by Chemory Gunko

8 reasons copywriting is more important than ever before (Microsoft Word)

You’d think, with the variety of tools available to us in today’s wide media landscape, that the need for good copywriting would have fallen by the wayside – but you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Nowadays, more than ever, it’s the guys with the best copywriting – and most informative content – that achieve the kinds of viral traction that we all dream of for our business marketing.

So, why is great copywriting still so much of a draw card in today’s multimedia world?

1. Content is King

There may be a million things to do online, but the most important one is reading.

Without negating the importance of your design, which is crucial to grabbing peoples’ attention and luring them in, what exactly do you do with them once you have their attention?

Yip – you give them informative content. Something that will hold their interest and keep them reading until the end, establishing you as a thought leader, and giving your products and services credibility. And it’s the relationships where you have credibility that will become cash cows for you.

Now here’s a secret that not many of you will know – a good copywriter will be able to take a single thought, idea or phrase, and turn that into a 450-word press release, without breaking a sweat.

That’s because the best copywriters are usually voracious readers – meaning they have a wealth of general knowledge to call upon. And smart people, with great general knowledge, can usually make associations at the speed of light.

This is important, because it’s exactly that thirst for hunger and knowledge that will make your marketing copy salient, informative and relevant – and relevant, informative copy is your best way to get the kind of traction you’re after.

2. SEO means that spelling counts

Not a lot of people think of this – and with autocorrect and Google’s famous Did you mean…?, not to mention sms abbreviations, so many people take this for granted.

Look, you can SEO your site until the cows come home, but at the end of the day what’s really going to matter, is how many people come across it organically and how long they stick around.

And for the search engines to really understand what you are talking about, you need make sure that the words you use align with the words they have indexed for that category. And since you won’t be there to answer the famous Did you mean question, it helps to have the words spelt and formatted correctly from the get-go.

And that’s another thing great copywriting gets right – awesome copywriters are inherently gifted with the ability to be able to spell correctly, and most of us can spot a missing or extraneous word from a mile off.

Believe me, that makes all the difference when you want copy that flows and reads easily.

3. Vernacular Rules

Pick any target market – it has it’s own language.

And from Business English and Jargon, to teen-speak and more, speaking to a person in the language that they use most often, and are most familiar with, is the single fastest way to engage them – and make them feel really heard.

4. People use the Internet for entertainment

And by offering great, easy-to-read content, you can easily get on the viral train.

What’s more, if people know that you will repeatedly offer great tidbits and snippets for them to enjoy, they’ll keep coming back to your site, and sign up to your mailing list. And that is what will keep you top of mind, and make you the first choice when they are looking for a provider in your area.

5. Viral messages and search results

Simply put, the more hits you have, the more likely you are to go viral. The more viral you go, the more likely you are to be seen. The more your pages are visited, the higher you will return in search results.

And who doesn’t want to be number one in search results?

6. Short attention spans and short on time

Who has time nowadays? We all complain about it – too much to do, too little money and not enough entertainment.

So, the most brilliant copy is able to take even the most complex and complicated ideas, and distill them down to a few short paragraphs – if you’re lucky, a few short sentences.

But it still gets the message across, and it does this in short, sweet, friendly and conversational way that makes the reader feel like they are talking to a dear, old friend.

7. You can assume that half or more of all people won’t see your images in emails

Especially in restricted-Internet countries like South Africa, where people are on tight budgets and are precious about their bandwidth.

In addition, many companies only offer restricted Internet access to their employees, which means that your externally-linked email images can’t or won’t be downloaded.

Also, you have no control over peoples’ personal image download settings – so everything you want to get across has to be gotten across in your HTML layout and copywriting

8. We have Americanized English and 11 official languages to deal with

11 official languages – that’s a lot. And even though English has become the de facto language, and business language, in South Africa, you can still safely assume that 70% or more of the people who will read your content are using English as a second language – so many of them won’t catch those subtle nuances and turns of phrase.

Chemory Gunko is the managing director and creative director of Dsignhaus, a B2B marketing services agency with in-depth and specialist knowledge in the field of digital marketing. Contact Chemory on chemory@dsignhaus.co.za, visit www.dsignhaus.co.za, follow @dsignhaus on Twitter or join the Facebook page on www.facebook.com/Dsignhaus.

Submission & Enquiries

Chemory Gunko

MD & Creative Director

Dsignhaus (Pty) Ltd

Tel: 011 025 4165

Cell: 082 224 2357

Email: chemory@dsignhaus.co.za

Web: www.dsignhaus.co.za

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Eight reasons why copywriting is more important than ever before