Posts Tagged Copywriting

Copywriters – Artists or Scientists?

Picture by Sarah G...

Picture by Sarah G...

What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. Instead of the city of the Violet Crown, a Lancashire village has expanded into a mighty region of factories and warehouses. Yet, rightly understood, Manchester is as great a human exploit; as Athens.

- Benjamin Disraeli

Tom Albrighton and Martin Williams have spent the greater part of this week discussing whether or not copywriters is the right term to describe professional creators of content. While they have covered that debate fairly comprehensively, it has raised a few other interesting questions.

The question that intrigues me most as an SEO, is that of a percieved division between the “creative professional” copywriter and the “keyword-driven” SEO content mill. It’s a question I’ve tried to answer before in discussions, explaining that the latter has to balance the art of copywriting with the science of SEO.

But am I right? Are copywriters artists, or are they scientists? And is there really a fundamental division between the beauty of the copywriter and the usefulness of the SEO content creator?

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Are Your Calls to Action Strong Enough to Stop Rampaging Leeds Fans?

Image by Andrew Nattan

Image by Andrew Nattan

Picture the scene. From 1-0 down, and with ten men, Leeds United have snatched an unlikely victory from the jaws of defeat. And with it, promotion. A decade of unrelenting misery, two relegations, three play off defeats and an unprecedented points deduction wiped away with a deft flick of Jermaine Beckford’s outstretched boot.

The fans are ecstatic. The terraces are shaking, and the masses are bearing down on the ten men whose lung-bursting efforts have made this possible. A thin orange line of stewards is parted by sheer force of numbers, and the only thing between the thousands of revellers and the hallowed Elland Road turf is a video screen displaying a message.

“Please Keep Off The Pitch”

Is there any wonder that the grass is covered by a mass of leaping, singing fans, hoisting a half-naked Andy Hughes to shoulder height?

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You Really Shouldn’t Be Blogging

Photo by Brainware 3000

Photo by Brainware 3000

Common wisdom across the Blogosphere is that you should be blogging. All the time. If you’re not creating reams of content regularly, then your readers are going to desert you, RSS subscribers will throw in the towel and the search engine spiders will retreat to less dusty corners of the web.

This is of course, rubbish. Because guess what? You really shouldn’t be blogging.

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Follow Friday – The Copywriters You Should Be Following on Twitter

I’ll take it as read that everyone here is following me on Twitter at @Mr603 (and if not, why not?), but there may be one or two copywriting experts you should be following that have somehow slipped the net.

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