Make It Beautiful: The Formula for Preparing Understandable Content Brief

Quality is essential if a website or a blog is to enjoy a loyal audience yearning for more, let alone attract new readers. Additionally, it goes a long way in boosting search engine rankings crucial to reaching a wider readership or target audience. Therefore, if you plan to develop a unique website or blog that captivates an extensive readership base, it is crucial to tell copywriters what is expected of them from the word go. Therefore, a content brief or technical task (TT) is an important document to prepare.

What is a content brief?

A content brief is a detailed guide that provides requirements and recommendations and directs writers as they create content. Some of the information in a content brief include the topic and title of the content to be made, subtopics, the word count, and the keywords to use.

The content brief can also provide in-depth information about the target audience and the desired goals. Therefore, a guideline keeps the writer in check regarding their responsibilities as part of the project.

Content brief templates detail editorial direction and content strategy to ensure the final piece is well-written and can drive SEO results on search engines.

Who creates a content brief?

A content team that can comprise of marketing managers, SEO strategists, clients, and content managers who create a content brief. By formulating a technical task, content strategists or content managers can paint a picture of what is expected, leaving the writers with less questions or uncertainty.

Content brief vs. creative brief: what's the difference?

While content brief and creative brief share many similarities, they are different. A content brief outlines the guidelines writers must follow to develop quality content. On the other hand, a creative brief outlines the innovative approach of a big project.

A creative brief does not apply to one deliverable. Instead, it covers creative and brand requirements from the landing page on the website to social media posts and video production. It also details all the deliverables or new work as part of a marketing or advertising campaign. The brief summarizes a design project's mission goals and the challenges it will likely experience. Content briefs are more commonly used for projects like blog posts or whitepapers.

Why are content briefs so important?

Increase consistency

A content brief guides copywriters into producing content that is beyond reproof, addresses the underlying needs, and is aimed to captivate the target audience.

Ensure delivery deadlines

A content brief ensures the project manager and writer read from the same page. The fact that it explains the expected content ensures the writer does not stray to other matters but focuses on producing timely and desired content.

Save time and money

A quality content writing brief template allows writers to produce content that incorporates everything and aligns with content marketing strategy. Consequently, it helps save time by avoiding back and forth with edits or rewrites that can be costly.

Prevent rewrites

A content brief helps organize all the researched ideas and keywords, ensuring writers get everything on the final piece. Therefore, the risk of writers going off-topic or failing to add important information, which could lead to a rewrite, is significantly averted.

Include all the critical information

The well-articulated guidelines and requirements help break the overall task into manageable parts that the copywriters can easily follow. It will also clarify the general context of what is expected in the final piece or work.

Strengthen content marketing

A detailed task brief allows writers to create awesome content that aligns with the goals of a specific campaign and the content marketing strategy. In this case, all the points and relevant keywords will be incorporated, thus ensuring the final piece is aligned with the marketing strategy.

Improve search rankings

Creating an SEO content brief ensures writers generate content that targets a specific search query, enhancing the prospects of ranking higher on search engines. The task brief contains all the target keywords for higher ranking on search engines.

Grove content teams

A content brief will ensure alignment when working on a much bigger project requiring a team of writers. Every writer will work on what is expected of them while focusing on a specific goal.

Provide a clear direction and fast approval

A brief project template is essential when working on a project that involves more than one person. It helps provide clear direction by ensuring everyone is aligned to deliver content that meets set goals and targets. In addition, the teams following the set-out guidelines ensure fast approval without much editing.

When should you use content briefs?

An SEO strategist or content manager should use content briefs whenever:

• You are struggling to scale the content production on writers taking too long to produce content
• You are working on content alone and want to organize your ideas, research, and include all the necessary keywords to make sure you don't miss anything or waste time writing the wrong content
• You are working on a project that involves more than one person to ensure everyone is aligned

How to write a perfect content brief?

Project goal

The first step to creating a content brief entails defining the project goal. The task brief template should clearly depict what is expected of the writers. Therefore, it should articulate what the final piece should address depending on the target market or readership base. It should also detail what readers ought to learn from the topic.

Client guidelines

While preparing a strategic content brief template, make it known from the word to the writing style the writers should adhere to. For example, specify whether the article should be single-spaced or double-spaced when it comes to formatting. In addition, let it know the font and size that writers should resort to and whether the first line of the paragraph should be indented. Finally, the task brief should affirm the recommended word count and the delivery deadline.

The content brief should insist on a specific brand voice that should be used in the article. Depending on the target audience, make it known if it will be conversational or technical. It should also include where to hyperlink text in the article and the kind of links to use. The content brief should also provide links to resources that act as a style guide.

It would be best to give guidelines on the relevant visuals, such as images and videos, to use in the article to enhance SEO standing.

All in all, the guidelines in the content brief should be straightforward for writers to understand and implement to generate the desired piece easily.

Brief details/Synopsis

The more information you provide about what is expected, the better. Therefore, while preparing a content strategy brief template, one can include two to three sentences that allows writers to understand what is expected of them in the article. Sharing examples of previous work can also shed more light and direct writers to generate quality articles.

Search intent

The only way a blog or website can have a more effective content strategy is by producing content that aligns with the target audience's needs. Understanding readers' needs through search intent can help writers create relevant content. Consequently, the content will rank higher on search results.

SEO

While preparing a SEO content brief template, it is vital to have a topic focus in mind that writers can research to write relevant content. If you don't have one in mind, you can always explore your audience to find their biggest pain points. Quora, reviews, and Google's most-asked questions are perfect platforms for generating focus topics. Content ideation tools can also help generate hot topics that rank higher on SEO.

For an article to rank higher against competing articles, writers should be advised to prepare an appropriate SEO-optimized meta description and meta title. The two should include the primary keywords as they are part of the HTML code that search engines use to understand and rank a web page.

As part of the SEO strategy, the content brief should contain links that can be used to link the final piece to other website pages and authoritative sites. Linking is crucial as it helps build connections to relevant articles. It also helps search engines understand how to place an article during ranking. Writers should be advised against linking competitor sites or unreliable sources. Additionally, you can provide the writers with a list of stock image websites from which they can select the most relevant images to use with the article to help boost its SEO ratings. Some websites that can be used to generate relevant visuals include Patay and Shutterstock.

CTA (call-to-action)

A call to action is a marketing ploy that prompts readers to do something after reading the piece. In most cases, it has links to sales or other activities that can potentially convert or benefit the readers. Therefore, writers should use the right words on CTA to inspire the readers to take action. It should be catchy and persuasive to keep readers yearning for more. The call to action can also contain a link that directs the readers to other parts of the website or relevant articles.

Tone of voice

Depending on the target audience or readership base, writers should be encouraged to maintain a given tone of voice. For example, when preparing content for kids, the writing style and the choice of words should be simple to understand yet conversational. On the other hand, while addressing a mature or technical base, the writers should incorporate keywords relevant to appear to the professionals. In the content brief, make it known who the audience is and how you want the brand to appeal to them. In this case, you can furnish the writers with previous examples written to target a specific audience for the writers to get a feel of the tone.

Estimated word count

The word count helps writers plan the subtopics and how in-depth they will be in each section. Word count is crucial as it is one of the aspects that search engines look at when comparing articles within the same niche or topic.

List internal/external links to be added

Adding internal and external links is vital, improving its SEO rating while enhancing the article's integrity. Internal links help visitors and search engines better understand a website's structure. They enable website owners to let their visitors know what pages are most important. For example, the top-level categories in website navigation (About Us, Contact Us, Products, Services) tell readers and search engines what website owners consider the most important content. Those links closest to the top of the hierarchy are naturally considered more critical when writing content. External links, as the name suggests, refer to an external website frequently used to site smth as a source of information, offer additional content to the reader, and provide proof of the information. It helps readers find answers to additional questions shedding more light on your topic. As a result, more trust and traffic.

Provide examples of articles

Providing examples of articles covering the same topic helps set the benchmark writers would be working towards beating. In addition, the examples will shed more light on the structure of the article and the kind of sub-topics that writers can work on to try and make the final piece as unique as possible. While plagiarism, copying, and spinning are unacceptable, the content brief should clarify that the maples are only an overview.

Add information/topics/subtopics to be covered

Depending on the questions the content needs to answer, sharing topics and subtopics helps writers stick to the subject matter and produce good content. A content designer should conduct in-depth research on the topic or subject matter while looking at competitor's words. In most cases, the content brief includes subheadings that make it unique. The use of subheadings within the article helps readers scan the article to find what they are looking for. It also helps the search engine understand the content, increasing rankings.

Things to remember while preparing a technical task

Focus on the audience

While preparing the guidelines for technical writing, always have the audience or readership base in mind. Therefore, any instructions given to the copywriter should be tailored to address the needs of the underlying base.

Topics and keywords selection

Any topics or keywords selected should resonate well with the audience and elicit the much-needed interest that keeps them returning for more. The idea is to explore the nitty gritty and what makes them tick and incorporate it into the instructions.

Captivate readers at the start

While preparing a technical task, copywriters should be reminded that important messages must appear at the beginning to capture the audience's attention. They must also stick to small, grammatically correct, and well-structured sentences. It keeps the readers motivated to continue reading instead of immediately logging out or closing the page.

Make it simple

Using simple and short words that pass the correct message is also vital. The use of jargon that requires readers to look for dictionaries should be avoided. Additionally, copywriters should be reminded to avoid using meaningless words or idioms.

Summary

A detailed content brief that is easy to read and understand will help a copywriter prepare a masterpiece that quickly passes the intended ideas to the target audience. Spending time on an effective content brief saves frustration by enhancing the prospects of getting what you hope for the first time as part of a content marketing strategy.