Do your marketing videos do anything more than just sing your praise?

‘Content marketing’ is a term that is starting to take hold in online marketing conversations. The idea that it promotes is straightforward: Create content that helps your customers and prospects solve their business problems, content that informs them (rather than screams at them), content that they care about and content that helps them to understand something new, something they didn’t already know. Information about your company and the features of your product or service is less important. The benefits of your product and how your product fits into the ecosystem and community that exists around your product is what matters.

One of the fastest growing web content categories is the ‘how-to’ sites. These sites offer more than empty entertainment calories – they help you do stuff. They intrigue you, they inform you and some even inspire you. And their numbers are sure to grow. Niches, sub-niches and micro-niches (I just made that up) will soon begin to proliferate. At the center of all of these sub categories of information and community will be trusted knowledge leaders – companies like yours who have positioned themselves in this community by providing valuable knowledge and insight into things that matter most to your customers and prospects.

A sampling of how-to sites (these are top-level aggregators but new sub-category sites will emerge):

eHow – One of the originals it covers a wide range of helpful topics.

WikiHow – A huge, slightly messy repository of open source knowledge and helpful stuff.

Howstuffworks – An interesting collection of trivia, tips and just about anything you could ever imagine.

Lifehacker – Definitely one of the cooler how-to sites.

Make – Geek heaven, chock-a-block with techno stuff.

5-min Started this year and is quickly building a good inventory of knowledge.

The companies and people who provide real value and impart knowledge to their constituents are the ones who will lead this next great movement.