Written by Bob McClain, Web Copywriting Expert

The days of a website being a static brochure on the Internet are long gone. They are now platforms for blogs, video, images, advertising, forums, articles, white papers and various other forms of social media.

Today, you need to be competent in a wide range of writing styles and methods. For instance, I have a client who is a dentist. So far I’ve written all his website copy, Wrote an e-book for him to give away, written 4 magazine ads (he just asked for a fifth), written 2 radio ads, wrote a video script and the voice-over, and I’m writing blog posts and doing blog commenting for him.

As the Internet gets more “media diverse”, you’re going to have to be able and willing to explore all types of copywriting or find yourself left out in the cold.

Let me give you an example from my own past…

Before I became a copywriter, I was a draftsman for 19 years. When I started out in the business, everything was being drawn on paper or vellum with mechanical pencils or ink. The Big Three automakers were using computers for design but they were using $25,000 to $30,000 Silicon Graphics workstations and software programs that cost as much as the workstations.

Very few people in the drafting industry ever thought pens and pencils and paper would ever go away for the small design and drafting firms.

The day the earth moved…

Then one day, the word went out from General Motors. Any engineering firm that wanted to continue doing subcontracting work for GM needed to switch to all computer-aided-design drafting.

People made fortunes overnight in Detroit selling computer systems and drafting software to all the small engineering firms in the area. Trainers in CAD were in such demand that they could literally write their own ticket.

And those of us on the drafting board had a decision to make. Would we continue fighting for the fewer and fewer jobs where they still used board drafters or go out and get the training? I watched a lot of older guys refuse to learn CAD. They either retired or moved into other areas.

Don’t get left behind…

And so you need to make the same decision. Businesses are going to expect a lot more of their website copywriters than just the ability to write good sales copy for web pages. Start learning. Start reading. And start practicing. Your own website is a good place to start.

Start a blog. Start using social media. Start blog commenting. Create some videos and PowerPoint Presentations. Start podcasting. And learn everything you can about link building and search engine optimization. It will all be expected of you and it’s much easier to learn it now than after a client asks, “Can you do this?”