Last year, we told you about 3 things that don’t belong in your content marketing. Well, we’re back with more bad habits that must be banished to keep your content clean and free of advertorial.

Vain Profiles

Example: Lance Executivehair, a (ugh) thought-leader, is head of product development at B2B MARKETING SYSTEMS. As a renowned go-getter, Lance Executivehair can shepherd your product, whatever it is, from the drawing board to innovation.

Why no one wants to see it: Can expertise sell your business? Absolutely. But this kind of puffery and buzzwords is better suited to the BS mill that is LinkedIn. There’s better ways of demonstrating expertise than

Four better ideas

• Regular company blog on how said company solves problems regular to their industry.
• Video featuring Lance presenting his expertise to an audience.
• A series of landing pages that focus on specific product categories to deliver more tailored content marketing.
• An infographic outlining the five stages of product development, the biggest threats to products at each stage, and how expertise can handle said threats.

Event Listings

Example: The 4^th ANNUAL LAUGH-YOUR-PANTS-OFF FESTIVAL is coming to town this week. Join us at the Jubilee Auditorium every weeknight, from 6-9, for ten up and coming comedians. Best of all, show up WITHOUT PANTS, and you’ll get $5 off your ticket . . .

Why no one wants to see it: It isn’t that people don’t like to hear about events, it’s that they are not well-suited to long form content on your blog.

Five better ideas

• List of responses from participating comedians to the question: “what would you prefer to be doing besides this festival?”
• An iconic photo from history photoshopped so that the subjects no longer have pants.
• Tongue-in-cheek style guide detailing how to put together outfits sans pants.
• Montage of clips from past shows. (Duh.)
• List of ten most inappropriate places to show up without pants.

Pitches

Example: What do you get when you buy a BEEFY truck? True BEEFY value. We have ten reasons why you should drive home in a brand new BEEFY truck today! Reason one . . .

Why no one wants to see it: People don’t like being pitched to. They don’t like having sales talk thrown at them. They don’t really like most advertising. That’s the entire point about content marketing.

Five better ideas

• Picture essay showing all the different stuff the truck can haul.
• Infographic showing how American trucks have changed over time.
• How-to guide for off-roading.
• Video featuring all the different kinds of recreational off-roading, e.g. dune bashing, mudding, rock crawling, etc.
• Picture of a beefy guy trying to carry an anvil in the basket of a children’s bike, then turn that into a user-driven social media contest.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. It’s just a smattering of some of the bad content we’ve encountered or, in some cases, been asked to write. Full disclosure: we’ll write bad content (which is really just advertorial) if you pay us enough money. But why would you want that?