Content Writing vs. Copywriting

Content writing is the pipe-smoking professor. Copywriting is the Three Card Monte hustler.

Content writing takes a longer, “scenic route” approach to helping you sell.

Copywriting takes you right to it – HERE’S THE FEELINGS, HERE’S THE BENEFITS, CLICK HERE TO BUY.

While content writing isn’t as leisurely as the fifty-page digressions in a Dostoyevsky novel, it’s still something your potential customers will read 5-10 of before deciding to buy.

Copywriting takes as much research (or more!) to complete as content writing. Copywriters have to get their audiences exactly right. They might do the research for five words that a content writer does for 500.

Content writing is more collegial, bringing in the competitors and making positive references to other products. Content has to be more broadly applicable, more informative, more educational.

Copywriting makes a friendship, says what you’re coming to do for your customers, and asks them to do something about it. There isn’t space for the competition. Copywriters don’t come to say that the competition’s wallets hold your money just as well as their own.

It all still drives toward making a sale – though content writing is circumspect, it’s here to show off our product. Though it may introduce you to other possibilities, it’s trying to impress you for us.

You can pay content writers by the word. You want hundreds and thousands of words of content. Content has to be thorough and sometimes meandering. Research to back up good content might lay a few links about a blog post.

You cannot pay copywriters by the word. Their words make you briefcases full of cash, and it might only be a few hundred words scattered through your website. Research to back up good copy stiffens each word with deep dives into relevant forums, subreddits, and subscriptions to newsletters.

Though both are about people, they’re at different distances from people.

Content writing sees people through binoculars. Yes, there’s the people, but look at the surrounding products and services, contextual details, yadda yadda yadda.

Copywriting knows what your customers like to eat for breakfast and alludes to it through a reference to what they like to eat for lunch. That’s right, a breakfast allusion through a lunch reference.

Content writing is the pipe-smoking professor that will take a little time to expound upon what you need to know. Educational marketing and all that.

Copywriting is the Three Card Monte hustler who knows his crowd and makes them happy to pay for the show.

Sometimes you need a professor. Sometimes you need a Three Card Monte hustler.

You can’t find what you don’t know to look for.

Drop me an e-mail if I helped.