I have written a few posts on how long 'content marketing' has been around - check out Content Marketing from the year 1900.
This thing we are doing (content marketing, inbound generation etc) is not new. Just the tech has made it far easier to create and share your thoughts, your experience and hopefully a little wisdom with your niche audience especially in the B2B space.
We are more enabled now than ever but it is not new and frankly it is really simple.
Stuart Constable from twogether sums it up really nicely on his blog post:
"Find something fresh, relevant and valuable to say. Say it. To the right people. And then sell stuff."
Enough said.