With the rise of the online content revolution in the mid-2000s, copywriting as a career exploded. Numerous financial magazines listed copywriting in their top-10 lists of careers as more and more people eschewed brick-and-mortar jobs for the comfort of generating online content from home.
And with Forester Research predicting that 2012 will see $61 billion in revenue from interactive marketing such as social networking, search engine optimization and online video, expect no lull in the demand for great copywriting.
But the landscape of copywriting is ever evolving, and 2012 saw more changes than ever in how people access and digest online content. New technologies allow for new methodologies, and it’s up to the copywriter to stay abreast of these trends in order to ensure they can continue to produce vital, attention-grabbing material. To this end, here are some current trends in the world of copywriting that are expected to continue through the coming year.
NEW MEDIUMS
For many years, online content was designed to be accessible via laptop or desktop computers. However, the rise in popularity of smartphones and tablets has completely altered the landscape. These days the Internet is in the palms of most people’s hands. The trend is now moving toward copy tailored for the smaller screens of mobile devices and even Internet TV. Apple TV is on track to become even more popular in the coming year, so look for larger print and shorter content in order to accommodate television, tablet and smartphone reading.
GOOGLE PLUS IS HERE TO STAY
As of September 2012, Google had registered 400 million users to their popular multilingual social networking site. And due to the fact that the West’s most popular search engine is incorporating Plus into all aspects of its services, don’t expect it to go away anytime soon. Because Google Plus incorporates social networking with webpage rankings, the nature of search results has effectively been changed. The fact that shared pages are more valuable through Google Plus fundamentally changes search engine optimization. Look for corporate web copy to become obsolete as organic, social networking-based copy takes its place.
VIDEO SCRIPT WRITING IN DEMAND
The importance of video content to web users has been a visible trend for some time. Video content features more and more in Internet searches thus copywriters will need to adapt. That means learning how to write effective video scripts, as video copy will feature prominently in mediums such as Internet TV in the foreseeable future.
A MOVE AWAY FROM EMAIL
The aforementioned rise in the popularity of social networking is rendering email all but obsolete. More and more people prefer to send messages via Facebook and Twitter rather than composing lengthy emails. Some people even eschew email in favor of making a phone call or sending a text. Look for major brands to further reduce their email marketing campaign budgets in the coming year.
These are just some of the trends that are currently – or have been projected to be – shaping copywriting and online marketing. Above all, writers who want to ensure steady work in the coming year need to focus on performance data. Copywriters who can keep track of such data in the form of positive client feedback and testimonials can prove their worth in the marketplace. Above all performance data shows that the work a copywriter puts out gets results. And that will be more valuable than ever future copywriting landscape.
