Wednesday 22 April 2015

Just so You Know



Just so You Know
If you’ve come to the Dorset Copywriter site because you need something written for your business you will know the answers to the following questions. If you’ve just clicked on it out of curiosity, like we all do sometimes, you might not. The questions being 
1.     What is a copywriter?
2.     What does a copywriter actually do?
The answer to the first question is quite straightforward. If you are in business a copywriter is someone who can help you. Wikipedia will tell you that he or she is someone who writes “copy” or text if you like, for the purpose of advertising, promoting or marketing a product, a business, a person, an opinion or an idea.

That’s as good a definition as any. It goes on to say that the purpose of the copy is to persuade the reader, or sometimes the listener, as in the case of a radio or TV script, to buy the product advertised, or subscribe to the idea or viewpoint being promoted. Again that sums it up quite neatly.

The answer to the second question follows on from that. Copywriters create direct mail pieces, taglines, lyrics for jingles, content for web pages, online advertisements, e-mails, scripts for television or radio commercials, press releases, , catalogues, , brochures, postcards, sales letters, and other marketing communications and media pages. Copy is also provided for social media content especially blog posts but also tweets, and other social networking site posts.

I have undertaken quite a few of those tasks for different clients, however the reality is that writing content for websites constitutes a very large proportion of the work I get asked to do. For that reason, like most copywriters these days I am also described quite often as a “Content Author.”

A copywriter is a wordsmith, not a graphic artist and therefore does not do illustrations, just words. A copywriter or content author can work well in collaboration with a graphic designer or a website designer and creator.

Copyright is the law that protects writers, artists, musicians etc from having their work pirated by others. Copywriters only involvement with it is in respecting the rights of others and complying with the law of copyright.   


J