When it comes to content marketing, you can probably think of partners and competitors who do it well, and others that, well, they're trying.

In content marketing, companies gently woo customers by producing blogs, videos, guides, white papers and other content that isn't explicitly marketing material or advertising.

A solid content marketing strategy can help enhance a brand's image and marketing efforts overall, but a lackluster effort can come up disappointingly empty.

The challenge for solution providers is there's really no one way to ensure success. Still, there are some things your marketers can do to really shoot themselves in the foot.

In a recent white paper, the folks in Oracle's marketing cloud team have put together what they call the seven-and-a-half deadly sins of content marketing.

These sins range from the obvious, like failing to plan, to subtler pitfalls, like failing to realize that you shouldn't be trying to sell something with every piece of content.

Check out the white paper here.