In my last blogpost, I discussed why small businesses and nonprofits should be using social media to understand your audience and make them true fans, not just followers. However, I would be amiss to not include content marketing in the discussion about social media.

Content marketing is based on the idea that providing useful, high-quality information to current and potential customers establishes your company and its staff as experts, fosters new business and builds brand loyalty. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re searching online for a palate-searing curry recipe and soon find this great Web site, Thai Foodies. There you find not only the recipe you were looking for, but also useful articles on the history of traditional Thai dishes, helpful videos showing how to cook your dish just right and links within the recipes to their online shop where you can purchase essential tools and ingredients for your dish.

Best of all, the content is written clearly and concisely. Oh yeah, you’ll be bookmarking this site, won’t you?  And, you may even share that information with your other friends who would find it helpful.

Can you feel the sizzle? That’s it! Thai Foodies provided useful relevant information to an interested audience and that information is used, shared, used and shared. You get the idea.

By content, I mean videos, blogs, white papers, e-books, webinars, E-newsletters, even social media status updates linking to articles, news or commentary on a given topic related to your company’s industry.

So, that’s content marketing.

Does it work? Yes! In a recent study, visitors to a retail site who viewed video on the site stayed longer and were 64 percent more likely to purchase product than other visitors to that site. Already 90% of B2B marketers have adopted a social media strategy and are increasing their budget for it in the coming year. As an example, look at Internet marketing company Blue Glass’s success with their recent infographic effort. If you’re still not convinced, I suggest picking up Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman. What are you waiting for?

Do you know small companies doing a great job of content marketing? If so, post a comment!