You’ll probably answer that a digital copywriter writes copy for digital platforms. Right? Yes, you’re right about this but if you give this type of answer in an exam or test you’ll only get one out of five marks. There’s a lot more that a digital copywriter does and needs to understand.
A keen understanding of the digital space
Just as copywriter need to know about the copywriting principles developed by the greats such as David Ogilvy, a digital copywriter needs to know what the digital landscape inside and out. For example, as more and more people consume content on their mobile phones, the digital copywriter will need to know how they need to present copy on websites in order for it to be easily read and digested on both mobile and desktop screens.
The digital copywriter needs to understand the methodologies involved in ‘responsive design’. This type of website design is a way of putting together a site so that it instinctively scales its content and elements to fit the screen size that it is being viewed on. Using responsive design helps to keep images from being larger than the screen width. In addition, it also is responsible for presenting visitors on mobile devices from being required to do extra work in order to read your content.
The ultimate aim of responsive design is to circumvent the unnecessary resizing, scrolling, zooming, or panning that happens with sites which have not been optimised for different devices. It is often very challenging to navigate these sites. If you don’t have a responsive site this may even cost you potential customers who may become frustrated with attempting to figure out how to do something.
Responsive website design also swaps out the previous need to design a dedicated mobile website for users of smart devices. Now, as opposed to designing many websites for various screen sizes, it is possible to put together just one website that scales up or down automatically in order to match the device it’s being viewed on.
Writing SEO-optimised copy
A fundamental part of being a digital copywriter is putting together SEO-optimised copy. What this means is that the copy that this type of copywriter puts together plays a very important function in helping people find a business’ website as it includes certain keywords that are relevant to that particular company’s line of business.
Types of keywords are:
- Short-tail keywords,
- Long-tail keywords,
- Short-term fresh keyword,
- Long-term evergreen keyword,
- Customer defining keyword,
- Geo-targeting keyword,
- LSI keyword, and
- Intent-targeting keywords.
The articles and website content that you need to write must not be stuffed with these types of keywords. ‘Keyword stuffing’ is the practice of injecting a large number of keywords into a piece ofWeb content as well as meta tags in an attempt to artificially increase a page’s ranking in search results as well as driving more traffic to the site.
A keen understanding of a company’s customers
A digital copywriter needs to have a keen understanding of who the company’s digital customers are so that they can tailor what they write for the correct audience and they will respond accordingly. What could be very useful in this exercise is putting together a buyer persona. A ‘buyer persona’ is a semi-fictional depiction of your ideal customer. This representation is based on market research as well as real data about the customers who are already buying from your business.
Consider the following criteria when creating your buyer persona(s):
- Customer demographics,
- Behaviour patterns,
- Motivations, and
- Goals
The more detailed that you are, the better this is for you.
Buyer personas are responsible for providing tremendous structure and insight for your digital copywriting. A buyer persona which is detailed will help you to:
- Determine where to focus your time,
- Guide product development, and
- Allow for alignment across the organisation.
This means that you will be able to attract the most valuable visitors, leads as well as customers to your business.
Digital copywriting may seem like an involved process. However, it is a very rewarding profession for someone who is passionate about this.
Chris Mcdonald has been the lead news writer at complete connection. His passion for helping people in all aspects of online marketing flows through in the expert industry coverage he provides. Chris is also an author of tech blog Area19delegate. He likes spending his time with family, studying martial arts and plucking fat bass guitar strings.