Do you need qualifications to be a copywriter?
I always check the ‘who’s looked at your profile’ bit on LinkedIn whenever I get a new view. Perhaps a small part of me craves that little serotonin hit of a new notification. I usually pop up when people search for a freelance copywriter, but I keep turning up in searches for graduates.
While yes, I am a graduate, I finished studying back in 2009. And my degree and subsequent post-graduate diploma (it’s like an MA, but, like, half an MA?) have almost nothing to do with what I do now. My qualifications are in journalism, which might go to the same party as copywriting but will staunchly hover in opposite corners of the room, one investigating the buffet and the other eavesdropping on everyone else. I’ll leave you to decide which is which.
This got me thinking. Do you really need qualifications to do the job you do? Or can practical experience outweigh booksmarts? There’s only one way to find out…
Experience vs. qualifications: round one
Ding ding! In the blue corner, we’ve got experience. Strengthened by once being weak, experience is fueled by past mistakes turned glories, and awful email errors including the classic “please see attached” but, oh no - there’s no attachment! Whack!
And in the red corner, we’ve got qualifications. Rippling with research and as many adjectives as can be crammed into a single essay, qualifications are for the lucky, dedicated lifelong learners. What’s this? Qualifications is staggering under its own weighty brain! Pow!
Seconds out, round two. Although...maybe a fight isn’t the right way to look at this.
Being the right blend
Maybe the best position to be in is the one that you’ve created through your own blend of work experience and qualifications. And I’m not just talking about university - that’s just my age, my demographic, and the “Education, education, education” message speaking, although that actually went more like: “Education, top up fees, 2008 recession.” Qualifications can be courses you’ve attended, certifications, industry learning, online workshops, webinars - you name it.
And if you don’t have a bunch of qualifications, proof of education, grades or swimming certificates, it really doesn’t matter. Not once since 2009 has any employer asked to see my degree results, and I believe that’s because qualifications just aren’t an accurate reflection of your capabilities. For me, experience beats qualifications hands-down. The best thing you can do is learn your trade, read widely and practice relentlessly. There are TONS of books to read on copywriting, and so far the best ones I’ve found are:
Persuasive Copywriting by Andy Maslen
Copywriting by Mark Shaw
Survival Skills for Freelancers by Sarah Townsend (not exclusively about writing, and incredibly useful for all freelancers)
Copywriting Is… by Andrew Boulton
Is all work experience useful?
I don’t see why not. As for me, I have half a decade of almost completely irrelevant work experience. I used to manage a well-known high street cosmetics store. The one you can smell from 3 streets away. Yes, you get used to the smell, yes, it looks like cheese, and no, you can’t eat that. Years later, that mantra still lives in my head.
Being in a totally different industry for a long time gave me not only my first career, but my first hit on the transferable skills punchbag. I’m not a bad accountant now, thanks to running my own store. And I can delegate like a mofo, which sadly now is just me delegating to myself. Hey me, get the kettle on! The main skill I took with me after leaving retail is customer service. I pride myself on clear communication and building solid relationships with every client, every time.
Having worked agency-side and in-house before going freelance, I think all writing work experience is vital. Working on different projects with different clients, a great variety of tones of voice and the actual finished product being - you guess it - different, has been a huge help in shaping my writing skills and experience. I’ve written news features, articles, vox pops, newsletters, playbooks, handbooks, blogs, website copy, microcopy, ad copy, instructional copy, English-as-a-second-language copy, plain English copy, tone of voice work… The list goes on. And as far as topics goes, I’ve come across my fair share. My writing career has included writing about:
Delicatessen (and I’m a veggie)
Life insurance about death
Am I die-hard expert on any of those topics? Not really. But gathering materials, reading around the topics and making page after page after page of research notes, doing interviews and immersing myself in tone of voice guides means I’ve got a pretty good knowledge of lots of different - and sometimes obscure - topics. So yes, all work experience is useful! The fact that I took a writing-focused degree is kind of only the beginning. I write for fun, too - possibly I’m a sadist - and typing away all day and some of the night is where you’ll normally find me. Unless I’m playing chase with my dog and a squeaky rubber pig, because she’s pretty good at making me take screen breaks. With each project, you’ll learn something new about your own writing techniques, styles and preferences. Experience can only ever grow and become more useful.
How much is enough writing experience?
This is like that woodchuck thing. If you can write, then you should write, plentifully and often. There’s no such thing as enough writing experience: it’s a muscle that needs training and stretching with different exercises. I will often sit down with a notebook and write thoughts by hand, because using a pen feels like it speaks to a different bit of my brain than typing. And I work on different projects, like my book or blog, to keep the neurons firing in different directions. To beat the terrible cliché, I do sometimes get shower inspiration, but more often than not the solution to a tricky headline or call to action will seep into my brain while I’m writing something totally unrelated. The only way to be a writer is to write. You can’t edit a blank page.
So… what should I study to become a copywriter?
Here is my parting thought: study if you want to. Sorry that’s not more inspiring. Anything to do with language or communication will set you up for success in copywriting, but the real point is that you’ve just gotta write. Accept that a lot of your early work will be bum-clenchingly awful when you read it back, and just keep going. Your own voice is in there - often hidden under a lot of crap ideas and the things you think you should be saying - so keep digging until you find it. Dig dig dig, like a goblin in a mine seeking shiny gems. Save all your crap work - even the stuff that makes you cringe your face off - because it could be useful one day. By writing badly, you can only ever improve. Plus you get to look back over old work and have a good chuckle at how earnest you were.
If you want to talk about how good copy can help your business, find out more about the services I offer, or just chat about goblins in a mine, get in touch with me. I promise I’m not as weird as I sound.