Copywriting vs. Content Writing
If you deal with digital marketing, you will be surprised by the vast terminology. Sometimes even professionals disagree on the terms and their true meaning. What most people confuse is Copywriting and Content Writing. The confusion is spread on all social media, and people are wondering which service they need for their website, or which professional they need to hire. Some people place ads for Copywriter and others for Content Writer while they may mean the same thing. Can a Copywriter be a Content Writer and vice versa?
What is a Copywriter?
The Copywriter writes texts, usually not extensively, to direct sales or motivate the reader to act in a particular way. Copywriters are primarily Sales Writers, and their purpose is to promote or sell a product or service. Consequently, their texts are much more sales-oriented and don’t aim so much at informing the reader. Copywriters have traditionally been an integral part of an advertising company team, as many of you will have seen in the popular Mad Men series.
With the spread of the internet, Copywriters began to focus more on creating keyword-targeted texts so that users could discover these pages from search engine results. But, of course, this does not mean that the Creative Copywriters of advertising companies have ceased to exist. However, many of them have inevitably adapted to the needs of the digital age.
Think of Copywriters as the masters of storytelling or creating imaginative campaign ideas. They know well how to use words and psychology to invoke emotion and also understand what the user wants to hear, see or read to identify with an ad. What are classic types of text written by a Copywriter? Online and offline ads, texts for email campaigns, headlines, texts for the pages of a site, video scripts, brochures.
Copywriting focuses on an immediate, short-term goal that will generate high returns, i.e., sales. It has to do with ads, sales emails, PPC of landing pages, and much more. A copywriter is a person who can create competitive headlines and persuade everyone to buy a product, sign up for a service, plan a trip or provide this information that a marketer will then use to target him with ads.
Copywriting is more direct and simple than content writing and uses persuasive and emotional reasoning to address the consumer to urge him to take immediate action. If you want to sell your product or your brand name, then you should find professionals because you should always hire an independent partner for the Digital Marketing of your business.
What is a Content Writer?
Content Writing is the fuel that gives life to Content Marketing. Content Marketing creates and shares valuable content to the reader that aims to inform and educate, not to sell directly. So, Content Writing is the fuel of Content Marketing and is more editorial writing and not so sales-oriented. We often see that in the background of Content Writers, as many come from the journalism industry.
The most classic form of content written by Content Writers is the well-known blog posts. When creating content, they will always consider using specific keywords to target, as well as optimizing their articles through meta-descriptions, SEO titles, permalinks and “Alt text” for photos. Also, the content of this format is usually more extensive, as it aims to cover a topic as fully as possible.
A Content Writer writes posts in blogs, posts in all social media, writes promotional emails, and provides valuable content to inform and entertain the readers or customers about a topic. He focuses on creating a productive relationship with the public so that, over time, they can trust your brand and are interested in what you sell.
The best content writers are so good and fun at storytelling that they can write dozens of blog posts without even mentioning your brand name. However, they manage to attract the public and turn them into potential customers.
Copywriter vs. Content Writer: After all, who do you need?
To make this clear to your mind, it may be best to first look at the difference between the two roles.
- The most basic distinction is in the goal we seek to achieve with everyone. Copywriting is the art of selling through text or encouraging the user to act the way we want. On the contrary, with Content Writing, we aim more at brand awareness and creating a relationship of trust with the user, giving answers to questions that concern him, informing and educating him. Selling, in this case, is a longer-term goal.
- The writing style is a key consequence of the above difference. Precisely because Copywriters want to sell rather than update, their writing style is tailored accordingly. It’s not enough just to inform or quote the facts, but somewhere in the description of the facts, you will find elaborately embedded how their product will help you do something faster, more efficiently or with less effort. As a result, their writing style is sleeker and action-oriented with corresponding verbs and expressions that push you to act and “Buy now!” On the other hand, content writers will be content mainly with simply informing you about a topic using statistics or surveys that will support their approach.
In closing, it’s good to emphasize that now these two roles coincide a lot as we will often find Copywriters who will be called to undertake Content Marketing campaigns and Content Writers who will create website copy or email campaigns aimed at selling. Nevertheless, we need to distinguish this because it’s not self-evident that all writers can and do have the experience to sell through their texts. Respectively, the creation of texts for the purpose of brand awareness and not direct profit is a skillset that is not found in everyone who deals with the production of online content. So, it’s good to know what needs and requirements we have from a role so that we can find the right person.
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