Content Writing VS Content Marketing — What’s the difference?

“You may be good at something but doing something else completely. That is how much both domains are differentiable. Don’t believe it? Check this out; you’ll know!”

The content industry as a whole has many sectors underneath. Content writing and content marketing are the two such sectors in the industry. Those who know the differences between the two are mostly found to be related to the two niche sectors, while others will find it hard to differentiate them correctly. In this blog, we will clear this whole “Content writing vs Content marketing” confusion. Let’s dive deep into the world of these content niches and understand them better.

Key Differences in Purpose

Although content writers’ and marketers’ jobs revolve around content, the reasons behind their work are entirely different. Let’s look at these sectors’ intent and job profiles.

Purpose of Content Writing

Content writing is a wide subject, and compelling written content is just one aspect. For example, A complete blog or article contains engrossing text, beautiful images, smartly presented infographics, and videos. Content writers’ job is to carry out this process and optimize the content to make it SERP-friendly in all ways to maximize reach.

There are numerous domains in Content writing vs content marketing domains, such as technical content writing, e-book writing, whitepaper creation, report writing, etc. However, the main intent is to create purpose-specific ideal content. If you see different pieces of content on our website, Content Whale, you will get better clarity on how content varies for different requirements.

The main objective of a content writer is to deliver the content as per the requirement. The objective is mostly based on the intent of the client. Here is a list of a few intents or purposes for content writing requirements:

• Inform.
• Express
• Answer
• Question
• Guide
• Educate
• Entertain
• Attract
• Compel and more

Purpose of Content Marketing

The purpose of content writing vs content marketing purpose is different. It is to generate new qualified leads by developing, publishing, and marketing content. Content marketers do a complete study of the different types of content they post online. They analyze user behavior and content performance in terms of engagement, reach, and overall popularity, whether positive or negative.

Content marketing jobs require a content marketer to develop a content marketing strategy, execute it, and, finally, performance analysis. It’s a holistic process involving various organizational processes while keeping the objective at the center.

When we talk about the advantages of content writing vs content marketing advantages, we can see that content marketing has numerous advantages. It enhances your brand’s value and authority and boosts organic traffic, differentiating it from full-on digital marketing, which also involves deploying your financial resources toward generating traffic. However, attracting new clients could be the content marketer’s sole intent, but it is not to be portrayed as that. Keeping the target audience in mind, here is the list of different intents of content marketing:

• Customer acquisition:
• Content creation, although not necessarily
• Postings on different platforms
• Analyze on reception
• Customer engagement:
• Analyzing content behavior
• Create CTAs for engagement
• Maximize engagement
• Customer retention:
• Regular content posting
• Enhancing content quality
• Stay relevant to the market

Given the discussion on “Content writing vs content marketing”, intent or purpose is one of the important aspects of understanding the differences.

Difference in roles

Major differences exist regarding content writers’ and content marketers’ roles and responsibilities. One’s creative, while the other is technical. Here’s more on how they’re different.

Role of Content Writers

When understanding roles in Content writing vs content marketing roles, content writing caters to various requirements, but most importantly, its roles involve content creation for a certain objective, and pretty much that is all. It’s all about the client’s needs by strategizing and curating content in various forms, such as:

• Articles
• Blogs
• Landing pages
• Emailers
• Newsletters
• Social media content
• Case studies
• E-books, and
• Ad copies

Role of content marketers

As mentioned before, a simpler process of content writing vs content marketing holistic process involves all other departments sharing a common goal of business growth. Content marketers’ roles and responsibilities consist of formulating content marketing strategy as per the marketing requirements, execution, performance analysis, and continuous enhancement. It also requires them to generate leads by maximizing engagement and monitoring customer retention rates.

Here’s a listicle of roles & responsibilities involved in developing an effective content marketing strategy:

• Curating content marketing techniques
• Promoting content
• Analyzing traffic
• Tracking leads
• Researching downloads
• Generating views
• Targeting new audiences
• Distributing content.

You can view our content marketing services to know more.

Differences in the process

When we talk about processes involved in content writing vs content marketing processes, we can see dynamic changes, objective changes, and domain changes. Let’s study both of their processes to understand them in detail.

Processes involved in content writing

• Analyzing customer requirements.
• Planning and strategizing content based on those requirements.
• Deep research for the latest and accurate data.
• Curating quality content checking client’s attribute requirements such as tone, voice, language, personality, etc.
• Editing, proofreading & polishing content for finalization.

Processes involved in content marketing

• Create a content marketing strategy according to the objectives.
• Developing a content base for the strategy.
• Publish content on different platforms.
• Analyze performance in terms of engagement, reach and lead generation.
• Monitor performance and continually enhance marketing plan.

Depending on the niche, you can realize huge differences in content writing vs content marketing in terms of the processes involved, which showcases how much they are related and yet so much different from each other from an objective point of view.

Differences in skills required

A career choice between both niches can be difficult to grasp regarding what skills you have and what you need to acquire. You shall point out the merits of content writing vs content marketing merits. The job responsibilities require various levels of competence, and these jobs have distinct educational requirements and skill sets.

Skills Required for Content Writing

Content writing is an ingenious field requiring writers to have industry expertise and unparalleled writing skills. Our writers’ skill set is one reason Content Whale can provide quality content in an exceptional turnaround time. However, if you want to know the skills required to be a good content writer, below is the list:

• Good writing
• Command over the language
• Researching skills
• Linguistic skills
• Literary knowledge
• Subject matter expertise
• Creativity
• Brevity
• Planning & Strategizing
• Editing
• Proofreading
• SEO optimization
• Checking for plagiarism and more.

Skills required for Content Marketing

Skills required in content writing vs content marketing skills is a deep topic of discussion. Content marketing is more of a technical job requiring a technical understanding of statistics and figures. Unlike content writers, who typically come from a literary background, educational qualifications for content marketers typically include a degree in marketing.

Content marketers must be familiar with various marketing tools and softwares, allowing them to find statistics and create a content marketing strategy accordingly.

Here are some major skills that content marketers need to possess:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing strategy formulation
• Content writing
• Digital Marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Social Media Management
• Automation tools
• Data Analysis
• Google Ads

You may have noticed that content marketing contains the skill set of content writing. However, generally in a standard KPI, content writing skillset is only required to have an overview and clear understanding of the content you should use for your marketing strategy.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Now that we are much more aware of the key differentiating factors on the “Content writing vs content marketing” subject matter, let’s see what their KPIs are:

KPIs of a Content Writer

• The total number of words written.
• Number of articles published.
• Writing error-free content.
• Writing plagiarism-free content.
• Writing style.
• Client satisfaction.

KPIs of a Content Marketer

• Traffic on the generated content.
• The number of leads.
• The total number of conversions.
• Number of followers and retention rate.
• Page reviews.
• Engagement metrics such as the number of reviews, comments, and shares.
• Search engine rankings.

Content Marketing’s dependence on Content Writing

In this blog, we understood the whole discussion on “Content writing vs content marketing” in detail. However broad and differentiated both niches are, it must be noted that content marketing is highly dependent on content writing for an efficient content marketing strategy to work by providing noteworthy content which can secure the desired goal.

A poorly optimized content, however marketed, will not weave the required results until and unless refined to an appropriate level of competency. At the very least, it must be SEO-optimized using white hat practices only. A good piece of content shall contain relevant information, presented engrossingly with visual content such as infographics. Content marketers can generate high organic traffic using such content.

Content marketers and writers shall work together to develop strategies that achieve optimum results.

Bonus Tips

Tips for Content Writers

• Persuasive content will influence consumers according to the objective of writing that content.
• In addition to providing information for your objective, add CTAs to captivate your audience.
• As per the constraints such as word limit, tonality, etc., content must be comprehensible, engaging, and provide utility to the consumer.
• There is a difference in persuasion in content writing vs content marketing persuasion methods. Convincing a content consumer to become a customer requires a certain amount of expertise. Capitalize on the content writing tools such as webpages, advertisements, e-mail, landing pages, and your creativity.

Tips for Content Marketers

• Assess your resources.
• Conduct in-depth keyword research.
• Conduct a content assessment.
• Create an editorial calendar.
• Focus on content promotion rather than just creation.
• Monitor your progress.
• Make necessary changes that follow the rest.

Conclusion

As the topic “content writing vs content marketing” is coming to an end, please note the differences and hope you have understood the key differences.

Content marketers manage the entire process, from creating a content marketing strategy to execution to monitoring. As stated earlier, content marketing is a holistic approach; here is a good example -

Depending on the size of the operations, content marketers work with content strategists who perform competitive analysis, market analysis, and keyword research to maximize the results while minimizing efforts, thus, increasing efficiency.

It is common for content marketers as well as content writers to have profound knowledge of SEO, which benefits the creation of every unique content marketing strategy for different types of requirements.

In relatively smaller firms, a content marketer has to develop, execute, and monitor content strategies all by himself. In huge organizations, work can be delegated in a hierarchical order which shall increase efficiency depending on the team’s clarity on the objective of a particular strategy.

And if we talk about strategies involved with content writing vs content marketing strategies, content writers must integrate strategies developed by content marketers in their content creation activities. They are the ones who curate content on topics and keywords provided by content marketers.

They have literary knowledge, good command over a language, and expertise in particular industries but usually lack technical data analysis.

They’re excellent at curating different types of quality content. Content writers possess excellent skills even to write over 2000 to 3000 words of content per day, something which cannot be integrated into content marketers’ KPI. These were some of the major points in understanding the topic of content writing vs content marketing.

Businesses with a limited workforce usually have a single person performing all these functions, which could be one of the reasons why content writing vs content marketing is a topic of confusion. Businesses also need to understand that both are relatively different fields, even though they fall under the same umbrella.

Content Whale is an agency that understands the importance of delegating the right job to the right individual. That is why we have many expert writers to provide premium quality content in less than 48 hours. We are committed to writing and producing notable content, serving businesses for exponential growth.

If you are looking for professional Content Writing or Content Marketing agency, Content Whale is one of the leading providers of such services. The services provided are internationally acclaimed as we curate premium content at exceptionally affordable prices for businesses in 20+ countries. You can see our portfolio and reviews from our different clients. You can reach out to us through the “contact us” form for the best rates or check our basic estimated rates through the price calculator.