Do you know how much time gets wasted if a writer doesn't have a clear idea of what they're supposed to write? If you don’t break it down to your writer what you need them to write about, then the draft won’t match your expectations. There’s only a 10% chance it will, and that's just if you’re lucky enough to have hired a good writer, which is rare.
To make sure you get the content you want, you need to prepare a document that communicates the direction that a writer should take to write it.
Everyone in tech has a content brief for their writers, but honestly, most of them are terrible. They’re either way too focused on SEO or just too vague. The result? Generic content that’s as boring as it gets—nothing stands out. But it has the keywords! 🥳
At Zmist & Copy, we're known for creating top-quality thought leadership content. Here is our approach to writing content briefs for writers:
Our approach
Speed up the research process
On average, a content writer working at a software development company (our major customer segment) creates three pieces of content per month. Not much. That's because the topics they write about need a lot of research. Rought 60% of the writing time goes on research.
Our content brief speeds up the research process by pointing writers to relevant research papers, data reports, and examples. This helps them produce more content each month. In some cases, we’ve managed to double their output.
Explain how your product fits in
There's no point in creating content if it isn't connected to your product. This connection can be direct or indirect. Here are two examples:
Direct connection
In a content brief for the article "Is VPN Safe for Online Banking?" for VeePN – one of our clients that offers a VPN solution, we say, "Emphasize VeePN’s features that make it ideal for secure online banking" and "Add a call to action: encourage readers to consider VeePN for their security needs."
There is a direct link between this topic and our product.
Indirect connection
In a content brief for the ebook "What Smart Companies Should Know about Integrating AI" for Modeso – a Swiss software development company, we say, "For this section on hiring AI developers, it would be worth mentioning our approach: Hire external developers first to develop the solution. Once the concept proves successful, switch to an in-house team," and provide a link to the material where this approach is described.
In this case, we don't directly sell the product. Instead, we find opportunities to share knowledge about it within a relevant context to shape the desired perception.
Offer ideas for making the article unique
Not every writer will go the extra mile to create a unique piece. Many will simply copy the first three articles from Google’s search results and call it a day. That’s why we specify in the content brief how they can make the piece stand out—like interviewing subject matter experts or sharing personal stories.
We often handle the interviews for them to speed up the process and ensure the content meets our standards. For example, here’s a content brief for the article "Best AI Tools for Developers," where we've included insights from a developer survey we conducted before putting the topic on our roadmap.
Respect the writer's freedom
Our content briefs are not always brief, but they're not outlines. While we provide research papers, data reports, and examples, we don’t include suggested headers or enforce a rigid format. We give writers the freedom to write in the way they think best while staying informed and focused.
So, what does our content brief include?
- Suggested title
- Job to be done
- Goal
- Direction
- Sources
Content brief template
Click here to get a copy of our content brief template.
Suggested title
A suggested title helps the writer understand the “angle” that their content should take. This "angle" sets the tone for the content and makes it different from other articles on the same topic.
Here are some examples of suggested titles we've written – you can see the unique angle we’re aiming for in each of these pieces:
- Microservices Architecture in Banking: What’s the Fuss About?
- A Non-Boring Guide to How UX Research Is Supposed to Work
- Regression Testing in Agile: 10 Signs You’re Doing It Wrong
- Mobile Learning Design Principles: Let’s Steal From Social Media
- Conversational UI: How to Create а Brisk Human-Machine Dialogue
If you're writing SEO content, make sure your title includes the target keyword.
The suggested title should clearly communicate the core idea of your article, but feel free to get creative with it. A catchy title tells the writer, "This is going to be fun!" so they will be more motivated to write the thing.
I’ve written a guide on crafting effective blog titles: Headline Writing: The Only Formula You'll Ever Need. You can use this link as an additional resource for writers.
Job to be done
Job to be done is a more insightful way to describe your target audience than simply saying "This article is aimed at SaaS startup owners." It provides deeper context by focusing on your reader’s current situation, their problem, and their motivation for solving it.
Job to be done looks like this: [When _____ ] [I want to _____ ] [so I can _____ ].
For example: “I'm thinking about developing generative AI for my business and am trying to figure out what roles I need to hire. There's a lot of varying information and new roles emerging, which is quite confusing. I'm seeking advice from experts in this field so I can clarify my team setup."
Goal
The goal specifies what you need this content for. We always specify the goal of the piece such as "Educate businesses on the essential roles and skills required for implementing generative AI" and a marketing goal, such as "Demonstrate Flyap's expertise by sharing a practical example from past projects, positioning us as a skilled and reliable partner in AI development."
This way we tell the writer, "Remember to make a connection between the topic of this article and our product."
Direction
Direction is the meat of our content brief. Here, we give an idea of the structure of the content and what it should be about.
As I've already mentioned, we don't include suggested headers, but we do try to create a logical flow so writers can immediately grasp how different sections relate to each other.
In this part of the brief, we provide ideas for making the article unique and for mentioning the product in the right context.
Here’s what we provide:
- An idea for the intro hook
- Bullet points outlining the focus of each section
- Details on what should be included in each section and where to find the information
- Ideas for making the article unique
- Ideas for how to naturally mention the product within the right context
- A CTA guiding where the reader should go next
Sources
Here we add some helpful links with information that a writer can rely on when writing content. We rarely provide links to competing articles because some writers might interpret this as an instruction to write like them, which we try to avoid. Also, a writer is pretty capable to find competing articles on their own.
Additional requirements
Sometimes we also include additional requirements such as the need to add metadata for SEO, and some other best practices. Here is what we usually add to this section:
- Write a meta title, description, and H1 for this blog post. Include the focus keyword in the beginning.
- Add the focus keyword to the image alt tag
- Write an SEO-friendly URL that includes the focus keyword. Don't use numbers!
- Link to 1-2 authoritative sites, use do-follow tags. For more external links use no-follow tags.
- Content should always be unique.
- 1500-2000 words
That's pretty much it for the content brief!
What do writers say about our content briefs?
We once interviewed the writers we work with asking how much our content briefs help them in writing articles. Here is what they said:
