The Difference Between Content Writing and Copywriting
Good writers can write many different things: articles, essays, blog posts, website copy, ebooks, short stories, social media posts, whitepapers — and the list goes on. When it comes to writing in the digital marketing space, the two big categories you'll hear referred to are content writing and copywriting. What's the difference?
Foundationally, content writing seeks to educate and inform your audience, while copywriting seeks to persuade and convert — and both are valuable and serve a purpose. Here's a bit more about each style.
Content Writing
What It Is And How It’s Used
Content writing seeks to educate an audience about a topic through longer-form genres. An organization will use various types of content to inform customers about topics, trends, or initiatives in their industry related to the products or services they sell. This type of content is not typically trying to make a hard sell on a product or service — instead, it helps its audience understand or solve a problem while demonstrating that organization's authority or thought leadership.
Different Types Of Content Writing
Blog posts: Typically hosted on an organization's website, blog posts focus on topics important to that organization, and are written more informally because they're "owned" by the organization. Blog posts can range from a few hundred words to a few thousand words.
Articles: Articles are written from someone in an organization (or ghostwritten) and placed with media sites, magazines, newspapers, or other media that's considered "earned," not "owned." They seek to inform or educate the audience of the media site or publication about a solution to an industry problem, advice based on experience, or how to achieve a goal. They're typically around 800 to 1200 words.
White papers: A white paper is a longer, more heavily researched document produced by an organization that addresses a problem in the industry and how its product or service solves it. More authoritative than a blog post, they run typically 3,000 to 5,000 words or more, and end with a call to action to learn more about the product or service.
Industry reports: Similarly, industry reports are longer-form content featuring original research conducted by the organization. It not only includes industry problems and solutions, but storytelling about the data. Depending on the scope of the research, industry reports can run as few as a few thousand words to 10,000+ words.
ebooks: An ebook is another piece of long-form content that educates an audience about an industry topic and that brand's products or services. Smaller ebooks may run 10 to 20 pages and could be a downloadable .pdf or lead gen on a website. Longer ebooks may run over 100 pages and could be turned into print-on-demand physical books.
Case studies: Case studies tell the story of how you helped a customer: the problem they were trying to solve, how your product or service solved it, and the resulting outcomes. Case studies can be blog post length, or may be upwards of 20 pages long.
Email newsletters: A brand's email newsletter is an important part of their customer engagement strategy, and creates awareness about that brand, offers education or value, or encourages a reader to click a link.
Scriptwriting: Today, video is becoming a more important part of a brand's content strategy, and scriptwriting is another form of content writing.
Miscellaneous: You could make an argument that certain social media posts could be considered content writing as well. And while content writing also tends to be on the longer side, there are plenty of instances of copywriting (sales pages, for instance) that may be longer than some pieces of content!
Necessary Content Writing Skills
Here are some of the skills a successful content writer possesses:
Understanding the audience and their pain points
Setting up a problem and offering a solution
Articulating a clear thesis statement
Being able to make an argument
The ability to teach something new
Researching
Expert knowledge or being able to extract expert knowledge from an SME
Storytelling or guiding a reader through a narrative
Copywriting
Copywriting is often short, highly creative, designed to catch your attention, appeal to your interests or emotions, and call you to action — and is often referred to as “direct response” copywriting. You'll find copywriting everywhere: on websites, on billboards, describing products in catalogs, on cereal boxes, on ads on the subway, and in social media captions.
The Different Types of Copywriting
Website copy: The words you read on a website — the words that draw you into the homepage, the About Us page, the information presented about products or services — are all copywriting. This writing has to engage an audience, communicate the brand's voice and tone, present products or services in a compelling way, and make a customer want to buy.
Ad copy: Perhaps the thing people most associate with copywriting is advertisements and their catchy tagline or calls to action. This is incredibly short-form, copy yet serves to engage and convert.
Social media copy: The posts you see on social media are copywriting as well, and have to be engaging, provide value or spark interest, and compel readers to stop scrolling and take action.
Landing pages/sales pages: While landing pages or sales pages are often the length of a piece of content writing (or more!), they're not necessarily trying to teach the audience something or raise awareness — they serve to convince the reader to make a purchase.
ecommerce: Selling products requires great copywriting that describes the product in an appealing way, the value it brings to the customers, and why they should buy it now.
Necessary Copywriting Skills
Here are some of the skills a successful copywriter possesses:
Excellent word choice
The ability to understand an audience and their pain points
Writing clearly and concisely
The ability to articulate benefits
Appealing to customer emotions
Understanding psychology and emotion
The ability to adapt style and voice as needed
Which One Should I Specialize In?
It’s up to you and your interests and skills! Some freelance writers may specialize in content writing or copywriting, or they may do both. Some freelance writers may specialize in something very specific like just writing blog posts for a specific industry or just writing product descriptions for ecommerce. Keep writing to find out where your skills and interests lay, then continue to pursue either content or copywriting opportunities.
