Copywriting is the use of words to promote a person, business, opinion, or idea. Although the word copy may be applied to any content intended for printing (as in the body of a newspaper article or book), the term copywriter is generally limited to such promotional situations, regardless of media (as advertisements for print, television, radio or other media). The author of newspaper or magazine copy, for example, is generally called a reporter or writer, not a copywriter.

(Although the word copywriting is correctly and regularly used as a noun or gerund, and copywrite is sometimes used as a verb by professionals, copywrite is not listed by major dictionaries.Copywrite as a noun is always incorrect.)

Thus the purpose of marketing copy, or promotional text, is to persuade the reader, listener or viewer to act — for example, to buy a product or subscribe to a certain viewpoint. Alternatively, copy might also be intended to dissuade a reader. Copywriting is “getting across the perfect message, with the perfect words.”

Copywriting can appear in direct mail pieces, taglines, jingle lyrics, web page content (although if the purpose is not ultimately promotional, its author might prefer to be called a content writer.), online ads, e-mail and other Internet content, television or radio commercial scripts, press releases, white papers, catalogs, billboards, brochures, postcards, sales letters, and other marketing communications media.

One of the first steps to writing your website content is to ask yourself three questions:

• Who is my target market?
• What information are they looking for?
• What action do you want your visitor to take?

These are three important questions because web copywriting isn’t just putting a bunch of web content on your pages. The most common mistake that people make when they are writing website content is writing about themselves or trying to sell something too quickly. Most people don’t surf the internet to buy stuff, they are looking for information. How quickly do you leave a website when you’re looking for info and all you read is stuff like “Welcome to our website”, “Our company has been trading since…”, “Cheap products”.

The thing is, you can’t write your web content around the product you want to sell (although that’s why you’re writing web copy in the first place). You have to give the people the information they need to make an informed decision about your product.

Learn more from Copywriting Sweetie Course

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