There are actually quite a few ways to import content into Drupal, and we've written about the Migrate module before. Since I'm not a full-time developer, I typically seek out less technical solutions.
Node Import, and Feeds are two solutions I've used recently to import content. From my experience Feeds has been a bit more flexible, so I'll focus this tutorial on that module.
I'll highlight the steps it takes to import content with Feeds, and if you are more visual learner, you can check out the screencast at the end of this post.