What skills should a copywriter have?

One of the most common content marketing misconceptions that I see all the time is the idea that anyone can write copy. This is false.

Anyone can write.

But not everyone can write copy.

And anyone who thinks that writing and copywriting are the same thing… well, they’re wrong.

In this article I’m going to share some of the skills that a great copywriter needs. Skills that are required to turn ‘writing’ into ‘copy’, and skills that set a human copywriter apart from an AI copywriter — because these are the skills that an AI writing tool is never going to be able to emulate.

A copywriter should have a diverse skill set. Obviously, they should be a good writer and an excellent communicator.

But they should also be a storyteller. They should be able to take the reader on a journey, subtly addressing their pain points while leading them towards purchasing a product or making an enquiry — all without the audience even knowing it.

As a copywriter is creating text and content for marketing purposes, they should also have some background knowledge of marketing. While they don’t need to be able to write a marketing strategy from start to finish, they should be comfortable with concepts like:

This background knowledge in marketing is what turns ‘writing’ into ‘copy’. More than just writing factual information about a product, they are directly addressing the reader’s wants and needs. They are writing persuasively, to convince the reader that they want or need the product.

They want to make the reader feel emotion — be that joy, anger, sadness, frustration, happiness or even just FOMO — and then use that emotion as motivation to purchase the product or service that they are writing about.

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Blessings to you all on this beautiful Sunday. I hope that our connection finds you daydreaming. If it does not, I pray you will be lost in an expansive daydream for a while. Change. Evolution…