Content Brief on computer screen illustration.
Sep 23, 2020 | Content Marketing

What is a Content Brief?

As we work with our clients to grow the overall number of organic keywords their websites are ranking for, in addition to targeting new keywords, we always focus on writing quality content for their blogs. In most situations, we are either supplying blog topics and keywords to the client’s team of writers, or we are working directly with our copywriters to write content for our clients.

In either case, to successfully work with the copywriters, we must clearly communicate exactly what we are looking for the writer to write. This is why we will always supply the writer with a content brief.

Let’s discuss what a content brief is and how you can create a content brief for a copywriter you are working with.

What is a Content Brief?

A content brief is a document that contains all the information a copywriter will need in order to successfully deliver the blog or article you are asking them to write.

In its most basic form, a content brief includes:

  • Blog Topic or Title
  • SEO Recommendations
    • Organic keywords w/ search volume & keyword difficulty
    • Internal links
    • SEO tags
  • Post Outline
    • Bullet out what each paragraph will focus on
    • Questions to answer within the post
  • Word Count
  • Target Audience
  • Example Posts or Competition

Importance of a Content Brief

A content brief is a necessary way to communicate what you need from a copywriter and they should always include as much information as possible. I’d even venture to say that it is a red flag if a writer you are working with does not ask for some sort of content brief or direction. Although many writers may have their own interpretation or idea of what they’d like to write about when given a certain topic, our goal is to rank for targeted keywords that will increase our organic traffic and revenue.

This is why we include very specific target or focus keywords when we put our content briefs together. The keyword section of the brief is arguably the most important section because our blog posts revolve around 2 to 3 target keywords that we’ve identified as a good opportunity.

When we research keywords for our blog posts and content briefs, we look for low difficulty keywords, with high search volume. This gives us the best chance of ranking the post for the focus keywords because the keywords we are targeting are identified as keywords with little or no competition.

To Sum It All Up

Content briefs help agencies, individuals, or marketing professionals clearly communicate their needs to a copywriter. Content briefs include all necessary information a copywriter might need to successfully write a blog post, like the topic, keywords, an outline of the paragraphs, word count, and more.

If you have a question about content briefs that were not answered above, or you’d like to work with our team on creating content briefs for your blog posts, feel free to reach out by filling out a free consultation form.

Ricky Weiss
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