An inter­est­ing debate is rag­ing among copy­writ­ers and con­tent devel­op­ers about the dif­fer­ences, if any, between writ­ing copy for the web ver­sus writ­ing content.

Pro­lific copy­writer Nick Usborne con­ducted a sur­vey with his newslet­ter read­ers to dis­cover how many among them are copy­writ­ers, and how many are con­tent writers.

The result was split three ways: one-​​third copy­writ­ers, one-​​third con­tent writ­ers, and the final third both.

Actual titles aside, I think the results may be mis­lead­ing. Rea­son is, I believe all online copy is con­tent but not all con­tent is copy. Try­ing to dis­tin­guish the two is a problem.

Most web design­ers, web­mas­ters, and con­tent writ­ers develop text for web­sites in a way to edu­cate vis­i­tors. They hold the notion that “con­tent is king,” “con­tent increases search engine rank­ings,” “con­tent makes a web­site sticky,” and so on. That’s all fine and good.

But I believe con­tent fails when it strives only at inform­ing the reader, and thus lacks impor­tant ele­ments that take her “by the hand” and com­pels her to do some­thing — any­thing, includ­ing the sim­ple act of read­ing the con­tent in the first place.

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A few things to note today:

1. I love Word­Press so much, that I decided to con­vert my band’s web­site into a blog. (I’m not done yet. More web­sites to fol­low!) You see, it’s not really to use as a blog but as a con­tent deliv­ery system.

Why? Because the results (such as search engine rank­ings, the stam­pede of instant traf­fic using blog soft­ware, and par­tic­u­larly WordPress’s many plu­g­ins) are absolutely astonishing.

Go ahed and check it out Fortin​Drums​.com. (There’s a free video demo there, too. You’ll see yours truly ban­gin’ on them drums in the background.)

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