WHAT IS COPYWRITING?
what copywriting is? because there's just so much Confusing misleading information on the internet, it's like it's almost like copywriting has become this void like it's like this black box where if you know what copywriting is you're in the know right like everyone's talking about copywriting like some magical way to make money you're like a hustler you're making all this money, it's almost like a buzzword like dropshipping and things like that but it's not really okay so here's my definition of what copywriting is and I think it's one that might add a lot of clarity for anyone who's confused as to what copywriting even is so copywriting is the act of writing anything that helps indirectly or directly market or sells something, so what does that mean basically anything you see online that is written content that is used to help build brand awareness, educate clients, provide value, sell something advertise, something basically any piece of text or copy would be considered copywriting so when you think of copywriting in the light of it being this you know mysterious way of making money online it really isn't it really just boils down to that it's any form of text, that's used to help market or sell something for a company and I use the term market or sell something very broadly right so I said anything that indirectly or directly helps market or sell something you might be wondering, how does something indirectly help market or sell something? well if you think of a lot of the brands out there a lot of the ways they attract clients is through a kind of passive marketing right like a blog for example would be a good example of that there's a company called Hubspot that sell CRM and marketing software but they have a blog that they post a ton of helpful articles that aren't related directly to their product like how to get started in sales? how to build businesses? how to do Shopify stores? you can find almost anything related to working online or starting a startup on Shopify or on HubSpot's blog and that would be considered indirect marketing right it's indirectly bringing people to the website is right, it's providing value to them through a really awesome blog post it's directing them to that blog post through an SEO strategy and you know indirectly it might help someone click around browse other products that you know Hubspot would have for sale on their website, you know bookmark the page it's indirectly getting people to the website that like writing a post that can do that is an excellent example of what copywriting is now on the other side of the spectrum there's more direct copywriting so direct copywriting would be things that are directly intended to sell or market something to someone so take me for example, I consider myself a copywriter and how I make most of my money copywriting is through writing marketing emails a lot of the time my emails are either intended to help clients book meetings with prospects market a product or service or send out a newsletter to update clients on products or services, this is more of a direct form of copywriting because the copy I write is intended to get someone to take some form of action whether that be responding to accept a meeting request purchasing a product through an online store or just visiting the website to learn more about products or services that are coming down the pipe so in my case, as a copywriter, it's not so much about building a blog post for example like in my indirect example of copywriting and using that to draw people to a website, I focus more on the direct approach email marketing LinkedIn messages to help build a following on LinkedIn, I do some website copy so focus on writing the copy for sales pages like static sales pages so if someone visits the website you know either through an email that someone like me has written for them or on their own when they get to the sales page they get all the information they need on the product or service they're interested in that's the form of copywriting. I take care of so The next thing I wanted to cover is you know really that the big question out there What a lot of people ask me is how do copywriters know what to write like is there are some tricks or codes, that I need to crack to become a copywriter and the short answer is no the long answer is this as a copywriter the way that I am able to write effective copy is by asking my clients to answer questions about their business, their products, the value their products can bring and what their goals are with this particular piece of copy, there are no tricks here every client I take on the first step before we can get to work on their project is to ask them discovery questions what do they do? why do they do it? why do people care? who are they targeting? I ask as much as many questions as i canto help me collect all the information, I need to write a piece of copy that's going to resonate with their target audience based on their brand messaging me, myself I don't have this type of information for a specific company innately in my brain, what I do have as a copywriter is the ability to take what they tell me about their product, service, business and clients and put it into a piece of copy that's going to read well that's going to encourage the person to take action and is going to do a good job getting the business and working force message across so, if you're wondering if there's some magic the trick to knowing how to be a copywriter there really, isn't right Although you are a good writer and have the understanding of the types of questions you need to ask your clients to gather that information you could probably get started on writing something, right now of course experience matters and as a new copywriter you're probably not going to write something as solid. someone like me or someone more experienced than me but there's no like inherent nothing inherent about me, that makes me better suited to be a copyright. I didn't read some pdf or white paper that taught me this comes from practice but the basis of it and the basis of how a copywriter knows what to write is through understanding the client the product and their clients that's pretty much it obviously, it's more complicated than this short bit in this article sometimes qualification and discovery with the client can take hours days or weeks it all depends on what you're writing for and what the goal is of the client and so if you've heard of copywriting you've probably also heard the term content writing thrown around content writing is another one of these things that people are doing online to make money and a lot of people ask what the difference is? so if you remember I said that copywriting is the act of writing stuff that indirectly or directly helps sell or market something so a lot of people online argue that content writing is the act of writing content without the end goal of selling or marketing something, so here's where the lines get blurry in my opinion you could argue that all copywriting or all content writing is copyrighting and here's the reason, I say that we live in a digital world right so every asset that a business puts into the internet affects their brand and their customer's perception of that brand in some way, so in my definition of copywriting, I use the key term could indirectly sell or market something, i think that all content writing does that any piece of content a business puts online can affect our brand and anything that affects their brand could affect a client or a prospect's likelihood to purchase something from them book a meeting with them or visit their website so that's my opinion on copywriting versus content writing. it's a pretty blurred line right so I mean I know there's probably a lot of people who would argue that content writing and copywriting is very different and there probably are situations where there's a clear differentiation between the two what I’m trying to tell you is if you're reading this article to learn about what copywriting is, don't get hung up on that difference. I tell you to focus on one or two niches of copywriting so you can get good at it and offer value to your clients do that and expand as the projects come your way you know people are going to ask you if you can do different things for them and if you can great? if you can't let them know that but as a copywriter, it's really up to you to figure out what you can help clients with where you can add value and what copy or content you can produce to help them do that so I hope this article is helpful.
