For me, the key criterion was quality of output – not speed, website design or even cost. In this post, I’d like to revisit the concept of quality copywriting and explain why the whole scope of the Nublue test was so misguided – and what it tells us about the way people see blogging and online content generally.

True value

The key problem with the Nublue survey was that it only reflected the perspective of the client, not the target audience.

So, you think your new blog post is a cracker. It was easy to order, it arrived quickly and it was cheap. That’s great! I’m really happy for you. But the true test of quality is how your content fares out there on the web, and what benefit it brings you as a result. Only when it’s realised business benefit can you truly say it was quality content. Otherwise, your assessment of quality is just a personal judgement.

It may be going cheap, but will it ever bring you golden eggs?

The quality of a blog post has three dimensions.

• Commercial. What value will your post offer to customers? Will it help them make or research a purchase? Can it function as a landing page, guiding first-time visitors to the ‘business end’ of your site? And, whether they buy or not, will they form a positive impression?
• Reputation. Is this post truly unique? Is it going to build up your authority, credibility or standing in your niche? Does it differentiate you from competitors? Is it something you’d want prospective employees, partners or investors to read – and judge you on?
• Search and social. Is the post going to be commented, liked, tweeted and linked to? Is it going to be something you can push to social networks again and again, perhaps for many months? Is it going to get links and responses on other, reputable blogs?

If your posts aren’t valuable in these ways, why are you putting time, effort and cash into something that won’t bring you any benefit? Even if the content itself only costs a tenner, you still have to plan it, commission it, publish it, host it. Is it really worth it?

What’s the point?

‘Write me a post about IE9.’

‘Write me ten web pages about Irish whiskey.’

‘Rework this competitor’s content and make it unique so I can use it on my site.’

I get a lot of requests along these lines, and I always want to ask the same question: ‘Why?’

If it’s a blog post, what benefit will you really get from hastily written, internet-scraped, inaccurate or downright boring content? As noted above, no one will link to it, or like it, or comment on it, or (in all probability) even read it. It will just sit there, unloved and disregarded, making your blog look like a digital backwater. What’s more, there are hundreds of sites out there doing much the same thing; you’re aligning yourself with your competitors rather than differentiating. So what’s the point?

For SEO, the logic of cheap content is dubious at best. Even supposing you can get a ranking with your blatant spam (which gets harder by the day anyway), why should visitors stay on a site with average content? What impression will they form? How can such a site hope to convert traffic into sales?

For corporate web pages, the whole philosophy of ‘filling up’ the site with content as quickly or cheaply as possible is utterly misguided. As when buying a suit, a car or a meal, it’s about spending as much as you can afford to get the best possible result – scrimping and saving is just selling yourself short. And when you start thinking about hard performance factors like conversion rate, the idea of ‘cheap and cheerful’ makes even less sense.

The time factor is important too. While you spend months building a pointlessly derivative blog, or spamming the article sites with uninformative rubbish, your competitors are taking the quality route – building up such an advantage in terms of content, backlinks and SEO profile that you’ll simply never be able to overtake them. When success takes time, it’s best to start doing the right things right now.

Aim above adequacy

The depressing pursuit of ‘adequate content at best cost’, perfectly encapsulated by the Nublue exercise, misses the whole point of blogging – and online content creation in general.

Your aim should not be to create ‘me too’ content that achieves a passable standard of quality, but to make an exceptional and lasting mark on the internet with something that brings genuine, new value to the table.

But how do you get this wonderful stuff?

Choose better titles

Well, the first step is to stop posting dull, sheepishly topical briefs like ‘Review Internet Explorer 9’ to content mills and expecting anything good to come of it. A blog post can only be as good as the idea behind it.

Instead, try striking up a relationship with a copywriter who can come up with ideas that thousands of other people haven’t already covered. (Do I need to add that such a relationship can’t really be conducted via the web interface of a content mill?)

When you work with a professional writer regularly, they come to know your business very well. That puts them in the ideal position to consider how the expertise, knowledge and opinion you already have within your organisation could be turned into killer blog content.

What’s more, as you work together, you’ll become more alert and attuned to the blog ideas floating across your desk every day. Believe me, they’re there – but you won’t perceive them until you break free of the ‘get it done, get it cheap’ mindset.

Get better content

Having got a nice title together, make sure you honour it with some decent writing. Again, I don’t recommend going to a content mill, since you’ve got no control over who takes on your assignment, nor can you enter into a dialogue with them, nor is there any real mechanism for having your content revised or improved – which is the only path to quality.

Moreover, since they’re paid by the word, content-mill writers have zero incentive to add something extra in terms of research, snappy phrasing, humour, original opinion, different perspectives or anything else that might lift your post above the sea of mediocrity. So even the best writer, should you be lucky enough to get one, has no motivation to do the very things you want done.

It’s a crucial point, and one that content mills would rather their clients didn’t think about too deeply about. But there’s no way round it. The more time and effort goes into your post, the more likely it is to deliver lasting value to your business. There are no short cuts, no discounts, no quick and easy way. However, it does get easier the more you do it – provided you do it the right way in the first place.

Put quality over quantity

Finally, learn to put quality over quantity. Carefully considered content beats cheapo spam every time.

Some content mills crow over the fact that the typical freelance copywriter costs ‘ten times as much’ as their service, while glossing over the quality implications. For me, it’s very simple: while your cost per word is higher with a ‘real’ copywriter, your content is going to deliver far more benefit, however you measure it (backlinks, reputation, readership). Proper copywriters deliver far more bang for your buck.

Do they deliver ten times as much benefit, to justify their price? Well, as I’ve argued above, derivative and low-quality blog posts deliver little or no benefit at all, when you take all the factors into account. So a good blog post could be infinitely superior to a poor one.

To put it in the language of accounting, working with a copywriter makes content into an asset that delivers a return, rather than an overhead to be resented and minimised. Seen in this light, it’s easy to see why investing in it is worthwhile.

Start making sense

‘Best price’ offers, like the poor, will always be with us. In every sector, in every professional discipline, there will always be suppliers who opt for a value proposition based on the lowest price. And there will always be customers for them, too – people who see price as the overriding factor in every purchase, as well as those who lack the time or insight to analyse costs and benefits in a more balanced, reasoned way.

But when it comes to copywriting, there’s no getting away from it – the benefits from content-mill writing are small, and shrinking fast. That cheap content you’re buying could turn out to be very expensive indeed.

Craig, who trades as Straygoat Copywriting, was named in the first version of the article. At his request, it was edited to remove his name, but he ‘outed’ himself anyway by referring to the post on Twitter.

Conflict of interest

Several comments on the blog note the existing relationship between Nublue and content mill Copify, which comes top in the test.

The facts are as follows.

• Copify was co-founded by a former Nublue employee
• Copify operates from the same building as Nublue, and staff from the two firms know each other personally (confirmed in comments on the post)
• Copify is a supplier to Nublue
• Copify was nominated by Nublue for a Mashable award.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this constitutes a conflict of interest for Nublue, and whether the content delivered by Copify for the test was likely to be representative of its usual standard. (Craig was made aware that his copy was being used for a test, so it’s reasonable to assume that Copify also knew.)

The challenge

Shortly after the Nublue article appeared, I noted the points above on Twitter and received this reply from Copify:

As a rebuttal of the bias charge, it seemed rather thin; as a challenge, it seemed irrelevant. The real question is not whether I’m better than Copify’s writers, but whether Craig Wright is – despite what the Nublue test says. And that’s the focus of this article.

Scope of the test

Nublue asked for a 300-word blog post reviewing the beta version of Internet Explorer 9.

It rated the content providers in five areas, awarding scores out of ten in each category to arrive at a total score out of 50:

• cost
• ease of placing order
• speed of service
• usability of website
• quality of the finished article.

Copify and Text Broker came first and second with 49/50 and 46/50 respectively, with Craig in third place on 31/50. The other two content mills scored 9/50 and 4/50 because of problems with their service that don’t concern us here.

Category selection

Nublue’s assessment method, while perhaps even-handed prima facie, is actually highly questionable – because the choice of categories is arbitrary, and the weightings given to them are unbalanced.

For a content mill, ‘usability of website’ is key; for a freelance copywriter, it’s marginally relevant at best. A freelancer’s site is a portfolio with an email address attached; it has no real functionality.

Similar observations could be made on ‘ease of placing order’ and ‘speed of service’. A freelancer is unlikely to offer instant online ordering, because they’d want to discuss the brief before submitting a price. Similarly, an in-demand freelancer might not be able to turn a commission round in 24 hours, but their clients are willing to wait in order to get the writer they want.

Including these three categories inevitably biases the results towards content mills; in effect, the categories imply a preference for a Copify-style content service before we even get to the scoring. A fairer test would also reflect the strengths that freelance copywriters offer: listening, developing the brief, making helpful suggestions, responding to feedback, developing an understanding of the client’s business and so on.

Category weightings

Even if we give Nublue’s choice of categories the benefit of the doubt, there’s still a major problem with the weightings they’ve been given. Each category is evenly weighted (ten points), but four of the five categories focus on process rather than product, making the weighting given to quality far too low.

For example, are ‘usability of website’ and ‘ease of placing order’ really just as important as ‘quality of the finished article’? And is the way copy is ordered and delivered really three times as important as the actual quality of that copy, as the combined weighting of ‘usability of website’, ‘ease of placing order’ and ‘speed of service’ (30 points) implies?

In this model, a content provider could potentially deliver completely unusable content but still score 40/50 because they did it quickly, cheaply and efficiently. This seems like a case of ‘the operation was successful, but the patient died’.

Alternative assessment method

We could use a scoring method that gives equal weight to cost, quality and service. While this is also arbitrary, it does reflect the methods used elsewhere, for example at FreeIndex (customers score providers out of five for value for money, service and quality).

However, I would argue that, in copywriting specifically, quality is far more important than service and price. I’ll develop my argument more fully in a future post, but for now I will simply observe that the commercial and economic value delivered by (for example) a blog post depends on its power to generate social-media interest, attract backlinks and build authorial reputation – all of which are directly related to its quality.

Therefore, I propose a higher weighting of 30 points for quality, with cost and service together accounting for a further 20 points, to give this model:

• Cost: Score out of 10, as now.
• Service: Score out of 10, based on 3.3 points each for ease of placing order, speed of service and usability of website and calculated by adding Nublue’s scores in each area together and dividing by 3.
• Quality: Score out of 30 (calculated by multiplying Nublue’s score by 3)

As before, this gives a total score out of 50.

The table below shows how the three medal-winners would score under this new system, using Nublue’s own scores.

Assessment of quality

When I caught up with Craig, I found him understandably ‘angry’ at the results of the test. While he’s realistic about the way his costs and service stack up against the content mills, he takes issue with the evaluation of the end product.

‘I don’t care about being seen as expensive or slower,’ he said. ‘But what I don’t agree with is that the end result is of the same quality. As I stated in my comments on the blog, there is no way that Copify article can be seen as an objective review. It may as well have been written by Microsoft’s PR department.’

The Nublue brief is very clear: it asks for a review of IE9, not just coverage. The text of the brief includes these words (my italics):

This article will be aimed at Internet professionals and webmasters that may already be using IE9 or thinking about trying it.

The article should review Internet Explorer 9 with a focus on its performance and functionality for web users and developers. The article should make comparisons with other browsers that are available such as Firefox that are currently seen to have stronger developer ecosystems and stands [sic] compliant features.

While the Copify piece uncritically lists the features of IE9, press-release style, Craig’s expertly probes the areas where IE9 needs to prove itself to the web-developer community. Is it really fair to give both articles the same score?

‘It would have been good if some developers looked at the articles and commented, because I know which one they would have disliked the most – the pro-IE9 [Copify] one!’ laughs Craig. ‘Considering that developers were part of the target market, you’d expect something in the Copify article to provide them with a bit of info about how it is going to affect them. Would an IT expert/web developer have considered the Copify article was well researched and thorough? I doubt it!’

A commenter on the Nublue blog echoes these sentiments:

I did find it interesting that the Copify article and the freelance writer were ranked equally. I’m not even sure that the Copify article responded to the prompt. No evaluation of performance and functionality for web developers, no substantive comparison to other browsers, especially in the context of compatibility and developer ecosystems and no real consensus on whether IE9 is a competitor (“a step in the right direction”). Moreover, it’s technically inaccurate where there is substantive analysis.

To get an impartial developer’s perspective, I asked Gareth Thompson of Codepotato for his views on the three articles, as well as his score out of 30 for each. The texts were sent in a Word document with no accompanying details, and I didn’t outline the scope and intention of this post. As far as possible, it was a ‘blind’ assessment – a copywriting ‘Pepsi challenge’.

Gareth rated the Copify article 15/30, Text Broker 19.5/30 and Craig’s piece 25.5/30. ‘I think that article B [Craig] is a better article from the technology or “capabilities” point of view, as it explains the improvements that most web developers will want to know about,” he said. ‘Article C [Text Broker] just seems to miss the mark a little. Personally, out of the three articles I would have been more inclined to bookmark/recommend article B [Craig].’

When we plug Gareth’s scores into the more balanced scoring system, here’s what we find:

So there you have it – a much more balanced outcome. But I’m giving the final honours to Craig, for three reasons. Firstly, because Nublue marked him down on speed of service just because he was on holiday when they approached him. Secondly, because his article has the all-important social-media appeal that would have delivered true long-term value to the client – as Gareth confirmed in a blind test. And finally because he came top, convincingly, on quality – which should surely be the ultimate deciding factor.

Conclusion

I’ll leave the last word to Craig himself. ‘For an in-depth and considered view that gives your readership the answers they are looking for and adds value to your site, you’re better off with a freelance copywriter,’ he says. ‘One who takes the time to look past the press releases and investigate the real issues, concerns etc. – a process that takes more than an hour, and so costs more than £15!’

In a future post, I’ll expand on this point, explaining exactly why quality of content is so important – and why you ignore it at your peril.

Different writing projects require different skills, and writers evolve different skillsets, whether deliberately or simply as the natural result of their working experience. So the terms ‘copywriting’ and ‘copywriter’, although simple-sounding, actually encompass a range of specialisations and capabilities. This post lists some of the most common types of copywriting and copywriters.

Note that some of these copywriting disciplines have parallel job titles/descriptions, and others don’t. For example, while ‘SEO copywriter’ is now a recognised job title, I’ve never heard anyone describe themselves as a ‘long-copy copywriter’. Also, be aware that some of these labels are flexible – while there are different strands within copywriting, the distinctions between them aren’t always so clear-cut as my headings imply, and people may use these terms in different ways.

The freelance copywriter

The freelance copywriter writes in any medium directly for clients, usually operating as a sole trader or one-person company.

Businesses and organisations need a broad range of things written: websites, brochures, case studies, product descriptions, user manuals, press releases, presentations, internal documents and more. While many will simply use internal resource to get the writing done, many turn to a freelance copywriter to help them out.

Freelance copywriting is usually managed on an ad hoc, job-by-job basis, although some clients do strike retainer arrangements or set up longer contracts with freelances. Typically, the freelancer provides a price or proposal, does the work, revises the copy in response to feedback, and submits their invoice on approval.

Freelance copywriting typically requires ‘broad but shallow’ copywriting skills. For example, in the course of writing a corporate website, the copywriter might find themselves writing long copy for information pages, snappy selling copy for high-profile pages and journalistic copy for news pages. At the same time, they might throw in a company tagline and perhaps name a product range or two – in some cases, without even being asked, since the client may not have realised that they even need these things.

As a result of working for many different clients, the freelance copywriter also tends to develop broad but shallow knowledge of different business sectors, allowing them to get a handle on new clients’ requirements very quickly. This is one area where older freelancers can consistently outdo their younger counterparts – experience cannot be faked, nor bought.

Conversely, some freelances specialise in writing for a particular industry or sector – pharmaceuticals, charity and so on. This may be because they previously held a salaried position in that sector. It may be a deliberate choice, or it may just emerge as a result of the jobs and referrals that come along.

Since the freelance copywriter deals directly with clients who may have little or no marketing experience, they also need some skills in project management, consultancy and diplomacy. Like business knowledge, these skills take time to acquire.

Freelance copywriters come from a range of backgrounds. Some are ex-agency copywriters who wanted a change of lifestyle; some have experience in related industries such as marketing, journalism or publishing; some are just people with a talent for writing who have decided to give freelancing a go.

The agency copywriter

Agency copywriters work in-house for graphic design studios, full-service marketing agencies, digital agencies, search agencies, PR agencies and copywriting agencies, where they produce text to order for the agency’s clients. They’ll usually be briefed by an account handler, or perhaps a designer, and will produce whatever the client requires. In some cases, they may deal with the client directly. 

While freelance copywriters spend a lot of time on the nuts and bolts of their business – marketing, accounts, new business – the agency copywriter will do hands-on writing for the bulk of their day. Some writers prefer this, seeing it as their true vocation, while others might worry about the pressure of delivering creative ideas and high-quality content under the pressure of the clock – and the management.

Agency copywriters, particularly those who have worked in London or another media hub, will typically be able to show some impressive national or multinational brands on their cv. However, big companies require a range of content types, and the projects involved may not have been high-profile marketing campaigns. Also, the agency copywriter is given his clients and projects on a plate, while the freelancer has to go out and close deals directly with real-world companies, all on their own. Arguably, this gives the freelancer a better grasp of commercial realities. 

The in-house copywriter

In-house copywriters are employed by large organisations who have their own marketing departments and need the services of a writer, or writers, full-time.

The in-house copywriter, obviously, works only for one client, which may limit their opportunities in terms of selling different products or working in a range of media. However, they may get the opportunity to develop a brand’s tone of voice in depth, and they are also likely to enjoy a productively close working relationship with their internal ‘clients’ – those who use their copy and brief them on requirements.

Advertising copywriting

This is perhaps the kind of writing that most people think of when they hear the word ‘copywriting’: writing the content of press, TV and other forms of advertising. Ad copywriting includes the creation of memorable headlines, slogans and taglines that people remember from broadcast media – but it also includes the drafting of long-copy advertisements such as sometimes appear in Sunday supplements or on underground (subway) trains.

Since slogans are such a critical part of any ad campaign, the ad copywriter will spend a long time getting them right. The words in ad slogans are probably the most time-intensive writing to be found anywhere.

In short-copy work, the actual words that finally appear in an ad may be less important than the central idea. So ad copywriters sometimes do ‘creative concepts’ or ‘copy plots’ (brief outlines of what an ad will cover) as separate tasks from determining the actual content.

Since an advert is a highly concentrated format, where words, images and design work together very closely, the ad copywriter often works with a designer or art director to develop ideas that use both verbal and visual communication.

Ad copywriters who work at the highest level need to be creative, lateral thinkers who can come up with very strong, original ideas under pressure. Further down the advertising food chain, the copywriter’s work may involve a little more pragmatism and compromise. But whoever they work for, advertising copywriters need to be able to deliver ideas and content that sell products.

Long-copy work

‘Long copy’ refers to any advertisement (or other medium) that contains a lot of copy – whatever ‘a lot’ means in context. For example, a long-copy sales letter would be several pages long, rather than just one page; a long-copy press advertisement would have several paragraphs of text rather than just one; and a long-copy website might have longer articles (1000 words and up) rather than the usual 100- or 200-word web pages.

There’s no such thing as a ‘long copy copywriter’. I’m using this heading to distinguish long-copy work from the sort of highly creative, concentrated writing that goes into writing a consumer marketing slogan – because the skills required for each are very different.

As noted, the ad copywriter is likely to be a free creative spirit who can come up with an arresting, original and memorable three-word slogan that can work across an entire campaign. But they may not be the right person to produce all the content that’s associated with it – the website, the packaging copy, the press releases and whatever else is required. Doing so requires skills in structuring and planning content, achieving a uniform tone of voice and maintaining a high linguistic standard – the key abilities of the long-copy specialist.

The long-copy copywriter is less of an artist, more of a craftsperson. Rather than leaping to peaks of creative brilliance, their work is all about sustaining the right level of quality over long wordcounts.

Copywriting for publishers

‘Copywriting for publishers’ is a bit of a misnomer, since publishers do not refer to those who produce their text as ‘copywriters’, but rather ‘authors’ or ‘journalists’. However, many copywriters have all the skills required to write for online and offline publications: researching facts and turning them into readable prose that a third party then publishes, perhaps for profit.

Writing for publishers is usually a case of working to a brief. The client will need an article or book about a particular subject and will ask you to write it, either for a fixed fee or a royalty (payment per copy sold).

One key difference between copywriting for commercial clients and writing for (say) a newspaper is the additional level of editorial control involved with publishers. While a commercial client would expect their copywriter to submit editorially accurate text (i.e. to proofread it, or have it proofread), reporters and journalists are more accustomed to having their work rigorously checked, and often rewritten wholesale, by sub-editors. Hence they can crank out the copy much more quickly, for example by dictating it over the phone (‘phoning in’ their copy).

Increasingly, however, as content moves online, publishers are also putting the burden of accuracy on their writers, as well as trusting to luck by publishing unproofed content in the knowledge they can always amend it later. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Website copywriting

Website copywriting is simply producing text for websites. However, the skills of the web copywriter don’t end at simply producing the copy. They’re likely to get involved in structuring the site, planning the user’s experience, setting tone of voice, ensuring usability and getting design and text to work together. As a result, the web copywriter needs a good working knowledge of web design and usability, and ideally technical aspects such as HTML, CSS and SEO (see below).

Although some copywriters do present themselves as specialist web writers, all they’re really saying is that they’re strong in these related skills and have experience of writing a lot of sites. The core skill of copywriting is the same regardless of the medium involved.

SEO copywriting

SEO copywriting is the creation of web text with two aims: appealing to readers and achieving prominence in the results listed by search engines for particular results.

Views on SEO copywriting and its relationship to ‘ordinary’ copywriting differ sharply. Some regard it as a completely different discipline, while others feel that writing strong, well-structured copy that works for users will ensure that SEO takes care of itself.

My own view is somewhere in the middle. While SEO copy needs to do all the things that every piece of copy does – engage readers, communicate benefits, explain information, prompt action – it also needs to be written in the very specific way that indicates relevance to search engines. And, crucially, that may require some compromise in terms of phrasing and expression – for example, by using a keyword repeatedly rather than varying the usage through synonyms as a copywriter normally would.

SEO copywriters need a broad range of skills, some aesthetic and some technical. They need to be able to write reasonably good web copy that appeals to readers and generates sales. But because SEO is largely a function of the way a web page is coded, as well as the content it features, SEO copywriting shades into web design and web development. SEO copywriters need to understand technical issues such as meta tags, heading levels, anchor text, word-stemming and keyword density. These concepts might be a completely closed book to an advertising copywriter.

For more on the unique attributes of SEO copywriting, see this post.

Online article copywriting

On the face of it, writing online articles is the same as writing for offline media – there’s a brief, perhaps a word count, and the copywriter produces the text. However, because some SEO strategies require the creation of large amounts of on-topic copy, there’s a large market for mass-produced, relatively low-quality articles and web pages that are posted at article sites or used to add search-friendly content to clients’ sites. Sometimes, online press releases are also used to build search profile, and these are also churned out with an eye on speed and quantity rather than quality.

To satisfy this demand for content, so-called ‘content mills’ such as Copify and Demand Studios have emerged. These act as middlemen between clients (often SEO or digital agencies) and freelance copywriters, setting rates (usually by the word) and taking a percentage of the fee as their reward. It’s a high-volume, fast-turnaround business.

Writing online articles may be a good way to get started in copywriting, but it’s important to keep your eyes open. Because the content may be intended more for search engines than human readers, you’re not going to be widely read or build up a winning portfolio by creating it. And because the rates are low, putting too much care and attention into your copy simply reduces your effective hourly rate – potentially well below the UK minimum wage.

My article on the content mill phenomenon, What copywriting clients can’t get from content mills, discusses the drawbacks of paying for content by the word.

This post presents my responses to Martin’s post (and will make more sense if you read his post first).

What’s in a name?

What really got everyone’s goat about Copify was their hijacking of the term ‘copywriting’, for instance in their tagline ‘changing the way people think about copywriting’. If they’d set up as ‘content generation services’, or whatever, far fewer copywriters would have been bothered. Equating 2p-a-word content creation with the careful, considered approach of an experienced marketing, publishing or digital professional is ludicrous, and Copify were duly called out on it.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet

For my money, ‘copywriter’ still denotes the high end of the market – right up to highly experienced creatives who can charge hundreds for a single advert or slogan. There are many different types of writer under the umbrella of ‘copywriting’, but the sense of a consultancy/service rather than a by-the-yard word factory is pretty well understood – with the possible exception of ‘SEO copywriting’, which does have some connotations of cranking out the copy I think. (But that’s not to say that all SEO copywriters are content-crankers, Andrew!)

Come for the writing, stay for the thinking

It’s this consultancy/service aspect that distinguishes a ‘proper’ copywriter from a content creator. Or to put it another way, clients pay for the thinking, not just the writing. Working with a copywriter who takes the time to engage with you, your values and your character as a business is what makes the difference between getting content and being content. And it’s dispiriting to trade under a name that implies you simply churn out the words without paying much mind to the purpose of the exercise.

J’accuse!

However, when I look at my own website, or those of other copywriters, it always strikes me that we do tend to sell ourselves short in this regard. There’s a general emphasis on ‘words’, ‘writing’, ‘content’ and so on, although the incidence of pen imagery seems to be on the decline. This rather prosaic positioning is sometimes leavened with some promise to drive sales or build brands.

We tend to push the craft of copywriting rather than its business benefits. And when we do try to force our way into the boardroom, it isn’t always convincing – perhaps because we don’t quite believe we should be in there ourselves (but that’s another story).

Let me reiterate, I include myself in this criticism. My own tagline, ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’, is typical. Why should a client care about that? What does it do for them?

Where’s the value?

If I were advising a client who was a copywriter, I’d probably exhort them to emphasise the value being added rather than the service being delivered. As with tool manufacturers who are in the business of selling holes rather than drills, it’s the ultimate benefits that sell a service, not the nuts and bolts of its delivery. Positioning as a seller of words weakens the offer and invites like-for-like comparison with low-cost providers.

Could we therefore rebrand as ‘content consultants’ or similar, just as designers might describe themselves as, say, ‘creative directors’ or ‘senior creatives’? My feeling is we could, but there might not be such a benefit to it.

First, ironically, we’d lose out on people searching the web for ‘copywriter’. Online, you can’t get away from the need to use the language your client uses, and people start from a perception that they need content, so they search for the word most closely associated with their need. (Many firms developing their websites don’t even get that far, so we should be grateful.)

Secondly, we’d lose the very important emphasis on language as the tool for marketing communication, and the positioning of ourselves as the people who can take the client all the way from concept or value proposition through to words on a page. In my experience, being the person who ‘gets’ a company and can express its values in writing is a pretty good position to be in. I wouldn’t want a title that made me sound like an expensive luxury.

So, in summary, while it’s probably worth talking about the high-end stuff we can do, I think we need to keep our feet on the ground.

What the future holds

I personally think that the market will sort itself out. ‘Content’ and ‘copy’, for want of better words, will diverge more and more as clients become more literate, and there will actually be less need to differentiate, not more.

Those who just want content will get it. Those who want something better, and try to get it from a Copify, will change their approach. Those who think they just need something written will soon realise, from working with a professional, that they’re not just delegating an admin-level task that they could just as easily handle in-house. And those who appreciate the value of a true copywriter won’t be going anywhere.

Joe King, head of development at CTS, outlines the rationale behind the HOACS. “Essentially, copywriting is a lot like digging up turnips,” he says. “Humans can do it, but ultimately a machine can perform the same task more quickly and effectively. Our modular online application provides all the benefits of flexible, on-demand content generation – without the hassle of dealing with a thinking, feeling human being.”

Marketing content on demand

Perhaps surprisingly, the core ‘writing’ module of the HOACS was the easiest to develop. “In business-to-business mode, it just rehashes a competitor’s online content, inserting the words ‘solution’, ‘proactive’ and ‘flexible’,” explains Joe. “Article marketing turned out to be a breeze – just copy an existing article and rearrange the paragraphs, always remembering to change the byline and the backlink of course.”

Over 90% of online content is now created for blogs, SEO, PR or articles – media characterised by a read-rate of practically zero. “Recognising that no-one has the time or inclination to read their content, our clients are happy to accept a cost/quality trade-off,” says Joe. “Why overpay for material that even GoogleBot struggles to get through? To cut costs even further, HOACS leaves sections such as ‘about us’ and ‘our values’ completely blank, with no noticeable impact on sales.”

Social media capability

The ‘moaning about clients’ module of HOACS was far harder to develop. “As it happens, this is one of the few areas where humans may still have the edge,” reveals Joe. “Client behaviour has to be analysed for reasonableness, anonymised and then posted in cryptic snippets to social-media sites. If too much detail is given, there’s a risk of the client recognising themselves; if too little, the material isn’t juicy enough to get retweeted.”

HOACS offers full online integration with the functionality of ‘find a freelance’ sites such as People Per Hour and Elance, as well as with ‘content on demand’ services such as Demand Studios. “With this feature, clients can often receive the content they need within seconds of posting a requirement online,” enthuses Joe. “The whole process is completely automated, from scanning the online brief through to nicking the content off Wikipedia. As a virtual copywriter, HOACS can submit highly competitive bids, and is happy to work unpaid on the strength of ‘lots of work in the pipeline’. Very soon, I believe we’ll see automation of the client’s role too – it’s really just a case of monitoring Google Alerts for key words, generating a simple two-line brief and posting it online.”

Improving on nature

However, HOACS doesn’t mimic every attribute of the biological copywriter. In terms of attitude and personality, CTS have made some marked improvements. “Human copywriters tend to be pedantic, self-important and rather smug,” notes Joe. “Our solution has an ‘utter humility’ setting that forces it to accept all amends uncomplainingly, even those that result in grammatical errors, inconsistency or rubbish word choice. You can even send the HOACS content written by your ten-year-old nephew and it will respond with sycophantic flattery.”

Traditional copywriters are highly inefficient, needing large quantities of tea, Cheddars and red wine just to achieve a basic working day of seven hours, of which at most two or three will actually be productive. While additional time can be extracted, the extra wine required makes for an unrealistic cost-benefit equation and a marked decline in quality. In contrast, the HOACS, being web-based, consumes only a nominal amount of electricity and is ‘always on’. “The different in carbon footprint is dramatic,” says Joe. “Plus you can impose the most ludicrous timescales without the tedium of negotiating.”

CTS’ next project is even more ambitious: a completely automated graphic designer. “We’re working hard on eliminating pretension, surliness and foot-dragging over client amends,” enthuses Joe. “Our aim is to create something rather like a Spirograph, but easier to use. And cheaper.”

Out of interest, I sought the opinions of my copywriter friends on Twitter, including @Mr603, @turnerink, @NoSloppyCopy, @shelovestowrite, @PenHire, @sarahcopywriter and others. Turned out a heated debate was already raging, with copywriters’ opinions ranging from the doubtful to the derisive, and many focusing on the fees.

Of course, we can’t really argue that any price agreed in a free market is ‘too low’ or ‘too high’. If both parties agree to make a deal, a deal is made. However, we can question whether the transaction represents good value – for buyer as well as seller.

I have no axe to grind with Copify or the other (mainly US) content mills out there, such as Examiner, Suite101, Associated Content, eHow, and DemandStudio. They’ve seen a gap in the market and they’re filling it. Good luck to them. However, I feel I should point out exactly what copywriting clients won’t be getting when they go down this road…

1.    Ability. Sounds painfully obvious, but there’s such a thing as writing skill, and people have varying levels of it. If you’re a UK white-collar professional using a content mill, you could be delegating your copywriting to someone with abilities only as good as (or worse than) your own. So what have you really gained?

2.    Experience. 2p a word does not stretch to a seasoned copywriter. But why should you pay for experience? All I can say is that the ‘broad but shallow’ knowledge picked up during my career has served my clients very well. Ideas from clients in other industries. Print techniques that work online, and vice versa. Ideas on ecommerce, SEO, social media and more. Ideas on improving value propositions. Ways to save time – and money. It all adds up – and you get a professional manner, calm demeanour and sense of humour thrown in.

3.    The right price. If you need to spend more, you should spend it. If my plasterer discovers rising damp, I want him to tell me, not just cover it up. Let’s say I’m working on a fixed-price job for a content mill. The client has directed me towards out-of-date sources. Halfway through, I realise this, but have no incentive to raise it since there’s no way to renegotiate the fee. So I just cut and run, having fulfilled the letter of the contract. The content is inaccurate, and some valuable learning is lost.

4.    Enough time. Closely allied to cost is the need for adequate time. Many copywriting projects throw up unforeseen issues. ‘The subject is more complicated than we thought.’ ‘There’s more to say.’ ‘Our structure needs work.’ ‘We need to rethink terminology.’ ‘Our industry jargon won’t work for SEO.’ ‘We’ve identified a new market segment.’ The professional copywriter works with the client to address these problems – with a time implication, yes, but what’s the point in rushing to the wrong destination?

5.    Reassurance. So you’ve chosen to use a content mill. Presumably you’re completely confident about factual accuracy, grammar and spelling, copyright and fair use, trade marks, US/UK language conventions, Google penalties, duplicate content and the legal implications of publication. If not, why not work with a professional whose reputation is on the line with every single job?

6.    Flexibility. Inspired by The E-Myth Revisited, I once dreamt of creating a one-size-fits-all ‘system’ for handling writing and design projects. I soon gave up. No one needed it, or wanted it. Marketing should be a bespoke suit, not a T-shirt from Asda. Savvy clients appreciate that service and expertise pay for themselves.

7.    Rapport. Clients who tender copywriting job by job never realise the benefits of working long-term with a copywriter who truly understands them. For them, every step is the first – every piece slightly off the mark, lacking sparkle, bringing nothing extra. They’ll never feel the thrill of receiving text from their regular copywriter that absolutely nails everything they wanted to say, and more – first time. (For a regular client, I recently wrote the president’s introduction to a brochure with no brief. He approved it without change.)

8.    Creativity. The fixed-price deal actively discourages discussion, consideration and indeed active thought. The copywriter’s only hope is to bang that copy out quickly and pray she doesn’t get RSI. She certainly has absolutely no incentive to put forward anything creative, inventive or alternative, even if it could help the client. The risk is just too great that it will be rejected – leading to a rewrite, obliterated profits and aching wrists.

9.    Intelligent SEO. Even basic SEO copywriting is an art – hitting keyword density targets for multiple terms without grammar and sense collapsing completely. But competent SEO copywriters take it to the next level, offering content that actually appeals to humans too. In other words, a landing page that isn’t a bouncing page.

10. Motivation. When prospects ask what I’d charge for ‘an hour’s graft writing fresh copy’ (a genuine quote), they are perhaps puzzled as to why their enquiry fails to excite my interest. The reason is that I prefer to strike a civilised, mutually beneficial deal in an atmosphere of respect, friendship and dignity. With that in place, I’m motivated to give my very best to the project. Without it, you’ll get ‘good enough’, but no more.  

Now, the most likely objection to all this is that it’s completely irrelevant to article marketing, or the creation of banks of SEO pages. I beg to differ. For articles posted at Ezine Articles and similar sites, your best chances of republication (propagating backlinks across multiple domains) come with a compelling, high-quality article. Better to have one killer piece than five embarrassing duds. And for SEO, as I’ve argued, you need your landing pages to convert the reader, not just attract traffic.

I also feel there’s a big cloud hanging over the in-vogue strategy of gaming the search engines by posting huge amounts of nominally relevant content, hoping to boost link velocity and backlink numbers. Google’s business model depends on search results that are relevant and deliver genuine value to users. Historically, it’s never failed to weed out any attempt to reduce quality to a formula, or mere gruntwork. Would you bet against it now?