Content briefs are a crucial part of any content marketing strategy. Discover content briefs help companies achieve their content goals with ease.

All successful businesses know the importance of having a great content strategy in place. Written content has the power to engage consumers more deeply than other types of content, which makes it a supremely effective marketing tool.

Regardless of your role in your business’s content marketing strategy, you’ve likely encountered a few first drafts that feel short of your expectations. That is precisely why content briefs are the most crucial part of any content strategy.

Writers may complete a first draft with perfect form and grammar yet fail to meet the client’s needs or expectations. Therefore, the first draft requires lengthy revisions, draining precious time and resources that could be better served elsewhere in the company. But you can avoid major content overhauls entirely by providing writers from the start exactly how you want content created and formatted—with detailed content briefs.

Content briefs contain a detailed set of instructions and guidelines for writers. This information enables writers to have a clear understanding of what is expected before ever even writing an introductory paragraph.

Content briefs usually include the main topic, article objectives, target audience, keywords, and a structured outline of the subtopics the writer is expected to cover.

With the guidance of content briefs, writers have a direct path for producing content that fits a company’s writing standards and achieves specific business goals. Even the best writers rely on detailed content briefs to effectively communicate with their target audiences.

In this article, you will discover what to include in your content briefs as well as how content briefs benefit the overall company’s content goals.

Benefits of Content Briefs

Saves Time and Production Costs

Writing high-quality content takes time, as it is a uniquely tailored creative process for the writer.

As content briefs have already set guidelines for the writer to follow, they no longer need to spend time thinking about how to structure their word limit. The writer can focus on seamlessly tying all of their ideas together and ensuring the piece resonates with the target audience. In turn, the content editor can also edit, send it back for a round of revisions, or approve the article that much faster. If the writer was able to adequately reflect the content brief specifics in the article, then no changes may need to be made at all!

Content briefs streamline the writing process, sparing production costs in both time and money.

With content briefs, writers don’t need to constantly revise and re-revise content and editors better know how to provide proper, highly-effective feedback. This ultimately impacts your overall content strategy in a positive manner—as well as for your client’s satisfaction because you are more likely to meet delivery deadlines.

Fewer Rewrites and Revisions

In today’s day and age, anything can mean everything and everything can mean anything. Providing your writer with just a general topic or keyword is not enough. Being even a little bit vague runs the risk of misguiding writers, as they may take a completely different perspective from your plans if they don’t understand exactly what you’re going for from the start.

Furthermore, even if they do understand the end goal, the desired company voice and tone can be lost without providing content briefs. Providing writers with detailed content briefs eliminates any guesswork and writers are more likely to get the content right the first time around.

To reiterate, content briefs provide writers a clear direction—while still allowing them the creative autonomy to connect the dots. Writers get to see the subtopic points meant to be emphasized, which significantly streamlines the overall time required for the content creation process.

With all the right information in tow, writers can consistently produce better content that aims to meet specific business goals.

Better Organic Web Traffic Results

Each piece of written content has a specific article goal. For you to achieve the article goal, there must be a plan laid out.

Content briefs are developed during the planning and research processes because it is during these stages that information is collected.

For example, if the content goal is to boost traffic to your website from search engines, you must have an SEO specialist involved. By optimizing your content for the search engines, you can boost rankings for your webpage to better reach more people. Your SEO specialist can provide you with the right keywords, data, and formatting for your written content to perform best on the web.

As search engines get smarter, SEO requirements have become more complex. In the oversaturated digital sphere, quality content just isn’t enough. Content needs to be paired with a well-developed SEO strategy that is relayed in your content briefs. SEO specialists can provide content writers with accurate search data and user intent analysis, which should guide their writing.

Content briefs are the way to go, especially if you are working with multiple content writers and need traffic-boosting content.

Provides a Centralized Source of Information for the Entire Content Team

Producing high-quality written content does not rest on the responsibility of writers alone. To effectively execute a successful content strategy, a skilled content marketing team is required.

You must also ensure the flow of work between team members is as smooth and seamless. Providing content teams with content briefs helps them be agile. They will have a single reference point, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Writers, content managers, editors, and other team members will experience a smoother, more efficient workflow. This is particularly important for teams with members working remotely.

Remote work allows teams to work from all parts of the globe. While hybrid workforces already existed before 2020, the coronavirus pandemic undoubtedly increased their presence. Though technology keeps teams connected around the clock, communication still needs to be smooth to ensure the work gets done—properly and timely. Content briefs help in facilitating this, and they are especially beneficial for hybrid workforces with remote teams.

What to Include in a Content Brief

Content briefs can be intimidating to create, and require a considerable amount of research before they are useful.

And when constructed correctly can be incredibly effective at helping a business achieve its goals and improving the way a content marketing team works.

Here are the most important elements of what to include in content briefs:

Content Goal

What is the main goal of the article? Is it meant to inform readers, entertain, or simply provide a listicle of tips and tricks? The content goal should be concise and measurable. Regardless of what the content goal is, it must be communicated to the entire content team via content briefs.

The content goal will also serve as the general direction of the written piece. For example, if the goal is to drive website traffic, you must more on specific keywords to warrant higher rankings on the search engines. Factors like this need to be considered when determining your overall content goals.

Target Keywords

The target keywords give writers a central idea of what the content should be focused on as the main topic. These will also serve as an anchor point for your readers, as keywords are often what the audience would type into the search engines.

Target keywords are especially important when it comes to SEO. Having high-traffic keywords in your written content can drive more people to it in the digital space and allow it to rank higher on the search engines.

Subtopics

Subheadings help content become more easily digestible. They also better enable your writers to craft well-flowing pieces, as they connect introductions to body paragraphs and so on. From your piece’s introduction to its conclusion, the subheadings make it easier for your writers to come up with content to write. It also helps your target audience interpret the logical flow of the article, so they can truly understand the content from start to finish.

Questions to Answer

What do you want your target audience to know? The questions to answer add more meat to your content while providing your audience with valuable knowledge. Adding them to your content briefs will also provide your writers with writing prompts to further flesh out their assigned topic.

Brand Voice and Tone

The personality of the company is showcased through the voice and tone of the content. Does the company wish to portray a professional tone, or something more fun and casual?

The voice and tone, of course, depend on your target audience. As such, you must conduct research on your target audience’s preferences, so you know what would best resonate with them.

And including the target market information in the content briefs is imperative because even if the piece is well-written and SEO-friendly—it means nothing if the intended audience is unable to connect with it.

Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach? Your team needs to know exactly who you are speaking to as this is the first step to communicating more effectively. Your writers can adjust their writing style to your target audience’s preferences, which will help your content be more well-received.

The content team may even craft a customer persona. By researching your target audience, you can create a customer persona that will help you better understand how to connect with your customers.

Resources

Providing the content team with competitor websites or existing published content that is similar to what they are writing about is also helpful to include in your content briefs.

Resource links direct the content team back to already existing content to gain inspiration and new ideas.

This allows the content team to confirm their research, and to see what parts of the content can be expanded on or modified. They may even also find studies or additional research that will support their findings.

Drive SEO Results With Content Briefs By WriteForMe

Content briefs are a vital part of any content marketing strategy as they make the content delivery process more efficient.

Well-developed content briefs help content teams achieve goals and produce content that resonates with the intended audience.

Partner with WriteForMe today for your content marketing strategy and receive detailed content briefs to help ensure your content meets your business goals.