This title sounds redundant, we know. But there is a difference between good copywriting and creating content. Ultimately, we need to remember that great content involves some of the essential elements of copywriting and keep them in mind as you create the content.
But many people think that “more is better” and churn out constant content to put on their sites, whether it is great or not. This is a dangerous idea. The only thing worse than no content is badly written content. You should strive to practice the copywriting standards of the copywriting industry when producing your web content.
In this post, we will examine some of the best practices of the copywriting industry that you can use as a standard when creating your web content.
Quality First
In the past, people were spinning content out faster than a manufacturing plant puts out shoes or retail products. The idea was “the more, the better.” While it is true that you needs a lot of content, you also need high-quality content.
Google, in 2015, emphasized its April 2015 algorithm updates that there were two major things website owners and copywriters should focus on:
- High-quality content
- Mobile-friendly content
That’s all. They didn’t talk about how to produce 100 articles per month, how to use SEO or keywords or how to use the keyword tool. Just awesome content and mobile-friendliness.
This should tell us something as site owners. Quality is job one. Google, the number one ranked search engine in the world, sees high-quality content as the most important factor in your site content. Why is this?
High-quality content keeps people engaged. If you are a site owner, you have to see yourself as a publisher. That’s what you are. You are publishing regular content on either your site or your blog with the aim of increasing your traffic and bringing more people to your site.
You also want to increase the level of interaction such as comments on your blogs and shares on social media. So to do that, you have to create content that is interesting and engaging to people.
Best Practices in Copywriting
So what makes good copywriting? There are many different types of copy. There is ad copy, corporate white papers, eBooks, and many other types of content that can be useful to a company. The main point is that, whatever format you put your content into, it should offer value to your target audience. It should be something they will want to share with others, thus increasing your potential audience exponentially. It should be something that your readers find valuable.
How to Create Value
So how do you create value within your site content? First, you have to know your audience. You should conduct surveys either on or off your site that tell you what you need to know about your customers’ needs and wants. You should understand their “pain points” and what drives them to action.
Use old customer service emails or phone calls to determine what they want to see within your content. Try to tune into the mind of your target audience, and you can’t lose. If you give them want they want, they will be back.
Another way to create value is to make it fun. By providing some gamification or interesting aspect on your website that others don’t provide, you will reach your audience in a more personal way and help create more followers and brand evangelists.
Sometimes it’s not even about your product. It’s about the experience that you provide to your audience that they remember and want to share with others.
In an informative article entitled, “The Ten Commandments of Copywriting,” Entrepreneur magazine states that knowing your audience and determining your value proposition are the two most important things you should do when writing copy.
Know Your Objective
Another key ingredient of efficient copywriting that engages people is to know your objective. Every type of writing has a purpose. You should know what that purpose is and how you are going to carry it out. What wording will you use to achieve your objective?
Will your call-to-action be short and sweet or is it a long sales pitch? Much of your copy on your website may have sales as the ultimate goal, but the copy itself may slant toward the informative style. This is the way it should be, as people are more likely to read text that is informative or helps them gain the knowledge they can use as opposed to selling them a product directly.
The rise of native advertising has proven the point that people have gotten desensitized to traditional advertising, so companies are having to resort to more clandestine ways to show people sales information. With native advertising, the sales copy is embedded within a news ticker or within a group of stories that the reader is already looking up online. Then when the user clicks on one of them, they will see the story, along with links or ads related to the topic they are researching.
This may seem sneaky, but you are just giving people what they want when searching for information. You are giving them information (along with a sales pitch) about the topic they chose to research. The reasoning behind this is that people tend to research something before they buy it.
So the purpose of a native ad would be to sell, but the purpose is not apparent to the reader.
Keep in mind that we are not trying to trick people. Black hat techniques are out and are highly penalized by Google. But native advertising (along with writing carefully thought out copy) for your site are all viable methods to bring in your target audience who will likely be interested in your products and services.
You just have to get good at the details of what makes good copy and apply them every time you add content to your page.
Be Authentic
One of the best things you can offer in your online content is to be authentic. This means to be real. Don’t make things up. Use your experiences or the experiences of others to tell people about a product. In an explainer video, speak to the customer directly and tell them why the product will benefit them or make their lives better.
Whatever you say on your blog or website, make it real. People respond to honesty.
Entertain them!
As we mentioned before, even though you have a business on your website, it doesn’t have to all revolve around your sales pitch. Remember you are a publisher too if you have content on your website so make your copy entertaining.
Copywriting is an entire field in large cities like New York or Los Angeles. Copywriting agencies go out of their way to provide great copy for national ads for Fortune 500 companies. But you don’t have to produce the best sales copy if you are creating engaging text that makes people want to return time and time again.
Infographics are an excellent way to do this. They add to your content in ways that words cannot do. You should still have the copywriting and the words. But add a dynamic infographic and see what happens.
If you don’t know where to start, we can help. Infographic Design Team has been creating stunning infographics with pictures and data for years.
See us online and visit us for a free quote.
