A good copywriter is not born but made…
Yes, copywriting, especially the excellent kind is a developed skill and not an inborn one. It is not necessary that an individual who has a post-graduate degree in English or any other language is a good copywriter and the other side of the coin is that a good or excellent copywriter doesn’t need much of linguistic education to be successful. In short, the attributes that make a good copywriter are his understanding of the niche, understanding of the targeted readers and his life’s experience as a whole. Let us look at these aspects in greater detail…
Understanding of the niche: If one is writing a copy about a particular niche, say the oil industry, the copywriter needs to understand the niche either by experience or by virtue of detailed research. A professional copywriter is not expected to have experience in every niche, so the latter holds good. In essence, he or she needs to have absolutely excellent research skills and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge… The more exposure a copywriter gets to the niche, the better his copy will be.
Understanding of targeted readers: Readers may be traditional as in newspapers or magazines or modern as in internet based publishing. Whatever the category of readers, a good copywriter needs to have a good understanding of his reader base and attune his linguistic as well as expression skills to cater to their tastes and readability. Using niche oriented jargon would help but keeping that to a lower level is advisable. As in the above example, an oil niche professional would understand “slick” differently than a person outside the niche. So, a good copywriter needs to understand his target readers and adjust his style to make the copy look “slick” and make it stick where it should.
Experience: A look or an outlook or an insight into people is very important for a good copywriter. Although, it may seem irrelevant to a new copywriter or one who is not a copywriter, a little experience will prove otherwise… A good copywriter is the one who appeals to all readers to some extent or the other, making the required impression amongst the target audience. To make that impression, he or she needs to understand the mental makeup by putting himself into their shoes. This comes only with experience and this experience is the key to becoming a good copywriter.
Therefore, becoming a good and professional copywriter is not really a learned process but a good copywriter becomes better by writing continuously and by gaining experience in different niches and different kinds of target audience.
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