Copywriting vs Copyrighting

As someone who likes to travel, I love to pick up fun tourist shirts and souvenirs. One especially humorous shirt said, “No, we don’t have kangaroos in Austria.” It’s funny how just a few letters can make a world of difference in meaning. The terms copywriting and copyrighting often receive the same mix-ups. Though, no one has made a shirt about it yet, at least that I have found. As a copyWRITING business, this copywrite vs. copyright mix-up is a little more personal, as we are not prepared to take on copyRIGHTING jobs. So we wanted to remove any confusion between the two. The Difference Between Copywrite vs. Copyright While they sound very similar, the two terms have entirely unrelated meanings. Let’s break those meanings down for you: Copywrite: Copywriting is creating marketing, advertising, and other business-related text. Copyright: Copyrighting is acquiring the legal rights to intellectual property. Here’s an easy way to differentiate copywriting vs. copyrighting. CopyWRITErs are people who WRITE content, usually for businesses. They are very knowledgeable about business, marketing, and the proper use of the Oxford comma. Meanwhile, a copyRIGHTer is a legal expert who helps people obtain the RIGHTS to their intellectual property. Even the term copy has different meanings. For copywriters, copy refers to materials or content that they write. However, copyrighters deal with people who want to duplicate another’s property, so copy in that sense refers to the legal right to duplication. Now that you know the basic difference between copywrite and a copyright, let’s go a little deeper into who a copywriter is and why they might just be the person you didn’t know you needed most. What Is Copywriting? Are you confused yet? Hopefully not, because we will break this down even further for you. Copywriting does not fit neatly into a box and often overlaps with its many content cousins. Here’s a look at some of the other terms you might have heard before: Copywriting: Writing with the intent to persuade, sell, or move the reader toward an action. Content writing: Writing with the intent to entertain and educate the reader. Technical writing: Writing industry-specific content that requires a knowledge on a deeper level than a Wikipedia article. Can a copywriter be a technical writer? Yes! Can a copywriter be a content writer? Yes! Can someone be all three? Absolutely! The name might change, but the person doesn’t have to. The category that content falls into depends on the content you are creating. For example, manuals and guides would fall into the technical writing category. However, you would hire a content writer if you wanted an eBook. Marketers want to work with copywriters because they are people who understand the subtle nuances of content marketing. Here’s another interesting fact: all copywriters are content writers, but not all content writers are copywriters. In other words, all copywriters should know how to entertain, engage, and educate the reader since those are pillars of content marketing. However, not all content writers understand how to transform educational content into content that converts. Psst, Express Writers are trained in ALL THREE: copywriting, content writing, and technical writing. What Types of Content Do Copywriters Create? Copywriters can create any type of persuasive content. If there are words, and those words have a persuasive goal, a copywriter most likely wrote them. An eBook on marketing? Yes. A blog post on exercising equipment? Yes. A billboard? Yes. The ingredients on your soup can? Probably not. However, a copywriter most likely helped create the label content so it’s appealing and marketable. Here are some of the most common projects our clients order: Blog posts Case studies Website pages Emails/Newsletters Social media posts eBooks Whitepapers While these are the projects we receive the most, we have also had fun creating slogans for clients, developing branding content, and even creating food label text. There really is no limit to what content you can have a copywriter help you create. What Is a Copywriter? What does a copywriter do? Based on the VERY brief definition we gave at the start, you might picture a copywriter as a keyboard warrior who likes writing up overly verbose emails or spending fifteen minutes throwing together a blog post. Let’s scrap that image and start fresh. While a copywriter’s primary function is writing copy, the job involves much more. A copywriter is also a: Researcher Data analyst Editor Avid coffee drinker While the last one is optional, it does help copywriters handle the sheer volume of work that comes with even a single blog post. A quality blog post is not simple at all. 2020, the average blog post took 3 hours and 55 minutes to create. What’s even more surprising is that the time it takes to craft a blog post has grown. But so has the writer’s job description.   Here is another way to think about it. If you live in a small town with only one restaurant, and that restaurant serves mediocre food, what’s the chance you’d still go there? Probably pretty high because if you need a meal and don’t have the food or energy to cook, that’s your only option. But what if a dozen other restaurants had much better quality food? You would probably go somewhere else. As the internet has grown, so has the digital content available. There are about 1.13 billion websites online. Creating mediocre content just won’t cut it. Not only is there more competition, but audience expectations are rising. People expect more personal experiences, niche content, and engaging interactions. Copywriters aren’t just putting words on paper. They’re helping businesses stand out from the crowd, building relationships through those words, and crafting experiences that will keep those readers engaged, ultimately converting them into customers. Here’s a breakdown of some of a copywriter’s specific tasks: Researcher Before a copywriter adds a single word to their document, they research. The purpose is to understand the business, audience, and content fully. They also want to understand the content’s … Read more