“If you confuse, you lose.” It’s one of those lines that sounds almost too simple, until you visit a website that manages to say very little across six pages of copy, and then you get it.
Words are everywhere in business. On your website, your press releases, your LinkedIn page, your email newsletters, your pitches. And yet, for all the time organisations spend agonising over their logo or colour palette, the words often get treated as an afterthought. Something to fill the gaps. A box to tick once the design is done.
But this is a mistake – and a very costly one at that.
Why content has been mistreated as of late
The environment we are currently operating in presents a number of challenges for content. AI tools can produce over a thousand words in a matter of seconds, and every business is publishing more content because of this.
But everything sounds the same. The buzzwords and phrases AI favours have been picked up, so when hundreds of companies describe themselves as “fast paced world “, “innovative”, “unlocking potential” or “dedicated to delivering exceptional results” – it’s obvious where it has come from.
Subconsciously, we all ignore it. We are so used to seeing this kind of language that readers have got into the habit of skimming and moving on swiftly after.
The businesses who retain interest and keep people around for longer are the ones with something worth reading. Not just something to say, but an authentic and engaging way of saying it. And that is all controlled by copywriting.
What is good copywriting?
Just because someone is literate and has a reasonable grasp of grammar doesn’t necessarily mean they can produce effective business copy.
Good copywriting is a craft. It requires an understanding of the reader – who they are, what they need, what is keeping them up at night, what’s going to resonate deep enough that they stop scrolling.
It’s about turning complex ideas and concepts into clear messages, so non-specialists can understand how or why they need your business’ help. This can come down to something as small as when to use a short sentence. And when the length of a sentence has a responsibility for keeping the reader engaged.
This is why copywriting is also strategic. Every piece of copy serves a purpose – to inform, persuade, reassure, or inspire action. A good copywriter will understand that purpose first, and work deliberately towards it without wandering off into paragraphs that don’t carry much weight.
Where this fits into PR and Marketing
The stakes around language are particularly high in public relations. We’re not just writing for websites or social media, we’re writing content for journalists and editors – people who know how to use words effectively. What we write has to persuade busy, sceptical people to pay attention and pick our content to read over someone else’s.
A poorly written press release can damage businesses credibility with the journalists who receive it. If it’s been created with AI just to get the job done, it suggests that the business doesn’t understand their readership and doesn’t really know what to say. This will end up in junk.
A well-crafted press release, on the other hand, helps out the journalist. It gives them the story, the context, the quote, the angle. It treats them as a professional and makes their job fractionally easier. This is what builds relationships, and relationships are everything in PR.
The same principle applies to thought leadership articles. Most people can have a stab at writing an opinion piece, but it takes a certain level of skill to produce something a trade editor wants to publish. They are looking for the ones that bring a fresh perspective, a counter-intuitive argument, or a piece of insight the reader hasn’t found elsewhere. Stating the obvious or rewording what others have already written isn’t likely to get your content shared.
Writing for people and for search engines
Beneath shareability lies a complex, more technical reason why copy quality is so important today. The way people find information is changing.
Search engines have always rewarded relevant, well-written content over keyword-stuffing. But with more AI-powered search tools coming through, that bar has risen further.
Large language models (or LLMs for short), when asked to recommend the best provider in a particular sector, don’t just pull information from whoever paid for an ad. They scan all the available content and pick out the parts that are authoritative, clear, credible, and well-written.
In simple terms, the quality of your copy directly affects your visibility in AI search. If your website is full of vague, generic, poorly constructed content, you won’t just fail to impress a human reader, the algorithms won’t notice you.
This is where the worlds of copywriting and PR feel increasingly important. Earned media coverage in credible publications feeds directly into AI visibility, and the content that earns coverage always comes down to the writing.
The briefing problem
Quite often we encounter businesses who know their copy needs improving but aren’t quite sure how they got to this point. The root cause isn’t usually a shortage of competent writers; it’s a lack of clarity about what the business wants to say.
Copywriters need a proper brief. What is this piece trying to achieve? Who is it for? What do we want them to think or feel or do after reading it? What makes our business genuinely different from the competition? The planning starts long before anything is typed up.
The answers to these questions will be what separates copy that sounds like every other organisation in your sector from copy that actually sounds like you.
We work with our clients to understand what they want to achieve from their writing and translate this into language that gets the response they want from their audience.
Value over volume
There is a temptation to publish, post, and share more now that content production has become so accessible. But there is such thing as overproducing content, and this will dilute your reputation if it’s poor quality.
Readers and search engines quickly learn whether content is worth their time, and if most of what is published is AI or filler, it will be ignored.
This doesn’t mean you should publish so infrequently that your channels go silent. It means being intentional about every piece and consistently producing writing that is good enough to share. It’s about writing with a purpose.
Words define your brand
Your writing isn’t the packaging of your ideas, it is your ideas. The way you write reflects how you think, how much you care about your audience receiving the right information, and how seriously you take your own reputation.
Clarity, authenticity, and craft in your writing is one of the most powerful differentiators available to you in a time where businesses are saying roughly the same thing in roughly the same way.
As a PR agency, words are everything to us. We’ve spent years writing for the audiences that matter to our clients – national journalists to trade editors to niche sector publications – and that expertise runs through all our services.
If you’d like to talk about how your content and copywriting could work harder for your business, get in touch with WorkPR. You have a great story to tell, and we’d love to help you find the right words.
