Your business needs somebody to write about it to become successful. Through storytelling, gains customers’ trust and inspires them to act. For that, you need someone to write, and who would you choose, a content writer or a copywriter. Digital marketing has so developed that you need to see if you have the right copy and content for your target personas to gain the best results. With blogging gaining much importance among marketing professionals, it is essential to know who you should hire. To make a decision, you need to compare content writer vs. copywriter.
What is Content Writing?
Content writing is writing or creating content to educate, inform and entertain an audience on a particular topic. It is meant to offer different purposes for different types of audiences. In business-to-business marketing, content writing helps the reader learn more about a particular product, service, or brand and take action after making a decision. It enables you to create productive engagement with your prospective customers so that they will have trust in your brand and buy your product or service.
Content writing involves writing blog posts, emails, social media posts, e-books, and white papers. Through these materials, a content writer is expected to generate organic traffic through search engines and turn them into leads. The power of content is such that it can convert these leads into prospects, which in turn into customers. These customers are retained to repeat buying the same brand in the future. Blogging has gained a lot of significance today for being the most cost-effective lead generation method.
What is Copy Writing?
Copywriting is creating text for advertising or any other type of marketing. With a long tradition, copywriting majorly focuses on a short-term goal of generating sales through advertisements, sales letters, PPC landing pages, sales emails, and so on. The main objective of copywriting is to generate traffic and convert them into leads and sales. Copywriters create attractive headlines and call to action (CTAs) to induce customers to invest in a product, provide important information, schedule a trip and subscribe to a service.
Several renowned marketing campaigns are created by talented copywriters. Over the years, copywriting has evolved that it is increasingly used in display ads, web development, digital marketing, and search ads.
Though both copywriting and content writing ultimately focus on converting leads into sales, there is a considerable difference between copywriting and content writing. A few distinctive differences are:
- Intent
When a copywriter creates a text with the sole intention of selling, a content writer writes a blog or white paper to give information and provide answers to the readers’ questions about a product or service. The text written by a copywriter is driven to close the sale, while the content from a content writer is so created to figure on the leading pages of a search engine to help the reader find the answer for his or her queries.
Most people want to learn more about a product or brand before they decide to buy. Content writers thus inform or educate them, and if they are impressed and ready to buy, they read the sales copy.
- Different Skillsets
Though both types of writing require skills to perform the task, their skillsets are not the same. Copywriters are generally regarded as salespeople, who motivate people to buy a product or service. Therefore, they use action verbs to create excitement and drive people to buy. On the contrary, content writers create SEO content for the readers. The content they write is ranked by the search engines to help the readers click and find answers to their questions and move further.
- Sense of Urgency
When a copywriter writes to induce people to take a quick action like fill in a form, signup for a product catalog or newsletter, or buy a product, a content writer writes to engage the audience and build trust in a brand.
Know the Significance of Content Writing and Copywriting in Business
With well-written content, you can effectively target your SEO, generate organic traffic and convert them into leads. High-quality content writing is essential for improving audience engagement, retaining and connecting customers with the brand. Consistency is another aspect of delivering content and keeping your website on the first page of the search engine.
Similarly, good copywriting help reflects the values of your business, has an influence on the readers, and eventually forces them to engage in an action. The significance of copywriting lies in speaking your target audience’s language, which will help boost your sales.
Avoid Plagiarism in Content Writing and Copywriting
Whether you are engaged in content writing or copywriting, it asks for writing unique content. Plagiarism occurs in any writing style and it is essential to avoid it to save you from any consequences. However, skilled you are in writing, there are chances of making mistakes. It is said that plagiarism is insidious, and does not necessarily happen owing to borrowing somebody’s work.
For copywriters, it may amount to plagiarism if they fail to paraphrase the ideas, which they have borrowed from other websites, in their own words. If they have paraphrased it appropriately, and have failed to cite the sources, still their content is accused of plagiarism. The result is your webpage will be ranked lower by Google and other search engines. To avoid this, use a reliable plagiarism checker to ensure the originality of your content. The risk of plagiarism issues lies in content writing too. If you do not give much attention to writing your thoughts in your own words or paraphrase the ideas taken from other sources, you tend to cause plagiarism. Use proper synonyms, modify the sentence structures and provide citations to make your content original. Moreover, you can use a plagiarism detection tool to compare your document online and get a detailed report. If any revision is needed, you can rework any similar text before publishing it.