Content Briefs 101: What They Are And Why They Matter

A few months ago, I was in an interview for a writing position. The interviewer asked me if I had ever created content without having a content brief.

I said I had. The interviewer mentioned that if I was chosen for the role, I might have to create content without a brief. In my head, alarm bells were ringing loudly. Having a content brief is a best practice for writing in an organization, whether it’s a small non-profit or a multinational company.

A content brief serves as the instructions to the writer for how to create a given piece of content. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss what they are and why you need one.

What’s a Content Brief?

Think of a content brief as a recipe for writing content.

You wouldn’t bake a cake unless you had a recipe. The recipe tells you the ingredients you need, how many servings the cake will yield, and the baking time. The same holds true of content.

A writer needs to know what kind of content they’ll be writing—a blog post, an eBook, a report, emails, technical documentation—and who the audience is. They need to know if there’s a specific message they need to convey or particular points they need to cover. They need to know if there are any calls-to-action. And they need to know the deadline.

Why Writers Need Content Briefs

Let’s go back to the story I shared at the beginning. Why did alarm bells ring when the interviewer told me I might need to create content without a brief?

A content brief isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity. You wouldn’t bake a cake without a recipe, and you can’t create effective content without a brief.

Yes, I have been in situations where I’ve had to work without a content brief. Those situations were frustrating, and it took much longer to write than it would have if I had simply received a brief at the outset.

Without a brief, the writer is left to guess about important things like word count, target persona, and deadlines. When I was in a situation where I didn’t have a brief, I had to email the contact at the organization and ask for those details. It wasted my time and theirs.

Editors and Reviewers Need Content Briefs, Too

You might be in a situation where other people are reviewing content. Maybe it’s an editor, maybe it’s a colleague who’s a stakeholder. Those people need a content brief, so they understand what the content is about and whether it covers the points you wanted the writer to make.

Without a content brief, the editor or reviewer can’t do much more than correct the content for grammar and spelling. They won’t know if the writer has followed instructions.

Content Briefs Are a Content Creation Process Best Practice

“I don’t have time to write a content brief,” you say. “I need to get this article/blog post/email out the door yesterday.”

Trust me, it will take you much less time to write a content brief than it will to go back and forth with the writer about what you want, edit something that might not be up to snuff, and then ask the writer to rewrite it.

Content briefs are a best practice in the content creation process. However, having a content brief isn’t enough. In the next blog post, I’ll talk about what you need to include in a content brief for it to be useful for writers, editors, and reviewers.