The ability to easily share your thoughts with the whole world while being online has led to the fact that almost everyone who likes to write considers himself at least a copywriter, and as a maximum – a writer with a capital letter.
As a result, we are drowning in an abundance of useless information, and brands are testing various approaches to copywriting in their marketing strategies in order to reach potential customers with the help of the word as well.
However, what will happen next? What are the global prospects for copywriting taking into account the current speed of technology development and what should companies and copywriters themselves begin to prepare for now?
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- Copywriting – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow & Future
- Will text content disappear?
- How Technology Is Changing Copywriting Approaches
- How Voice and Visual Search Will Affect Written Content?
- Will Approaches to Translations Be Changed?
- What New Requests Will the Video Content Provoke?
- What Will Happen to Localization in the Future?
- Should Copywriters Really Be Afraid of Losing Their Jobs?
- What Skills Do Future Copywriters Need Now?
- Benefits of Copywriting
Copywriting – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow & Future
Fifteen years ago, copywriters wrote texts for search engines. People were just starting to get acquainted with the model of online interaction with business. At that time, marketers did not know anything about personalization, email newsletters, instant messengers, and chatbots.
A more or less adequate text crammed with keywords was enough for the search engine to index pages and show the site according to the user’s request. A lower price than at the physical point of sale was enough for the user to make a purchase, at his own risk, of course.
However, today everything has changed. Today, copywriters are part of the sales team, and the word is their main tool. Modern copywriters are struggling to find a balance between SEO fullness, readable content, structuredness, accuracy and the needs of the target audience.
And here is the most important thing. Competition for reader attention is constantly growing. The number of created sites, and therefore the information with which they are filled, is increasing every day.
If before we were drowning in the noise of advertising, today we are drowning in the noise of text content, and it can be quite difficult to find real benefits among such an amount of information. Therefore, the main credo of a copywriter today is benefit and novelty.
However, what will happen next? Modern copywriters have received a powerful set of technologies for checking the text for uniqueness, literacy, ease of perception and semantic content.
All these systems are based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. But there are also opinions that very soon these algorithms will replace copywriters and learn how to do all the work for them.
Will text content disappear?
Some experts are of the opinion that text content will soon disappear. And social networks will be the first platforms that completely abandon the text and within their framework users will share videos, visual elements, and streams.
However, now there is no reason to say that technology will force us to completely abandon the text. Fortunately, words, both written and full, were and remain the main way of communication between people. There was the word in the beginning. And the word will live.
How Technology Is Changing Copywriting Approaches
The word will live, but certainly, it will live under the influence of technology. Let’s see how copywriting will change under the pressure of technological trends.
How Voice and Visual Search Will Affect Written Content?
Well, the statistics speak for themselves – already in 2020 half of the search queries will be voiced. What does it mean? This means that when making a voice request, the user will receive only one result.
For a copywriter, this means having to master the art of answering questions. Watery texts will become a thing of the past. Modern technologies and new approaches to user requests will make copywriters talk short and on business.
Moreover, they will receive only one attempt, since when searching by voice, Google gives only one most specific answer. The requests will be as specific as possible (in the language of SEO, these will be long-tail keywords voiced).
Therefore, it will be useful right now to start playing answers to questions and upgrade skills.
As for the visual search, here everything is a little easier. If a person is interested in a certain product, then this is a good sign. However, what does this mean for a copywriter?
This means that a person who, for example, wanted to find such a bag as he saw in the celebrity profile on Instagram, is already a rather warm client, and of course, he wants to know more characteristics than just appearance.
And here the copywriter will have to focus heavily on the selling description of the product – to create an attractive and readable description structure, talk about emotions and advantages, rather than technical characteristics, and create an attractive call to action.
Will Approaches to Translations Be Changed?
Of course, translation and copywriting are fundamentally different things, but it’s all about working with a word and text. Plus, sometimes a copywriter also faces the need for translation – for example, when there is a need to make a deep review and collect a maximum of relevant information, including in foreign languages.
In addition, sometimes it is necessary to quote an expert, and in this case, it is better to keep the thesis statement in its original form but explain the essence to the readers in their native language.
But if we talk about translations as such, then, of course, modern technology greatly facilitated the work of translators, and can even do part of their work.
Machine translation is becoming more literate. If we compare the quality of translation using Google Translator five years ago and now, the difference is very noticeable. The system has learned not only to correctly recognize words but also to arrange them in the correct order according to the rules of one or another language.
However, at the moment, it is impossible to get a really high-quality machine translation. This option is only suitable for quickly catching the essence of a foreign text, but cannot be considered a full-fledged result. To get a high-quality translation, the work of human translators is still necessary.
The machine still does not know how to recognize stable expressions accepted in a particular language, does not know individual linguistic constructions, and of course, cannot think artistically.
What New Requests Will the Video Content Provoke?
Video is a strong trend that will not fade. More and more brands are using this tool to deliver their marketing message, teach, cheer or solve the problem of users. However, have you ever wondered who is writing the script for the video? If this is a production video, not a real-time stream, then the script is definitely necessary.
Usually, video clips are created by entire teams of specialists, and the person responsible for the text component is also one of them. Most likely, in the near future, we will see the re-qualification of copywriters as video scriptwriters since the skill to sell with text will still be in demand. Only this text will become the script of the video clip, as well as its transcription.
What Will Happen to Localization in the Future?
Modern brands have received a huge set of technologies that enable them to develop to a global level. More and more brands are becoming global without even having a physical point of sale, and their number will only grow. Localization of language versions of sites is one of the mandatory stages of this development.
As we already said, it would be wrong to rely on machine translation, especially when it comes to localizing multilingual versions of web sites. In addition, Google recognizes this as duplicate content, which is poorly reflected in the search engine promotion of the site.
Therefore, in the future, most sites will be not only multilingual but also carefully localized to meet the needs of different target audiences. It is logical that each of the localized versions will have its own requirements for the content that will be created by copywriters and translators together.
The work of professional translators and localizers, such as the The Word Point, will not lose its relevance, and the demand for services will only grow along with the globalization of successful brands.
Should Copywriters Really Be Afraid of Losing Their Jobs?
Artificial intelligence is the most promising technology, which promises not only to solve all our problems in a good situation but also to leave someone without work and even “destroy humanity” if events do not develop according to plan.
However, this is all partly from the realm of fantasy. Artificial intelligence and machine learning will really free the labor market from professions that involve monotonous work which can be automated.
But taking away the old professions, technology will simultaneously throw a huge number of new requests onto the market.
Now let’s talk about the work of copywriters in this context. Not so long ago, an experiment was conducted, in which a professional journalist competed with a robot in writing text.
The robot coped faster and gave more statistical information, but the human article was still more lively, readable and interesting. What conclusions can be drawn from this?
At the moment, it would be wrong to say that copywriting will become a process that will be fully automated. At the moment, scientists and programmers have not found a way to sew code into the human brain, but only strive to teach AI to think like a person.
Therefore, most likely artificial intelligence algorithms will be used to more quickly work with the available information, but as for creating a unique text for people, this is still the task of copywriters.
Copywriting itself as an instrument of business promotion will also not be a thing of the past. Of course, we will see new technology-based marketing approaches, the content will be personalized as much as possible, the ways that people will look for information will determine the ways that copywriters will provide this information. However, it is too early to talk about the disappearance of the copywriter as a profession.
What Skills Do Future Copywriters Need Now?
So, as we have already found out, artificial intelligence will help copywriters to cope with routine tasks, but so far, innovation will not be able to replace them completely.
The power of copywriting as a marketing tool will not decrease either. However, being aware that a technological boom will happen soon, it makes sense to prepare a little and start to improve some skills today. And it should be precisely those skills that the machine cannot yet master.
● Creative and artistic thinking. A robot can never be creative because it will endanger humanity. The AI system can work only according to a clearly defined scenario, and nothing else. Therefore, such a skill as creative and artistic thinking remains the prerogative of human copywriters.
● Understanding human by human. AI cannot think like a human. This is the ultimate goal of its creation, but so far it has not been achieved. And when the content is created by humans and for humans, it is felt somewhere at a subconscious level.
● A lively writing style. It is possible to teach the algorithm to create texts, but it is not possible to teach this an individual style. It is impossible to teach the system to write using exactly the tone of voice that the brand needs. Yes, AI can create a text from a technical point of view, but if every brand does just that, we will get mountains of almost identical texts.
● Strong skills in creating selling text. And by analogy, just as a system cannot have an individual style, so far it cannot understand the subtleties of human psychology. And sales are just about psychology. It is possible to present the same fact in different ways – only the copywriter will be able to find the selling words, and the machine will simply provide information.
● Intuition. This is what the machine cannot be equipped with – since scientists themselves have not yet understood the whole nature of intuition. But it is precisely intuition that helps copywriters find the right words and hit the target accurately.
Benefits of Copywriting
Copywriting can help you in a number of ways, such as:
- Creating compelling content that attracts and keeps your readers engaged.
- Helping you achieve your marketing goals by attracting more website traffic and leads.
- Boosting your brand awareness and creating positive word of mouth.
- Enhancing your online presence by creating attractive and user-friendly web pages.
Brief Сonclusion
The oral speech was given to humanity at the time of its creation by the universe itself or by nature if you like. Written speech has become a human asset, and today’s technology is changing the formats of our communication, both among ourselves and with business.
The word and copywriting will also be transformed under the influence of innovations, copywriters and translators will have to reconsider their skills and learn to get along with smart systems, but working with text will not lose its significance as part of a marketing strategy.
And in the near future, this will still be the process “from person to person”, using the best technologies, of course.