Content creation is an integral part of digital marketing. It’s also common knowledge that users will not discover your business when browsing the internet unless you create content. Content is the driving force behind all successful digital marketing campaigns, including search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns and social media marketing (SMM). Each piece of content signals a new opportunity for your business to connect with prospective customers.
Not all forms of content creation are the same, however. There’s content writing, but there’s also copywriting. While both are used in digital marketing campaigns, they have starkly different purposes. If you use digital marketing to promote your business, you should learn the nuances that distinguish content writing from copywriting.
What Is Content Writing?
Content writing involves the creation of text content to educate or entertain readers. It may drive sales as well, but that’s not its primary purpose. With content writing, you want to educate or entertain readers by creating high-quality and valuable content.
Examples of content writing include:
- Blog posts
- E-books.
- Tutorials.
- Email newsletters.
- White papers
- News articles.
- Evergreen articles.
- Case studies.
- Social media posts.
What Is Copywriting?
Copywriting, on the other hand, involves the creation of text content to persuade readers to take some type of action related to your business’s sales process. If you’re trying to sell a product, for instance, you’ll need to convince prospective customers that it’s worth buying. If you’re trying to attract more calls, you’ll need to convince them that your business is worth calling. Copywriting is the art of persuading readers to take some type of sales-related action.
Examples of copywriting include:
• PPC landing pages.
• PPC ads.
• Cost-per-mille (CPM) ads.
• Social media ads.
• Product pages.
• Website sales copy.
• Sales emails.
• Short Message Service (SMS) ads.
Purpose
Before creating a new piece of content to use in a digital marketing campaign, you should consider its purpose. Content writing and copywriting are primarily distinguished from each other by purpose. Content writing is designed to educate or entertain, whereas copywriting is designed to persuade.
Most text ads involve copywriting because they seek to compel readers to take action. Whether on Google, Bing, Facebook or elsewhere on the internet, businesses use text ads to encourage their prospective customers to take action. Conversely, most pieces of organic website content involve content writing. Organic website content is designed to offer noncommercial value to readers through education and entertainment, so it requires content writing.
Length
Because it focuses on educating or entertaining, content writing typically results in longer content than that of copywriting. You might be able to persuade readers to take action using just one or two sentences, but educating or entertaining them will likely require a longer length. Depending on the topic, you may need to use anywhere from 500 to 2,500 words.
Short pieces of content can still be educational or entertaining, but content writing centers around noncommercial value. If a piece of content is too short, it won’t offer much value to readers. With a relatively long length, content is typically more valuable to readers.