What’s the Difference Between Content Writting, Copywriting, and Translation?
Content writing, copywriting, and translation are three activities that involve working with text. These activities are closely related to each other. Yet, there are many differences between them.
To find out more about these three types of services and how they differ from each other, let’s continue reading this article.
Content Writing – Writing Useful Text for Audiences
You might have read thousands of content writing pieces without knowing what they are called. You read posts and watch videos on social media platforms every day. Many read blog articles or infographics for both work or entertainment purposes. All of them are the products of content writing.
To put it simply, content writing is the activity of creating and sharing useful and interesting free information to attract audiences and convert prospects into customers or keep your customers coming back for your products and services. The products of content writing can be in form of:
-
- Text
- Videos
- Audio
- Images
As the aim of content writing is to provide your audience with valuable information and gain their trust, it requires content writers to have appropriate knowledge and skills. Before writing a piece, content writers must do proper research on the given topic and make sure the writing contains relevant keywords that they want their post to rank for on search engines. The post you are reading right now is an example of content writing.
You might have also heard about technical writing. The job of a technical writer is to create content that explains technological-related topics and makes these issues easy to absorb for readers. Some examples of technical writing are user manuals, API documentation, standard operating procedures, white papers, and technical reviews.
Copywriting – Writing Text for Advertising and Sales Purposes
Content writing and copywriting are two terms that confuse a lot of people. Are they the same? The answer is no. Copywriting is the process of creating persuasive content (whether written or spoken) for advertising or sales purposes. Copywriting is designed to entice the readers to take some form of action, such as clicking on a link, leaving their email address, or making a purchase.
The products of copywriting are slogans, product descriptions, advertising scripts, sales pages, direct emails, etc.
So what do copywriters do? The jobs of copywriters require them to have a thorough understanding of their target audience group (audience’s needs and desires). Once having these insights, copywriters come up with a content strategy that makes the target audience aware of their needs and issues and convinces them to use a product or service as a solution.
As for SEO copywriters, besides being persuasive, their writing should be friendly to search engines. Their content must contain the right amount of focus keywords that help it rank higher in search results.
How Does Content Writing Differ from Copywriting?
If you are still confused about content writing with copywriting after reading everything above, here is a short comparison table for you:
| Content Writing | Copywriting | |
| Examples | Blog articles, infographics, podcasts, autoresponders, etc. | Product descriptions, offer descriptions, slogans, advertising scripts, sales pages, direct emails, etc. |
| Purposes | Educate, entertain, and arouse the interest of readers. | Support the sales of products or promotion campaigns. |
| Features | Usually long and in-depth. | Usually shorter and persuasive. |
Although content writing and copywriting are not the same, they intertwine to some extent. You can’t have good content without using copywriting skills or have a good copy without useful content.
Content without Copywriting
Have you ever discovered a blog website that has excellent content (many times better than the most popular sites out there) but is not well-known to many readers? And you think to yourself that this site should have been more popular? Then that website is an illustration of good content with inefficient copywriting.
Maby the content is great but the headlines are too boring.
Maby the content is out of the world but there is no specific call to action to lets readers know what to do next.
Whatever the reasons are, it is still a waste of good content.
A Copy without Useful Content
Using all of the best copywriting techniques you know for your sales page does not guarantee that it will automatically generate tons of leads for you. For a customer to make a purchase, they must be convinced and have trust in your products or services. But for a customer to trust you, you need to bring them great value through your copy first.
So don’t completely separate content writing and copywriting. You should integrate them smartly for the best results.
Translation – Make Your Content Multilingual
Translating is another activity that deals with words. It is the process of converting text from one language to another, making your text understandable to foreign readers who can’t speak your native language.
The biggest difference between translation and content writing or copywriting lies in the availability of text. For content writing and copywriting, you create new text from scratch. Meanwhile, for translation, you work on the already-written text. After creating content in your language, you can use translation services to make your copy multilingual. Translation is utmostly important if you target global audiences.
Where to Get Translation Services?
If you want to make your content available to global audiences, GTE Localize’s team is here to help. With a network of 1200+ native linguists worldwide, we can translate your content into all major Asian, European, and American languages. Our translation services are value-for-money. We make sure every dollar you pay for our translation services is well spent.
Contact our team now and get your translation projects started!
