You’re under a deadline and you’ve got to get some copy to your website designer to prepare for the launch of your new product. You want it to be great — it’s going to introduce customers to all the useful features your widget has so they’re sure they want to buy.

And you need some copywriting help.

You have no time to try to find someone to hire, and you have a friend who has offered to help you, but he’s a technical writer. Hmmm.

He says he can do it, but isn’t tech writing all that dry, boring stuff you read when you buy a new gadget? Insert here, tighten there, drag that menu. Besides, he’s your friend so if you don’t like it, you’ll have to either hurt his feelings or go with it, even if it’s not what you wanted. And you’ve read a lot of really bad documentation, so you’re not all that impressed with technical writers anyway.

Well, here’s the deal. Just because you got a manual with your new HDTV doesn’t mean that a trained tech writer wrote it — in fact, a lot of documentation is written by engineers, not writers. That’s management’s fault, so don’t blame the manual.

The fact is, your friend probably is up for the job. Trained tech writers use many of the same techniques that copywriters do — they just use them for a different purpose: to help someone perform a task rather than to sell someone something. And the type of writing required for each has a lot in common. Let’s see how:

Where They Align

Understand your reader.

The first thing a tech writer does is to analyze the user. What information does she have when she starts to use the product? What does she know already, and what is she likely to need to know? Does she need conceptual information, or is she past that, and just needs directions? How can you help her solve her problem?

Business copywriters do the same thing: first, they analyze the customer. What does he need? What problem can you help him solve? Where is that customer in the pipeline? What does he know already about your industry or your product in particular, and what is he seeking to know?

Focus on your reader’s problem, not the features of your product.

Once you know where your reader is coming from, you are in a good position to understand what problem he has that you can solve. A tech writer knows how important it is to dig around and find out where the user is in the learning process. And most importantly: what task is he trying to accomplish?

There’s an adage in the tech writing industry: write task-based documentation, not feature-based. A task-based manual addresses how to perform a task (change the color of some text, for instance), rather than describing the feature (the Format menu includes a range of tools to format your text). See the difference? If you’re reading bad documentation, it’s likely written by an engineer who is proud of all the features she’s managed to squeeze into a small package, and so she wants to list them all.

So it is with copywriting. A good copywriter speaks directly to your potential customer about the problem he needs to solve, and how your product solves it for him – focusing on the benefits of your product, rather than on its features.

Write colloquially and simply.

A professional tech writer speaks directly his reader: “To change the font of your text, select the Format menu, choose Text, and then Font Color.” The wrong way to write this would be something like “If a user wants to change the color of text, he can do so in the Format menu, where he would choose Font Color from the Text menu.”

To the copywriter, writing colloquially and simply is paramount. You want your potential customers to easily read and quickly understand what your product can do to solve their problem. Using words like “utilize” instead of “use” just creates unnecessary jumble and turns your reader off.

The tech writer would agree.

Make the content easily scannable.

Online copy must be easy on the eyes and quickly scannable, and a tech writer ensures that this is so. This means using sub-heads that are easily visible, bullet points to sum up items, and numbered lists for clarification.

Add short sentences and lots of space on the page to provide an airier feel, and you’ll be operating like either a tech writer or a copywriter.

Fact check everything.

Neither a copywriter nor a tech writer worth their proverbial salt would ever allow any prose past their desk that had not been rigorously fact-checked and referenced where necessary.

Where They Collide

Okay, they are not entirely similar.

A copywriter wants to produce persuasive copy, copy that understands human psychology and includes an effective “call to action” to help turn a reader into a customer.

A tech writer doesn’t know what “persuasion” means — it’s all about the facts, ma’am, accompanied by a fastidious attention to detail and accuracy, backed by solid research.

The upshot:

If you can find a tech writer also trained as a copywriter, you’ll get the best of both worlds.