‘must-haves’ of a content brief 🖋

As publishing high-quality and targeted content becomes more and more important due to this ''over-volume'' happening lately, I decided to put together some brief points that might help you frame your next content request. First and foremost, the brief needs to clearly explain the goal or the intent of the content. This could be increasing the leads, increasing brand awareness, etc. Or all together! In other words, the expected action of a reader needs to be explained precisely. This needs to be supported with a CTA (a.k.a Call to Action) which tells your audience what to do. Then, the a very important step is to specify the persona/target audience as it indicates the direction of the content and clarifies whom we are talking to Also, it would be great to include the point of view that you want the content writer to work from. This means that the personal pronoun and the tone of voice need to be written appropriately. These will clarify how you are talking to your target audience. Of course, the title that you want (if it is a blog post) accompanied by primary and secondary keywords. If you have more technical knowledge you can also mention the intensity of the keywords but generally, it is advised to use them in a natural manner. Including some information regarding your brand is also essential in order to make sure that the writer has enough knowledge about your business. Plus, some samples could be a great addition. Some people think that mentioning samples of competitors could misguide the content writer but on the contrary, those can make them sure that they don’t forget some important considerations and professional writers can use these to their advantage. This means they can fill in the gaps not mentioned in the specific samples. It would be beneficial to include some words that contradict your brand or with the brand’s values in general to avoid any possible revisions but this is a nice to have rather that a must. Do you have any other tips for the briefs? Please share and let’s extend the list all together