Small Business Design Resources

The Differences Between a Proofreader and a Copywriter: Who to Hire and When

Many people do not know the difference between a proofreader and a copywriter. It’s no surprise, because their roles in writing are similar and easy to confuse. If your small business needs assistance with writing in any form, whether it be blogging, newsletters, eBooks and so on, it’s best to know which of the two you should contact. Though similar, they both offer very different skills.

A Copywriter is someone you contact during the early stages of your writing project. Their goals are to help you create. If you were writing an eBook or even a novel, they would help you make it publishable. A copywriter would offer creative advice to help you make the best finished product. Think of them as a mentor to lead you towards your goal of a great piece of writing. If you want to incorporate pictures or other visuals into your writing, a copywriter would be able to tell you the best places to put them, as well as help you choose which pictures would look best. They can also be helpful in telling you what content is best left out of a blog, book, newsletter and so on.  You can work with a copywriter, together creating the finished product you’re looking for or you can opt to let them work their magic and create the entire piece for you.

A Proofreader provides the finishing touches to your writing. Their only intentions are to make the product free of spelling and grammatical errors. They have no interest in the style or the flow. So if you need help in the actual creation process, a proofer is not going to be choice for you. They are very important in the world of words, but the skills needed are less than a copywriter, so it is usually considerably cheaper to hire a proofreader.

Does your website’s blog need the creative touch of a copywriter? Does your eNewsletter require a second set of eyes to proof it before sending it to your clients? Outsourcing to experts is a great way to improve your small business design and achieve positive results with your website writings. It’s okay to be too busy with your business to worry about the finishing touches of your blog, let someone else handle the dirty work for you!

Catch Their Eye with Attention Grabbing Headlines

How important are attention grabbing headlines? Believe it or not, they can cost you a sale. If you don’t think you have what it takes to create titles for your blogs or website articles, you’re wrong! Here are a couple great ideas you can use to make sure you have attention grabbing headlines that will produce results.

Speedy Results
People want to read information on topics they’re interested in quickly. If you’ve created a document that fits the description of a quick read, title it as such. Giving your blog post a headline like Learn How to _____ Fast or Quick Way to Fix ______ temps your time-crunched audience to read on.

Personalize
Use phrases in your headline that your target audience can relate to. Incorporate names of famous people or places, or even add a personal touch they can recognize and appreciate. Some examples would be:

• Learn to Knit Like Your Grandmother
• How to Make Authentic Parisian Coffee
• Easy-to-do Red Carpet Hairstyles

Whatever formula you use to develop attention grabbing headlines to use as part of your small business design, you should never assume that a generic title is simply good enough. You need to add a creative twist to make sure your article stands out in a website search engine against pages of other content. Keep your headlines short, clever and true to the article in question. You may think “If I don’t name my article or blog “XYZ” then it won’t show up in search results as well. You can implement plenty of keywords and phrases in the content without making your title suffer a dull name. The Search Engine Optimization of the article has very little to do with just the wording in the headline. If you continue to have difficulties developing attention grabbing headlines for your website, you can always consider the help of a copywriter.

Quick Tip: Do Keyword Research Before you Write your Website Content

Before you or your copywriter creates content for your website be sure to do your keyword search. Having the keywords ready before you write your website content will save you time and make it easier to optimize your content for search engines. Here are the best SEO keyword research tools to get you started.