What Is Copywriting?

Is web copywriting different than normal copywriting?

Copywriting has been described as the art of writing or preparing sales and marketing related materials. Copywriting has been used in every medium from the written to the spoken to "cyberspace" on the internet!

The purpose of copywriting is to persuade or convince the listener, reader or viewer to act in a specific way. It may be to buy a product or to simply move someone in the general direction of accepting an idea.

Copywriting can entail the use of words, pictures, images, emotions, even humour to motivate someone to move in a specific direction or mode of thought.

Web copywriting is similar to the writing of any type of copy for any other type of publication with one major difference. In all other types of copywriting you usually have a built in audience. For example, advertising copy writers for automobiles know that their ads will be placed in magazines that have a large circulation or on television programs that have a large viewing audience. While they have to "catch the eyes" of the reader or viewer they don't have to worry about trying to pull them in. But for a web site, the copywriter also has to write in such a way as to attract the search engines. The web copywriter has to consider things such as keywords, keyword placement, keyword definition along with  all the other concerns for all copywriters, namely good headlines, appealing copy, emotional impact of the words on the reader/viewer. Without proper use of keywords, your web site won't be picked up properly by the search engines so you may never get to see how effective your copy is on a visitor. And if you do get ranked high enough to draw great traffic, your copy better be good enough to sell your goods or it all goes to waste. So good web copywriting can have a great impact on search engine positioning as well as on how much you sell!

 The Five Great Worldwide Motivators: Psychologists have identified these five "Great" motivators as fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, and the need for approval. Every good web copywriter can create sales by using one of these motivators. If tap into these basic motivators for mankind, you will soon see your sales increase dramatically!

The Soft Motivators: Consumers are also motivated by what is referred to as "soft" motivators. These are convenience and pleasure and you will find them to be utilized best when combined with one or more of the five great motivators talked about above.

When writing your copy give a lot of thought to determine which of the basic motivators [combined with soft motivators] will work best to motivate your web site visitors to some action you desire.