A report from the Altimeter Group suggests that marketers shift their focus with content marketing as a way to drive the visibility of their site throughout the web.

A report from the Altimeter Group suggests that the idea that content marketing solely benefits organic website traffic is hurting the campaigns of businesses using it. The company highlights a model of converged media designed to inform the efforts of web marketing as a whole. ssentially, the presence of high-quality articles, blog posts and other kinds of content on a website will make every part of marketing better.

The report echoes others that Brafton has highlighted recently, all of which point to the multichannel conversion funnel and the need for several different kinds of website content to guide prospects to conversion. According to the Altimeter Group, sharing relevant content with fans and followers on social channels or other places on the web increases the likelihood that their own contacts will see it. This lends itself to the idea of “earned media,” which boosts visibility and makes paid media, whether it’s PPC campaigns or paid social ads, more effective.

Other ways organic content helps marketers drive earned media and their overall visibility is with improved search standing. By developing articles and other content that positions a brand a leader in its industry, companies will see traffic from Google and other search engines increase. Recently, Shareaholic reported that nearly half of the traffic its clients receive on the web comes from Google search results. SEO content can help businesses drive their search ranking and generate more awareness on the web.

Brafton highlighted a Shareaholic report, saying that social media marketing is also becoming more relevant for driving web traffic. In fact, sharing relevant headlines on Facebook drove site traffic more than Yahoo or Bing for the companies Shareaholic analyzed.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.