We see you, avid wordsmith! You’ve been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt that shows you’re a content writer who knows a thing or two about weaving words expertly.
But what’s beyond staples like traditional marketing and creative writing? Why is there a big fuss about digital marketing as a highly lucrative field? Well, the digital marketing industry is so massive that marketing experts project a global digital advertising revenue of $786.2 billion by 2026.
Website content writing is an integral part of that online economy, making its mastery essential for forward-thinking writing professionals. From targeted email marketing to each discrete eCommerce blog post, digital is where content marketing goes bananas with seemingly unlimited reach and ROI.
Explore what writing for digital marketing entails and how you can maximize best practices to elevate your offerings.
What Is Digital Marketing Writing?
Digital marketing comprises the fundamentals of storytelling and professionalized writing skills. You then apply and present these on a buzzing online market to inform, educate, entertain or sell a product or service. But there’s more!
Online marketing isn’t merely about taking traditional written content and making it digital. Effective digital marketing relies on two major principles: search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience (UX). When you’re a savvy digital marketer, you’re looking to balance your content writing with high-value, various SEO-friendly components and optimized written content that will be easy and enjoyable for the audience.
The most successful digital marketing writing sets itself apart from a myriad of online resources by hitting these four content pillars:
- A strategic approach and a clear focus — defined by carefully crafted goals and objectives.
- Length — the perfect amount of content, depending on platform, purpose and audience.
- Linking and referencing — factual information that is still intriguing.
- Optimization — taking into account what both search engines and humans need to ascertain authority, quality and relevance.
These four pillars are underpinned by a smooth transition from standard content writing to copywriting, with different aims and outcomes.
Subscribe to
The Content Marketer
Get weekly insights, advice and opinions about all things digital marketing.
Thanks for subscribing! Keep an eye out for a Welcome email from us shortly. If you don’t see it come through, check your spam folder and mark the email as “not spam.”
Content Writing vs. Copywriting: Understanding the Difference Between Two Content Giants
While they share a few basic similarities, content writing and copywriting are different forms of digital marketing with specific aims and outcomes. Learn more about the application of these two content giants below.
Content Writing
Remember what we’ve already covered about the core of digital marketing? Online storytelling either informs, educates, entertains or promotes a purchasable product or service. Now, content writing fulfills half that mandate.
Content writers are crafters of creative, value-driven writing that:
- presents new information or reintroduces ‘old’ information in a fresh way,
- educates readers on an interesting idea or concept, or
- entertains and enthuses readers.
With content writing, the main objective is to foster customer engagement, build strong relationships with a target audience and establish your brand among competitors. The most common examples of popular content writing types and formats include:
- Articles.
- Blog posts.
- E-books.
- Newsletters.
- White papers.
Copywriting
Copywriting, on the other hand, fulfills a different part of the digital marketing mandate — to promote products or services that readers need in their everyday lives. Copywriting is creative, too, but effective in a more strategic way that enables the art of persuasion.
With copywriting, the main objective is to convert readers into active customers. The most common examples of popular copywriting types and formats include:
- Advertising copy (also known as creative ad copy).
- Email copy for marketing campaigns.
- Social media copy.
- Website content that spans across different types of page copy.
- Video script copy.
What Makes Great Digital Marketing? 10 Tools To Have In Your Bag of Writing Tricks
As would be expected in any competitive field or trade, it doesn’t suffice to cover the bare minimum for what constitutes acceptable digital marketing. You want to employ the best tools to ensure you’re a great digital marketer who consistently hits targets with each piece of online work.
So here are 10 essential digital marketing writing skills and tools that will help you refine and customize your digital marketing writing outputs in the online marketplace.
#1: Adaptability
Skilled digital marketers write with flexibility to ensure adaptable content outputs that are on par with developing trends.
#2: Analytical Skills
Astute comparative analysis is important to stay ahead of competitors and produce layered or nuanced content writing.
#3: Solid Research Skills
Structured research is the cornerstone of factual, relevant, high-value information — even when quirky, fun or creative.
#4: Audience Insights
Understanding exactly who your target audience is helps you deliver exactly what they need, want and prefer.
#5: Creativity
Online audiences have seen and heard plenty. Produce fresh content to differentiate your writing from what already exists.
#6: Editing and Proofreading Skills
Attention to detail elevates good writing to great. Eliminate errors and clumsiness with careful editing.
#7: Empathy
Empathetic writing ensures you’re staying mindful of forming a connection with your audience to boost trust and authenticity.
#8: Originality
It’s important to uphold ethical content creation with uncompromised originality. Adhere to high transparency standards by avoiding plagiarism.
#9: SEO skills
SEO is the bedrock of effective digital marketing writing, with its own requirements, metrics, mechanisms and techniques.
#10: Time Management
Time management rounds up your digital marketing writing toolbag. Content planning and organization anchor sustained online success.
How Digital Marketers Can Improve Their Writing Skills
Practice makes perfect, and perfect never happens right away. So, once you’ve gotten the basics right and are following best practices, it’s time to pause, review and make plans for your areas of improvement.
Every good digital marketing writer wants to get bigger, brighter, faster and better at honing the most effective online content production skills over time. These 10 tips will bring out the most progressive digital marketer in you:
- Know your strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. Patch up your writing gaps by upskilling, championing diverse content efforts and embracing new challenges.
- Read and research widely. Stay abreast of the latest industry developments, writing trends, marketing automation tools and marketing buzzwords.
- Keep your writing muscles warm by continuing your content efforts even when there’s less inspiration, innovation or creativity. With clever prompting, popular AI tools like ChatGPT can help you get out of the writer’s block slump when necessary.
- Collaborate across disciplines and learn from fellow writers to get out of your writing comfort zone.
- Have fun with your writing while aiming to produce valuable content with each project, campaign or task.
- Develop a unique writing style but stay adaptable as you grow in your digital marketing journey.
- Embrace positive and negative feedback (as long as it’s constructive) and make space for different content writing points of view.
- Prioritize audience readability for content with a strong narrative flow.
- Set digital marketing writing goals alongside clear content strategies, even when tapping into niches like influencer marketing.
- Align your digital marketing writing with your broader digital marketing goals. Forecast your writing and develop a workable long-term content strategy.
Digital Marketing Rules: The Writing Dos and Don’ts
We’ve got a little confession.
Have you noticed? We’ve been setting you up for a steady walk down this aisle of digital marketing know-how to eventually lead you to this ultimate moment: consolidating the best practices with this final leg of digital marketing writing 101.
You can make this guide work perfectly for you and get started in your digital marketing writing revival immediately. But first, you’ll have to combine your new 10-tool bag of writing tricks, not forgetting the 10-tip improvement plan above, with this last set of insights — a collection of urgent digital marketing dos and don’ts.
This should lead to your performance and progress as a well-rounded, capable, competent digital marketing writer who is sensitive to paying careful attention to your SEO and audience needs.
Do:
- Competitor research and comparison.
- Brand development and brand awareness.
- Uphold content writing ethics with all written communication.
- Cater to your target audience and deliver quality content each time.
- Performance tracking and content monitoring to chart growth over time.
Don’t:
- Avoid audience engagement and commentary.
- Take feedback personally or write from a defensive point of view.
- Neglect effective SEO optimization with each digital marketing campaign.
- Cheat or deceive your audience. If writing with the assistance of AI, approach its automation as an aid and not a complete replacement of human research and writing responsibility.
- Ignore the role of social media for content promotion and audience growth.
Start Writing Like a Digital Marketing Pro Today
Digital marketing and online media are completely reshaping modern businesses, education platforms and global institutions. The best way to embrace this new wave of digital marketing information exchange is to join them and then carve your own lane in the content production and sharing race.
Whether writing to form a stronger relationship with potential customers or using a clever digital marketing strategy to produce digital marketing content that converts, write with purpose. This means maximizing each marketing effort with the best tools, tricks and industry insights.
Keen to access more comprehensive guides about writing for search? Explore more on the Brafton blog.
