Why, why on earth would anyone do this, you might ask. The answer is simple \u2026 because so far it\u2019s worked. I haven\u2019t found myself on the side of the road unable to keep going.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
With a quick fill-up, I\u2019m back on my way. The problem is, you know that eventually my pit-stop strategy is going to fail. When I pull into a parking lot for one more stop, I\u2019m not immune to worrying about my glowing orange gas light, and the big \u2018Check Gages\u2019 that\u2019s projected onto my windshield. \u2018What ifs\u2019 ranging from a new meeting to a call from daycare run through my head, and I know I would be slow to get there because I would have to stop for gas.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>So\u2026 why the admission regarding my poor approach to fueling my vehicle? Because, the same pit-stop strategy is what I often see when evaluating a company\u2019s blogging efforts.<\/p>\n Gas Up Your Blog Posts<\/strong><\/p>\n Blog posts, the staple of many organizations\u2019 content plans, are an\u00a0easy to ignore fuel light. As long as they keep coming, no one is forced to stop and evaluate the performance<\/a>. The measurement of success becomes whether or not a post was published that day, versus how the blog post is going to help achieve a stated content marketing objective.\u00a0 But eventually, this too will fail. Someone will start asking the right questions and you will be left holding the keys to a content marketing strategy that\u2019s built on blog posts that have run dry.<\/p>\n To avoid stalling out on the side of the content road, and make sure that your blog posts are strategically aligned with your overall content marketing efforts, it\u2019s important to follow best practices. Here are 4 considerations\u00a0to help your business blogging go the distance and reach your content marketing destination.<\/p>\n Seems silly, right? Of course the objective of the content marketing strategy<\/a>, and the blog posts that live within it, are likely one or more of the following; increasing brand awareness, audience engagement, traffic, and ultimately business-level metrics like MQL\u2019s or sales.<\/p>\n What I\u2019m talking about\u00a0is the objective of a\u00a0particular blog post. It happens too often that the content plan as a whole has an objective, but the individual pieces of content do not.<\/p>\n For example, it\u2019s easy to create a concept about \u201814 Reasons to Love Content Marketing\u2019 and tie it up with a nice Valentine\u2019s Day image. Mwah!<\/p>\n Take a closer look, though. Is that post going to directly help you reach any of your stated marketing objectives?<\/p>\n At the post level, be sure to identify the intended outcome of each piece of content.\u00a0For example, will the\u00a0post support:<\/p>\n Identifying the objective of each post at the outset is important to make sure that the content you create is going to contribute towards the\u00a0desired results. A\u00a0statement of objectives upfront also makes measuring success much easier.<\/p>\n![\"gas-fill-up-300x180\"](\"http:\/\/ebookhandy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/gas-fill-up-300x180.jpg\")
<\/p>\n1. Objective<\/h3>\n
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2. Audience<\/h3>\n