3 Content Strategies Your Business Needs To Thrive Online

Copywriting, content writing, and writing For SEO are three marketing strategies your business needs to be successful online. While overlaps exist between these three strategies, and all require writing, they’re all different.

Copywriting is the art of persuasion, and can be directly connected to sales figures both short and long-term. Content writing is the art of creating compelling content that makes visitors love your website. Writing for SEO is the strategy used to make sure your content is visible in the search engines.

Statistics show proper content marketing increases blog traffic by 2000% and boosts revenue by 40%. To see a similar boost resulting from your marketing efforts, you need to know the difference between all three writing strategies and hire an expert in each field.

 

A Writer Is Not Just A Writer

The unspoken myth many business owners believe is that a good writer automatically makes a good content writer, SEO writer, or copywriter. This belief makes sense, considering most people view writing as the art of forming concise, engaging sentences with proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. With this view of writing, anyone skilled in writing should be able to take on any writing task.

That conclusion sounds logical, but it’s not accurate. Think of it this way: Say you need to hire someone to write a fictional novel similar to James Patterson’s style. If you hire a non-fiction, technical writer for the job, he or she will struggle. He or she might produce a final product, but it’s unlikely to hold a reader’s interest. If you need a fictional novel, you’re better off hiring a fiction writer.

Similarly, a good content writer will struggle to write effective sales copy because content writing isn’t the same as copywriting. At first glance, the result might look similar, but copywriters spend years learning how to persuade readers through the written word. Persuasion isn’t just about the words used, but the format as well.

Effective copywriters need to ditch their attachment to proper grammar and punctuation, and adopt unfamiliar formatting habits that would make any high school English teacher uncomfortable. In the copywriting world, it’s all about creating rapport with the reader, making them feel understood, and creating copy that feels more like a conversation than a distribution of information.

 

What Is Your Goal?

The type of writer you hire should be determined by your goal.

 

Do You Want More Traffic And Inbound Links?

When your goal is to boost credibility and authority in Google to get relevant traffic, you need high-quality, SEO-optimized content. Avoid looking for writers on Craigslist or Fiverr.

The top SEO writers don’t sell their services a-la-carte for pennies. Skilled SEO content writers work for themselves or for the top marketing agencies out there. If you want skilled writers to create your content, you’re better off going through a reputable agency that can show proven results.

Good writers can bring you great content in form of blog posts or infographic ideas.

 

Do You Want Readers To Make An Immediate Purchase?

When your goal is to generate quick sales, you need to hire a professional content writer. For instance, if you’re in the health and nutrition industry, skip the internet marketers and go straight for David Deutsch. Deutsch is the man behind the direct response copy for nearly all the major health-related publications.

If you don’t have the budget for an A-list copywriter, send whoever you do hire to a copywriting boot camp or enroll them in a coaching program taught by other A-listers like John Carlton or Harlan Kilstein. Buy them courses designed to improve their skills as a copywriter. Don’t hire anyone unwilling to continue learning their trade.

If you’ve never hired a professional copywriter, you’ll see the difference rather quickly.

 

Do You Want Visitors To Love Your Blog?

Maybe you just want your visitors to love your blog so much that they bookmark it and come back to visit regularly.

A content writer will help you achieve that. A content writer will create engaging content for your blog, whether they’re trained to write for SEO or not. Of course, it’s always better if they can write for SEO.

 

Hiring The Wrong Kind Of Writer Postpones Your Online Success

Just as it’s rare for a brilliant graphic designer to also be a skilled programmer, it’s rare for a person to be highly skilled in both content writing and copywriting. If your writer is a content writer, stop tasking them with writing sales copy and hire a copywriter.

You’ll get better results in a shorter amount of time, and you’ll wonder why you waited so long.