Ah, content marketing, how far back does this practice go?

Here’s a brief history of content marketing that you likely didn’t know about and what you can learn from it that is very much applicable to your success today.

Sharing your expertise in scratching a particular itch is a great way to build trust with your audience. So they may remember to think of you whenever an itch of the same nature comes up and choose your services to provide instant soothing relief! (Ok, maybe that’s a horrible example.) But that is the essence of content marketing. I think.

It would be insightful for us to jump into our time capsule (thanks Elon Musk!) and travel back into the not too distant past where we may sleuth on our pioneering forefathers of content marketing. See how far back we can find such practice and discover which itch they scratched and the techniques they used.

And like young grasshoppers, we can learn from the masters and eventually beat them at their game. That is the plan.

In this brief history of content marketing, we’ll find examples that date back to 1732 – When Benjamin Franklin begins publishing his annual Poor Richard’s Almanack to promote his printing business.

1882 – The Edison Electric Lighting Company Bulletin is first published to spread the word about the benefits of electric lighting.

1888 – Johnson & Johnson launches a publication called Modern Methods of Antiseptic Wound Treatment, aimed at the informational needs of the doctors to whom it sells bandages.

And so forth.

The infographic below shows a timeline of how companies, inventors and individual business owners use content marketing to promote their work and their products. Which go all the way forward into our present time. (Depending on when you are reading this.)

Infographic by contentmarketinginstitute.com

Did we miss anything? Perhaps on our next travel back in time we can sleuth on Moses coming down Twin Peaks with a couple pieces of content on tablets that went incredibly viral. But that’s for another infographic. Perhaps we can convince Joe Pulizzi at Content Marketing Institute to make this one for the next installment. Just say’n.

As you can see this effective form of marketing isn’t new nor is it going away soon. And with that insight we can start thinking of how we can improve, innovate and evolve our content so we can emulate success that were made through foundations that were pioneered by our content marketing forefathers.

Till then. Keep on keeping on.