Most beginners in the vast world of content need help to choose between its most popular fields: content writing and content marketing. This difficulty stems from needing to understand the meanings, merits, and demerits of content writing compared to content marketing.

Instead of selecting a random field or course and realizing your mistake halfway, get a broad overview of both areas before you begin. This way, you can pick your desired career and prepare for the road ahead with full information. Thankfully, that’s our focus in this article, so let's begin.

What Is Content Writing?

As the name suggests, content writing refers to all the processes involved in producing marketable, engaging written content. These processes include planning, drafting, writing, editing, and publishing content online.

Depending on the writer’s specialization, the platforms could be blogs, official company websites, social media, email, etc. Professional content writers tailor the information to their platform and audience with key SEO practices that boost their reach.

Merits of Content Writing

Despite the role description above, content writing is uncomplicated if you already have a knack for words. But, besides its ease, what other merits of content writing are there, especially when compared to content marketing? Read on to see a few.

1. Wide Scope of Knowledge and Information

Unlike more streamlined professions, content writing involves developing content for clients across different industries and fields.

Exceptional content involves constant research and study of topics outside the writer’s existing scope of knowledge. Hence, most good content writers become knowledgeable about various subjects within and outside their field.

2. No Degree Required

Like several tech fields, content writing doesn’t require a formal degree or educational background.

Due to its popularity and demand, several e-learning platforms offer content writing courses, ranging from free introductory lessons to paid technical ones. So, irrespective of your educational background, you can take writing courses that pique your interest, learn, and practice immediately.

3. Greater Flexibility

Flexibility is a constant in many tech jobs, and writing is no different. In content writing, you have the luxury of choosing when, where, and how you work, not to mention the kind of writing you do.

Although content marketing is also flexible, writing has much less rigidity; you’ll have more opportunities to flex your creativity. Unlike content marketing, most content writing jobs don’t require your physical presence.

4. Less Monotonous

Content writers rarely stay at one job for extended periods due to job availability and demand. In cases where the writer decides to remain with one company, their tasks usually vary across diverse subjects.

Alternatively, you can branch into a different kind of writing when you tire of your current job description. There are opportunities for change and variety, whether it’s advertisement and copywriting, email, blog writing, or others.

5. Learning Process Is Beginner-Friendly

Starting a content writing career is straightforward and beginner-friendly; there’s no fundamental knowledge required to make progress. Once you can string words together creatively, sign up for courses to understand SEO and content structure, and you’re ready to begin.

Demerits of Content Writing

Though content writing has numerous merits, this path also has its demerits. Before diving into writing, you must understand both. Below are some demerits of content writing.

1. Requires Lots of Research

Generally, reading and writing go hand in hand; every good content writer is also an avid reader and researcher.

Despite its advantages, people tend to find researching unenjoyable, influencing the quality of content produced. Moreover, shabby research may affect the accuracy of your content, so you must be as thorough and scrupulous as possible.

2. Time-Consuming

As aforementioned, content writing requires lots of research and planning, which naturally takes up considerable time.

Besides research, other process stages, like editing and publishing, are time-consuming despite the availability of helpful AI tools. So, successful content writing demands hours on your worktable, which can be frustrating to some.

3. Cut-Throat Competition

Content writing is beginner-friendly and easy, but its simplicity attracts a crowd. As a result, until you can distinguish yourself as an excellent writer, you’ll have several competitors when applying for jobs.

Thankfully, this initial competition doesn’t affect job availability for seasoned, experienced writers.

4. Writer’s Block

Here’s the last but one of the most significant demerits of content writing–writer’s block. In simple terms, writer’s block is suddenly losing your writing ability, and it’s every bit as frustrating as it sounds.

Nonetheless, it’s often temporary, and good writers learn how to overcome writer’s block with a few easy hacks and time.

Next, let’s see a brief overview of content marketing and what it’s about.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is an aspect of marketing that involves distributing and promoting valuable content, written or in other formats, to its targeted audience. Content serves no purpose if it doesn’t reach the right destination, irrespective of its quality, and without content marketers, this becomes a possibility.

Furthermore, content marketers build relationships with their audience and ensure the marketed content yields results.

Merits of Content Marketing

Why study content marketing over content writing? This section focuses on the merits of content marketing and how being a content marketer can benefit you.

1. Wider Reach Compared to Content Writers

While content writers concentrate majorly on creating solid content, content marketers promote and distribute the content. Hence, a content marketer is more trained and has the tools to reach a larger audience than a writer. If a broader audience is your goal, then consider content marketing.

2. Career Opportunities

Content marketing has more space for career growth and diversification than content writing. Although content writers write about various fields and interests, there are more job titles or roles for content marketers.

From social media marketing to in-depth search engine optimization, content marketing allows for more places to work, gain more marketing experience, and develop your skills. Usually, this also equates to higher pay.

3. Increased Traffic and Sales

Since content marketers are specially equipped to reach more people, they’re likely to drive traffic and increase sales or revenue. For example, a good content writer can write splendid blog posts.

On the other hand, a content marketer will drive traffic to the site and increase the website’s visibility and revenue.

4. Less Competition

As opposed to content writing, content marketing is more technical. Convenient career paths are more attractive to most individuals; consequently, fewer people desire this skill, leading to fewer job contenders.

Demerits of Content Marketing

We’ve seen the merits of content marketing, but let’s discuss its demerits in detail. Here are a few demerits of content marketing that can influence your preferences.

1. Requires a Higher Level of Creativity

The bounce rate on the internet is higher than ever, and people tend to have short attention spans. Good content marketers must develop creative, unique ways of presenting content to captivate their audience.

This is a demerit of content marketing because creativity grows harder to find by the day. Considering the abundance of distractions available, only a handful of marketers can expertly command attention online.

2. More Education and Skill

Marketing, building customer relationships, and increasing site traffic demand a high level of proficiency. As such, you must undergo in-depth training and gather experience to hone your craft as a content marketer.

Of course, this demands that you put in considerable time, dedication, and effort, especially compared to content writing.

3. More Costly to Learn and Practice

Although you can get a few free courses, content marketing generally costs some money to learn.

In addition to knowing the general concept of this profession, you also need to understand how to use specific marketing tools to their fullest potential. These eventually amount to more courses, plus the best versions of most of these tools aren’t free. Some include BuzzSumo, HubSpot, and Mailchimp.

4. Difficulty in Finding Relevant Content

You need to have superb content writers and creators at your disposal to find suitable content that agrees with your tastes and vision. To combat the problem, content marketers usually have basic knowledge of content writing and how to use content creation tools. Regardless, this could also generate an extra workload.

Explore the Content Space

Understand your interests, then channel your energy into the content space that suits you best. Content writing and content marketing are excellent fields, and despite their merits and demerits, you can build a great career in either.