A number of organizations are gaining credibility as well as business share thanks to content marketing efforts. The marketing part of the content however must be extremely subtle as people do not want to be told what to buy, but instead want to be informed. Thus the “teach, don’t sell” principle works perfectly well with content marketing. Unfortunately, business analysis produced in the State of Small Business Report claims that while nearly half of the respondent organizations use content marketing, a majority of those push information on sales, discounts or promotions. No CTA (Call-to-Action) button must be inserted with the content which asks readers to buy something. Genuinely generous intentions on informing the public will ways be appreciated by the market. It is also important to inform them about aspects which they want to know rather than force-feeding them stuff that the marketers want to broadcast.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansutter/2016/02/19/want-to-be-successful-with-content-marketing-teach-dont-sell/#2a41251a45f0