Romantically, we can describe copywriting as the art of masterfully weaving words into engaging and persuasive messages that capture the audience’s attention by evoking emotions, arousing desires, and leading readers to a specific action. The copywriter is a craftsman of letters, skillfully shaping sentences to tell stories, sell ideas, and create lasting connections between brands and their consumers.

More objectively, copywriting is the ability to create persuasive text that aims to convince the reader to take a specific action, such as buying a product, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading an app. It is a form of writing geared toward selling, but ideally without being too obvious.

“Copywriting is the art and science of writing words that sell.” – Joseph Sugarman

One of the keys to successful copywriting is adapting the tone and style of the speech for different mediums. What works well in an email marketing campaign may not be as effective in a Facebook ad, for example. Let’s explore some copywriting techniques for different platforms next.

Social Media Copywriting

Social media is one of the main communication channels used by brands to create a connection with their customers and potential consumers. This is why copywriting techniques are so important in this medium. Here are some tips for creating persuasive and engaging content for social media:

• Know your target audience: before you start creating content for social media, it’s important to know who your target audience is. Research and understand your followers’ interests, habits, and needs to create content that resonates with them.
  
• Respect brand tone of voice: a brand’s tone of voice is an essential component of its identity and personality, as it reinforces the brand’s personality, helping to communicate its values, mission, and purpose more effectively. Some brands will have a more fun and casual tone of voice, while others will have a more formal and distant tone. Understanding the tone of voice of the brand you are creating the copy for is essential to write it successfully.
  
• Use clear, straightforward language: on social media (like almost everything these days, really), people have little time and many distractions, so it’s important to use clear, straightforward language that gets right to the point and captures the reader’s attention. Concise, non-extensive copy works best, especially on social media.
• Storytelling: people love stories, so use the power of storytelling to engage your followers and establish an emotional connection between them and your brand. Tell stories that illustrate how the product or service in question can help solve your target audience’s problems.
• Be creative: creative copywriting allows the brand to show its personality, which helps humanize it and establish emotional connections with the target audience. Moreover, extremely creative copy favors engagement and shares of the publications.

Romantically, we can describe copywriting as the art of masterfully weaving words into engaging and persuasive messages that capture the audience’s attention by evoking emotions, arousing desires, and leading readers to a specific action. The copywriter is a craftsman of letters, skillfully shaping sentences to tell stories, sell ideas, and create lasting connections between brands and their consumers.

More objectively, copywriting is the ability to create persuasive text that aims to convince the reader to take a specific action, such as buying a product, signing up for a mailing list, or downloading an app. It is a form of writing geared toward selling, but ideally without being too obvious.

“Coywriting is the art and science of writing words that sell.” – Joseph Sugarman

One of the keys to successful copywriting is adapting the tone and style of the speech for different mediums. What works well in an email marketing campaign may not be as effective in a Facebook ad, for example. Let’s explore some copywriting techniques for different platforms next.

Social Media Copywriting

Social media is one of the main communication channels used by brands to create a connection with their customers and potential consumers. This is why copywriting techniques are so important in this medium. Here are some tips for creating persuasive and engaging content for social media:

• Know your target audience: before you start creating content for social media, it’s important to know who your target audience is. Research and understand your followers’ interests, habits, and needs to create content that resonates with them.
  
• Respect brand tone of voice: a brand’s tone of voice is an essential component of its identity and personality, as it reinforces the brand’s personality, helping to communicate its values, mission, and purpose more effectively. Some brands will have a more fun and casual tone of voice, while others will have a more formal and distant tone. Understanding the tone of voice of the brand you are creating the copy for is essential to write it successfully.
  
• Use clear, straightforward language: on social media (like almost everything these days, really), people have little time and many distractions, so it’s important to use clear, straightforward language that gets right to the point and captures the reader’s attention. Concise, non-extensive copy works best, especially on social media.
• Storytelling: people love stories, so use the power of storytelling to engage your followers and establish an emotional connection between them and your brand. Tell stories that illustrate how the product or service in question can help solve your target audience’s problems.
• Be creative: creative copywriting allows the brand to show its personality, which helps humanize it and establish emotional connections with the target audience. Moreover, extremely creative copy favors engagement and shares of the publications.

Source: Instagram Control Portugal, Instagram Super Bock

The images above are two good examples of the importance of copywriting in social media posts. In this case, both brands have a very young, relaxed, and humorous tone of voice, so they often use jokes and puns. In these two cases, without the copy, they would just be two banal images. With copy… the story is different, but the happy ending involved thousands of interactions.

Social media is a fertile ground for copywriting. The key is to understand the audience of each account or brand and adapt the discourse accordingly. 

And speaking of understanding the audience, we cannot forget that each social network has a different audience and identity.

On LinkedIn, for example, the audience is more professional and expects more serious and informative content. Instagram users, on the other hand, are more visually oriented and expect more creative and engaging content.

Some differences between copywriting for Instagram and for LinkedIn:

• Audience: the Instagram audience is younger and more visually oriented than the LinkedIn audience, which is more professional and business oriented.
• Language: copywriting for LinkedIn should be more formal and professional than copywriting for Instagram, which can be more informal and personal.
• Content: content for LinkedIn should be informative and educational, while content for Instagram can be more inspirational and emotional. On Linkedin, it is also more usual for brands and companies to make posts that do not talk about their products and services but are more oriented toward company and team content.
• Format: Instagram is a visual platform, which means that copywriting for Instagram should be tailored to accompany images and videos while copywriting for LinkedIn can be more text-focused.
• Call to Action: CTAs for LinkedIn should be more business-oriented (“apply for our job opening,” “learn about our open positions,” while calls to action for Instagram can be more informal and personal.
• Hashtags: hashtags are important for both Instagram and LinkedIn, but hashtags for LinkedIn should be more business-oriented, while hashtags for Instagram can be broader and more general.
• Objectives: The goal of copywriting for LinkedIn is generally to generate leads, while the goal of copywriting for Instagram may be to build the brand and engage followers.

To summarize, copywriting in social media is all about understanding who we want to reach and impact, “speaking” simply and objectively, unleashing creativity, telling interesting stories, and always testing and adjusting our approach to the target audience and the predominant audience in that social network.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools. Here too, the key is to grab the reader’s attention right away. This can be done with a compelling subject and a catchy first paragraph. From there, the content should be concise and to the point, with a clear CTA for action at the end.

Here we list some copywriting techniques you can put into practice to create effective email marketing campaigns:

• Create an interesting subject: the trick to increasing the open rate of an email message is to write a subject that arouses the desire to click. 

Keep a few factors in mind when selecting the subject of an email campaign:

1. Length: Research indicates that short subject lines have the best open rate. This is probably because most people read emails on their mobile devices. If the subject line of your email is long, it may look great on a computer, but mobile device users won’t see the whole story – and most likely won’t click on it.
2. Word choice: Use action verbs in your subject line. This will help subscribers understand what they should do even before they open the email.
3. Keep it personal: By using real people’s names in the “to” and “from” fields, you will get higher open rates. Email is a personal medium, so treat it that way. It’s nicer for readers to see an email in their inbox with their name, and there are automatic ways to include your subscribers’ names in every email or campaign.

• Don’t forget the text preview: when it comes to writing emails, the text preview is very similar to a tweet before Twitter increased the character limit. It had only a few characters to pique users’ interest and make them read beyond the subject line.

Source: Campaign Monitor

• Make copy a conversation with the user: email writing needs to be personal if you want it to convert. That’s the bottom line. Instead of writing to hundreds, thousands, or millions of people, imagine you are writing the email to a single person. Pretend you are talking directly to a friend or a customer. Tell him or her about the exciting things you want to tell him or her and explain what you want him or her to do. Hold a conversation.

Source: Mint

• Know your target audience: before creating an ad, it is important to know your target audience. Understand their desires, their “pains”, needs, and problems to create a message that resonates with them.
• Use words that evoke action: use action words in your ad to encourage the audience to take action. However, try to focus on CTAs that reflect more of the users’ needs and fewer actions that are too direct in a commercial sense.
• Make sure the content is relevant:  in the same “meetings that could be emails” saga, there are also emails that could be social media posts or blog articles. Whenever you consider setting up an email marketing campaign, make sure that the subject matter is relevant to those who will receive it, always keeping in mind that email is a mailbox, albeit a digital one, and no one likes to receive advertising in their inbox without some clear benefit coming with it.

“Copy is a direct conversation with the consumer.” – Shirley Polykoff

Copywriting for Ads

Advertisements are another area where copywriting can make a big difference. The key is to make the speech relevant to the target audience. This can be done with personalized messages that connect with the consumer’s wants and needs. Using storytelling techniques can also be effective in grabbing the user’s attention and making them want to know more.

• Know your target audience: before creating an ad, it is important to know your target audience. Understand their desires, their “pains”, needs, and problems to create a message that resonates with them.
• Create a clear and direct message: online ads have little time to capture the audience’s attention, so it is important to create a clear and direct message that gets to the point and shows the benefits of your product or service.
• Use words that evoke action: use action words in your ad to encourage the audience to take action. However, try to focus on CTAs that reflect more of the users’ needs and fewer actions that are too direct in a commercial sense.
• Offer a benefit: Consumers want to know what’s good for them, so it’s important to highlight the benefits of your product or service. Use words that highlight the value you are offering.

The example below is an ad from Doutor Finanças in which they chose to ask a common question to several Portuguese with the premise of an answer after the click. The goal of this ad is to capture leads by filling out a form that is inside the article to which this ad directs. In that article, they answer the question asked in the ad, creating a win-win moment, both for the user and for the company itself, in the case of a captured lead.

Source: Doutor Finanças

• Use testimonials or testimonials: testimonials from satisfied customers can be a powerful tool to persuade other consumers to do business with a brand or to unlock a purchase pending doubts. Use quotes from satisfied customers or testimonials to reinforce brand credibility.
  

  The importance of not underestimating the power of the written word

  In conclusion, it is crucial to understand that images do not work alone, especially when it comes to copywriting for marketing channels. The written word has an undeniable power of persuasion and impact, capable of creating emotional connections with the target audience. By working in conjunction with images, a copy can help create a clearer and more consistent message, reinforcing brand identity and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

  Thus, it is essential to devote time and effort to creating copy that conveys the right message for each target audience, taking into consideration the marketing channel in which it will be aired. In addition, it is important to remember that the written word has immense power and can be the key to the success of an effective marketing campaign. Investing in well-designed copywriting can be an important difference to stand out in an increasingly competitive market.

  If you have reached the end of this article and are committed to learning more about how effective Copywriting can help elevate your brand or business, be sure to also read our article “How to create an audience through copy”.