In my recent ‘Call yourself a copywriter post?‘ I questioned whether the pure and simple title ‘copywriter‘ was being devalued by the copy mills and the SEO drive to force feed the interweb with fodder copy. Could it be possible to sidestep the low-rent pay per word perception and reclaim the business high ground for real value adding copywriters? Copywriters who as well as making money for clients through the words they write also contribute to the conceptualisation, the research, the planning and the enactment of a copy led online marketing plan. A supercharged copywriter. A copywriter plus.

A content strategist?

I’ve been doing a little digging around and have come up with some brilliantly insightful content strategy debate – For example, a hot of the press Content Strategists : what do they do? blog post by Dan Zambonini and a Kristina Halvorson post entitled Content Strategy is in fact, the next big thing in which she shows that Content Strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago.

Tamsin Hemingray at icrossing writes a great web editor Vs content strategist article and there is a splendid discussion on Lauren Pope’s What’s the Difference between a Content Strategist and a Web Editor? Posterous blog, also well worth a read.

Has social media and the need for link destinations of genuine worth really shown up a lack of strategy, a lack of quality content and delivered creatives a great new opportunity? It would seem so, with copywriting agencies increasingly focusing energy on delivering specialist content strategy.

Halvorson says: “Most companies can’t sustain social media engagement because they lack the internal editorial infrastructure to support it.

They don’t have a content strategy.

It’s not that this hasn’t been a problem for years. It’s simply that social media has made the problem more obvious (and more public) than ever before,”

Isn’t this the perfect opportunity for creatives, for copywriters, for copy content strategists to step up to the plate?

As I commented on the Zambonini post:

Really interesting stuff Dan, thanks.

Anything to differentiate what us “added value” copywriting types do from the pure spider food content mills. In that respect I see a shift in approach on our side. In order to impress upon clients the importance of quality content and a more strategic approach the term content strategist might have an important role to play.

Complementing existing skills by strengthening IA, tech and analytical know how would seem the obvious way forward.

As Tamsin Hemingray said in a post : “It feels to me that over the last 15 years there has been an ongoing process where we’ve all been working to create websites that look nice, that are sensibly organised, that are really easy to use, that are easy to find, and now we’re finally considering building websites that have stuff on them that people want and like.”

UK copywriting : Manchester copywriting and content strategy.

Make sense?

Is this business evolution or are we in danger of taking our eye off the specialist copywriter ball?