How do you write an Effective Content Brief for a business?

A content brief is a document that defines the scope of work and provides guidelines for content creation. It is usually created to ensure consistency in the quality of content, to create a uniform tone and style, and to keep all stakeholders in the loop.

A well-written content brief is essential for any business looking to create or maintain successful online marketing campaigns. It will help you stay on track with your goals by providing a clear understanding of what you want from your content, how much time you have, what your budget is, who your audience is, and how they consume information.

Here we have listed a few things to help you make an Effective Content Brief for a business.

Intent and Keywords

A company’s communication goals, target audience, and preferred method are all described in depth in a content brief. Before writing content, it is crucial for a content writer to determine the keywords and the brief’s purpose.

Knowing what keywords or search terms you are going to use, as well as the purpose of the piece, is the first step in writing any article. If you want an article to cover the subject the way you want it to, both of these things must be made apparent to the writer from the outset.

Anyone familiar with SEO will appreciate the significance of keywords, so let us start there. Finding significant keywords is by doing keyword research. Keyword research is the process of collecting data. It assists you in identifying keywords that are more commonly used by Google users and lead to your business objectives, such as conversions, or sales. You need to know what specific keywords are ranked that are relevant to the products and services that your page has to offer.

It is very important to know at what stage the user is in, whether the user is in the informational stage or transactional stage. You have to know their search intent for you to serve relevant and valuable content or articles to the user. We aim to satisfy the needs of our reader, and also satisfy your business goals.

This is one of the most crucial on-page SEO criteria, if not the most crucial. You must give some guidance regarding the article’s purpose after choosing the keywords, which will also influence the title. Therefore, the more guidance you can give readers on the article’s purpose, the better.

Format and Structure

It is favorable to establish a post’s structure to ensure that the client receives a very particular end product that will be comparable to top-ranking articles that have already been published, even though not all freelance writers, or internal writers necessarily need one. A strong organization makes it easier to give the reader a thorough, and knowledgeable response to their query. The reader should be able to follow it easily, and understand how it makes sense. In certain cases, analyzing what the competitor is doing is the quickest approach to deciding what topics to cover.

Topics and Subtopics

Giving a writer the core keyword provides them a rough sense of the article, but it still leaves a lot of the content, intent, and direction, up to change. Some, or all, of the subtopics, or subheadings, you want to be covered in the essay, should be included in your brief.

If you are unsure of what subtopics to add, use Google to find out what suggestions are made for your term on the search results page (SERPs). Google provides extremely pertinent queries and topics when searching for ideas. Any of these ideas from the “People also ask” area directly under the snippet, and the “Related searches” section at the bottom of the results page is ideal for SEO.

Make CTAs clear

A prompt instruction or other invitation for a user to do some desired action is known as a call-to-action (CTA) in marketing. CTAs typically have a direct connection to sales, another action that will lead to a conversion, or some way you may gain from the reader.

The ideal method to write a call-to-action that feels natural, and will have a far greater click-through rate, is to integrate it into the context of the post, as it is being written. The writer can plan and consider how they can organically incorporate CTAs into the content by writing in their brief what they want their CTAs to be, and where they want them in the piece.

Target Audience

In sales and marketing, persona creation is a frequent activity. A sales representative can better satisfy the needs of a customer, and improve conversion rates, when they have a clear grasp of who they are selling to.

The process of developing content is the same. The message of the article and the language used can be better tailored to appeal to the target audience if the author is aware of who they are writing for. Use of appropriate language for the reader’s age or the relevant industry jargon can make the difference between a reader clicking a CTA or hitting the back button.

You can develop an audience persona to assist your writer in understanding the target audience. This is essentially a profile and representation of a “person” that stands in for your audience.

You do not have to go into specifics, a brief description of your target audience’s demographics, frequent problems, level of education, and other information that you believe is important, might serve as an audience persona.

Length Of The Article

The word count cannot be left up for debate. Before they begin, writers need to know how lengthy their articles will be. You can use this to determine each segment’s subtopics and detail level. This is fantastic if you are familiar with the subject and understand how many words should be used. The best approach is to look at the word counts of the articles that are performing the best for your keyword, if you are unsure of the word count to aim for.

If you are going to explore the subject in depth, it should not be too difficult for a writer to generate a somewhat longer piece than is already ranking.

Competitive Research

Setting a standard for the writer to surpass by providing examples of articles written by rivals that cover the same subject as yours. It is unacceptable to duplicate, plagiarize, spin, or do anything else that involves utilizing another author’s content. You should not have to inform the author of this. However, if it is your first time working with someone, you might want to make it clear that they are merely illustrative examples.

SEO Cheat Sheet

You should tick all the on-page SEO boxes if you are releasing your material online to ensure that it ranks as highly as possible. Remember that the majority of writers are not SEOs. Some of the recommended practices will be familiar to them, but many on-page optimizations are arbitrary.

If you want the writer to create an article optimized the way you would do it, you will need to give them a cheat sheet for how you optimize your articles.

Conclusion

If you want a writer to produce an article that comes the closest to exactly what you are looking for, creating a solid content brief is crucial. Making a content brief may seem challenging and time-consuming, but it is not. Most of the content in your brief can be standardized over time. All that has to be changed are a few details unique to each piece.

The bottom line is that by assisting the writer in getting the text correct the first time, you will save time, money, and a lot of irritation on all the parties involved.

Please feel free to provide your thoughts and comments on this article based on your experience.
Reach out if you are looking for support with implementing the right SEO practices for your business.

Email: personalisation@iamhelium.com.au
Contact Number: +61 2-8114-4496