuraiwriter99‘ YouTube channel.

The interview went just over the hour and covered the following topics:
(This is a screenshot from the case study videos landing page on my site.)

For a first attempt, and using nothing more than a laptop’s internal camera and a USB headset, I’m reasonably happy with the outcome; although some of my unintended ‘grimaces’ are painful to behold. And that wall-mounted wooden coat hanger apparently protruding from my right temple is difficult to forget…

Having added a ‘freelance-b2b-case-study-writer-video-series‘ landing page, the remaining steps are to:

• Edit the video transcripts into a PDF-based report as a lead generation tool for our case study writing businesses.
• Create some podcasts using the audio channels from the interview and distribute via iTunes, or similar.
• Extract useful snippets from the transcripts and retweet them with a link to the landing page.
• Create a press release for online distribution.

Or, in other words, 2012′s the year that Samuraiwriter Services goes full duplex into the world of content marketing in the IT Networking marketplace(s).

And readers will have opportunities to contribute in a number of ways.

Here’s a mind map I put together to create this post.
(Click the image below and a larger version opens at the facebook fan page for Samuraiwriter Services.)

See below for an explanation of the key messages.

The high-level plan is as follows:

1) Write for B2B IT Marketers tasked with building and nurturing business relationships with specific buyer and influencer audiences in the IT Networking world.

2) Follow a monthly editorial calendar so we all know what’s on the menu and can also plan ahead.

3) This blog will follow the editorial calendar shown above.
I welcome guest posts from IT marketers and end users that address a monthly topic from the ‘content marketing’ perspective.

IT networking product and service pitches are not what I have in mind.
Successes and lessons learned from applying different content marketing styles and approaches to buyer/influencer personas are encouraged.

Also, I will be interested to hear from the targets of all these content marketing strategies – the ‘buyer personas’, themselves. You are real people with challenging roles, so if you want to use this blog as a platform to explain how IT networking vendors (and you don’t have to name names!) should be courting you as potential buyers, please get in touch.

4) A regular email newsletter that will focus on content marketing strategy and tactics for B2B IT Networking sectors.
This means looking at white papers, case studies, blog posts, videos, podcasts, data sheets, product briefings… in fact, the whole world of marketing collateral aimed at persuading and influencing IT networking staff from CIO to team leaders.
Each of these roles have varying degrees of technical influence and purchasing authority.

5) Get involved where IT B2B marketing people are active online. The usual suspects of Twitter and LinkedIn are on the list but I’ll also be grazing on FaceBook (business page), Google+ (separate profile and business page), connect.me (still in private beta) and at technologymarketers.com (look for ‘techcontentrocket’).
And of course, if you want to talk, email or skype with me in private about your b2b content marketing ideas, please get in touch.

Finally, since I’ve been living and working in Asia-Pacific since 1994, there will be a special focus on IT content marketing issues for Asian-based customers of computer networking products and services. There’s no shortage of material for Western markets but these are not always appropriate for the multiple cultures and business customs that exist in the East.

OK, that’s it for now.

The first edition of the email newsletter is provisionally planned for the last Monday in January (the 30th).
(Guest articles related to ‘IT Networking Security’ are due for review by 15th January.)

- Mark ‘IT content publisher‘ McClure

PS – Click here for a larger version of the mind map graphic hosted at the facebook fan page for Samuraiwriter Services.