Words. Businesses need a lot of them. Ideally, really good ones. So when you’re scratching for your fix of quality copy, do you wrangle a freelancer from the wild, or turn to your tamed writer in-house? And what exactly is the difference between a content writer and a copywriter, anyway?
Copywriting vs Content Writing
Content writing and copywriting are two disciplines often used interchangeably, although they can be distinguished from one another by purpose. Copywriting is generally short-form, primarily used in advertising. A copywriter sells your brand to your target audience, seeking to compel the reader to take action. Typically, although not exclusively, a copywriter writes online and offline ads, slogans and tag lines, landing pages, and sometimes social media posts. Whilst a copywriter makes the sale, the content writer does pretty much everything else.
Content writers attract an audience, sustain their attention, and demonstrate the knowledge, passion, or expertise of your business. Through providing value, content writers build trust with the audience. Their focus is on long-form content such as articles, blog posts, press releases, email newsletters and newspaper pieces.
Balancing Value and the Hard Sell
A copywriter crafts compelling sentences to entice and encourage you to buy. Copywriters could convince you to buy a surfboard, but wouldn’t give you much of an idea of what it’s like to be a surfer. That’s where the content writer’s role comes in. A content writer engages the reader in long-from with informative and entertaining articles based around a core subject. That subject can either be tackled head-on, for example a blog post about the best beginner surfboards on the market, or more broadly with an article profiling a famous surfer, or the top 10 places in the world to surf.
As your burgeoning interest in surfing swells, you lap up yet more surf-related content. The culture drips into your daydreams, and you wonder how long it would take for your hair to acquire that bodacious sun-bleached tone. And almost tasting the salt on your lips, you’re finally ready to buy that board.
Content takes the audience on a journey. There are many different routes the reader can take, and each path ventured engages them further. Sometimes it’s entertainment they seek, sometimes information, and sometimes education. But either way, the reader reaches their destination. It’s every bit as majestic as they’d imagined it to be. The copywriter greets them at the gates, and they walk through. Seamlessly, content has blended with copy, the audience into a converted customer.
Healthy, Attractive, Strong
Search engines love beautiful websites. But what exactly constitutes beauty? Elements such as site structure, page speed and mobile usability all play vital roles, but when it comes to ranking favourably with Google et al, quality content is king. Search engine bots scan all websites to better understand what the site is all about. The closer your content is matching user search intent, the more beautiful your site becomes to Google’s roving eye.
The Best of Both Worlds?
There can of course be an overlap between content writing and copywriting, but the two remain distinct disciplines for good reason. True, any business would relish getting their hands on copy that both attracted traffic organically and was a key sales driver. The reality, however, is that SEO content works best for driving traffic, and sales copy for driving sales.
Content Karma
It is said that content is a lot like karma: you need to give in order to receive. Content marketing has evolved a lot in recent years, trending these days much more towards audience enrichment as opposed to product promotion. Successful content must now be more empathetic, purposeful and customer-first, thanks in no small part to the change in the brand-customer relationship.
Our Content Writing Services
At ONQOR, we can help you cut through the noise of your competitors and gain maximum organic visibility with SEO. If needed, we can create top-ranking content with our SEO content writing services. Just say the word.
Our SEO writers perform a thorough niche market analysis and determine exactly what it is your target audience is searching for. By conducting research on appropriate keywords, phrases and subjects, we gain an in-depth understanding of the type of content that will best attract organic visitors to your site.
Utilising industry best practices such as article coordination and keyword optimisation, our focus is always on value and relevance. Search engines hate content for the sake of content. So does your audience. And so do we. Redundant words, poor article layout and non-relevant topics are never going to get you to the top of the rankings - but we will.
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