Where there’s a business, there are copywriter skills.
Business owners are highly interested in creating their own presence online, and you are, as a copywriter, the one who can help them achieve it. From websites, blogs, social media, emails, and advertising, every written material that a business has is written by the copywriter.
The company that hires you will highly depend on you to live up to their expectations and create some compelling copy that expresses the identity of the business while building a strong brand.
Companies are looking for skilled copywriters, but which skills are we talking about? Here’s our top 5:
Peerless Writing Skills
Whether you are working for an agency, in-house, or independently, the most important skill you need to have as a copywriter is to write to an excellent standard.
Remember that you are being employed specifically for your capabilities of combining words in the most fluent and articulated way. Not being able to do it will only lead to disappointed customers, and a lot of time spent on edits and re-writes.
This will not only harm your customer but also yourself, you’ll start to feel that you don’t have free time because you’ll need to edit your copy over and over again. At the end of the day, your job will feel like an arduous and unpleasant task to fulfill.
Being a peerless writer doesn’t always mean writing long words and complicated sentences. When it comes to copywriting, you just have to find the best way to approach your audience while envisioning the client’s idea.
Express your ideas in a calm, confident, and kind way to make your copy as clear and compelling as possible so that you can teach, promote, or sell everything your clients ask you to your readers.
Research Skills
Occasionally, you’ll get to write on topics that you are passionate about and have enough information to write freely. However, this doesn’t mean that you’ll only get to write about topics that you know thoroughly.
To learn all these copywriter skills you need to know how to write about subjects that you may have very little knowledge of. In other words, you need to know how to research efficiently.
To write a quality blog, web page, or article, more often than not you’ll need to conduct research. This research may involve complex documents, news articles, case studies, etc.
Everything is a piece of information that gives you punctual facts about your topic so that you can get an overall idea of exactly what to write about.
It’s extremely important to be able to conduct research efficiently, don’t forget you still have to meet a deadline.
Ability To Meet Deadlines
As in every copywriting project, you’ll need to be able to write towards a deadline.
Depending on the task, it could be a matter of hours for shorter pieces of work or a day or two for longer articles. The time frame will always depend on your client’s needs, so you also have to state clearly the limit of your capabilities in order not to overwork yourself.
As a skilled writer, you should strive to naturally find it easier to write quickly and efficiently. Although it’s also a matter of practice and time, once you have enough time on the job, you’ll know what your abilities and limits, are and also develop your writing process.
The most important thing is to allow yourself to be comfortable and limit distractions when writing. Ideas come when you are in the zone, and most of the time it’s really easy to get out of it when your surroundings are lively.
No one knows your creative process better than yourself, but one thing is for sure, if you can’t put your mind solely on your writing, it will affect the quality of your work, which isn’t ideal. So, try to find a place where you feel comfortable, let the ideas flow and you’ll surely meet your deadlines!
Understanding The Audience
You are always writing to someone.
Remember not to think about only yourself when writing, on the other side of the screen there’s always a reader whom you are trying to inform, entertain, or persuade in your way of thinking.
As we said in one of our previous articles:
“Before you start to create content for your blog, you’ll need to ask yourself “Who am I writing to?” “Who’s the target for my article?” “How old are they?” “What do they like?”. You need to be clear in all this information to figure out exactly what they need.”
We invite you to read our 3 steps to improve your business blog to learn more about understanding your audience and buyer’s persona. Once you get that covered, your writing is sure to be far more engaging and useful!
SEO Skills
Being good at writing is only half of the way to becoming a great copywriter.
If words are your bullets then SEO is your weapon. There isn’t a bullet that can fit every weapon.
When it comes to copywriting, not every word will fit your SEO strategy. You have to know which are the correct words to use in your posts, websites, blogs, etc. Not only to captivate the people who read it but to also make sure that those same words are words that people are currently and actively looking for. That is to say, to find the right keywords.
To learn more about SEO we highly recommend you check our previous article SEO 101: A Basic Guide For Beginners, once you finish reading it we assure you that you’ll gain a strong foundation of what SEO is and basic strategies you could start applying right away!
Remember that if you’d like to work as one of our freelance copywriters you are always welcome to contact us right here. Or, in case you’re looking for a copywriter for your business, click right here! And someone from our team will contact you ASAP.
We are always at your service!
See more articles by Ender Cárdenas
