A Basic Content Brief Guide

Writing a brief for your content writers is the most important part of the role as a client. The content brief tells your agency, freelancer, content writer exactly what your requirements are. We thought it’d be cool to write down what we think makes a great content brief.

A good brief should provide your content writers with all the necessary information required to meet your requirements.

Your Brief Should:

Specify the intended audience
> This determines the tone of “voice” used.
> The demographic the tone is aimed at would be different for 60’s plus compared to teenagers!




Purpose of the content / Objectives
> Inform? Persuade? Or Entertain?
> Again, like the demographic issues, the content has a baring on the style of language used.




Styling the piece
> Formal or Informal?
> This determines the language used, sentence structure and grammar.




Include Links
> Link-Building is great when working with content
> Building links is awesome, but where and why are the links being built? Relevant links for research purposes?




Keywords
> What keywords go with the page?
> Every piece of content has a keyword behind it that the article aims to rank for. What keywords do you want your article to rank for?




Metrics / Measurements
> How will you measure the success of the content?
> If you’re in a long term relationship with your content writer, how will you measure the success of the content, a/b testing?

Sample Brief

A leading search agency based in Newcastle requires a re-write of their web-page content. It should detail their new content management system offer. The agency requires 350 words of similar style and tone to the existing page: http://example.com/content-management-system/.

The purpose of the web-page is to inform users of their new content management features and the services the agency offers. Whilst encouraging them to a new free-trail.

Whilst appearing to be highly knowledgeable the piece must be informal and chatty. It is therefore appreciated for the writer to be familiar of the subject.

The agency has already implemented call-to-actions and links to other pages on the web-page which contain relevant information.

Attach Supporting Documents

It’s pleasant to send supporting documents and images for the content writer.

Hope this helps when you next write a content brief and Good Luck.