Briefs are short, 2-page documents mapping out your expectations from a project, clarifying its scope, and setting the nitty-gritty details like project deadline and scope. So you’ve heard. But the question is: how to write a brief for freelance writers?
Try as they might, scientists haven’t been able to engineer mind reading devices. So you really can’t expect writers to know what you need beforehand. And if you don’t clarify, you’re at risk of getting a copy that doesn’t meet your expectations, leading to an unwelcome round of edits and time waste.
This is where a brief comes in handy. It helps you measure twice and cut once.
Considering the role that briefs play, this post address all things related to creating focused briefs for working with freelance writers. We’ll talk about what a content brief is, how do you create a brief, and what makes a good creative brief and why it is important.
I’ll also throw in some templates (starting here) that you can download and start using instantly.
Let’s roll:
What is a brief?
A brief is a concise, focused outline of the project at hand. Or, as the Founder of Early Stage Marketing and Head of Marketing at Bonsai, Madhav Bhandari, puts it, “a guiding light.”
Madhav, who I talked to learn about his process of creating briefs sees this guideline as a way to communicate a write-up’s goals and structure to the writer.
So you bet you’d need to add details like the summary of the content piece, it’s objectives, deadline, and scope to a brief. More on what you need to add to a content brief in a bit.
What is the purpose of a brief?
When you first work with a freelance writer, you’re basically navigating through a rocky, dark terrain. You need to light the path as you go. Makes sense why Madhav sees the brief as a “guiding light,” doesn’t it?
The writer has the tools necessary for helping you reach the destination. But the writer doesn’t know your destination. Do you want him to talk you to the north end or head west?
This is where a brief’s purpose emerges:
- It’s the map that explains the project details and gives forward direction to the writer.
- It’s the guideline that you and the writer can visit, revisit, and revisit yet again to ensure the content process is taking the right direction.
- And finally, as the writer submits the copy, you can refer to the brief to see if the piece has met all the outlined expectations.
If you’re working with multiple writers, a brief’s purpose raises to the elite-class level. The document helps you track each project’s requirements, scope, deadlines, and other details.
In short, a brief’s purpose is to chalk out the path for a content piece. Considering its prestigious role, the brief appears to be an important document, doesn’t it? It sure is. Let’s look at its importance next. On we go.
Why is a brief important?
Have you have been in a situation like this one before?
You: I need a piece on SEO.
Writer: Sure, what do you want the piece to focus on? Link-building? Guest posting? Off-page SEO?
You: Write on anything. Just make sure it’s comprehensive.
A few days later, you get your write-up, but it doesn’t turn out to be what you expected. It doesn’t share the basics of SEO. Instead, it talks about blogger outreach. But you wanted a guide on SEO for beginners.
What now? *head-scratch*
Should you blame the writer? Ask for a rewrite? Or alter the post yourself?
Essentially, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. You weren’t clear about what you wanted in the first place. What you needed was a content brief that navigated the content creation process from start to end.
So, let’s round up the importance of a brief in a few points:
- A brief is important to manage expectations by setting up a clear project scope and schedule
- It helps ensure your content is all on-brand and authentic to your business. Say you’re working with multiple freelance writers – how can you ensure they are all on the same page? By sharing a brief
- The document clears any confusion so your writer has all the answers before he sits toiling over her keyboard or notepad
- It clips the odds of unnecessary work in the editing process and subsequent time waste
- It results in the creation of accurate, on-point content that hits the mark
In short:
“It [a brief] helps set the expectations correctly with the writer so they know exactly what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and what’s our goal from it. With that context, people can write the kind of articles we want,” – Madhav
So what can you do to create a good brief? Read on to learn about the four elements of a good brief before we dive into a brief’s format.
Elements of a creative brief
When you sit to create a brief, it is common to find yourself asking, ‘what makes a good creative brief?’
Here’s your answer:
- It’s focused: It’s to-the-point so it’s easy to understand and delivers your expectations clearly
- It’s clear: It enlists what you want without complicating things
- It’s concise: It doesn’t restrict the writer but gives sufficient direction
- It’s complete: It covers everything from the objectives of the content piece to the delivery format
What’s the right brief format you need to adopt?
Now that you know you need to create a focused, clear, concise brief, let’s talk about what is a complete brief.
It makes sense to say that a complete brief is one that includes all the project details. But which details?
Here’s what a good brief should include:
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Your objectives
What’s your goal with the piece? Do you want it to rank for a certain keyword? Or do you want to provide actionable tips to your readers?
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Scope of your project
Here’s where you set the boundaries of the project. What do you expect the draft to include? Will you need multiple edits or one round?
Who will edit or proofread and approve the work? Make sure you clarify how many people will go through the file and how long it will take you to get back to the writer with edits. What’s the agreed deadline?
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Summary of what you’re looking for
Be very specific here, but don’t limit your writer. Certain people prefer sharing their target keywords and expect the writer to work on headlines alongside the content. If you think that’s how your brief should look, check out this in-depth SEO brief template. Plus, a simpler version.
On the flip side, you can share briefs that contain an entire post’s outline.
A third option is to give bullet points of what you want using a checklist-style brief template.
Irrespective of what you choose, work with outlines. These help set expectations and minimize the need for edits. For instance, I prefer sending clients a rough outline before writing the draft. This helps give direction to the piece. Any needless sections can be removed then and there.
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Target audience
It’s also essential you share who your target audience is with the writer. This way, he/she is at a better place to write for your audience.
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Language
Are there are specific words or phrases the writer should avoid? Do you prefer American English? Do you prefer the oxford comma? All these intricacies should be clear beforehand to prevent the need for fruitless edits.
Alternatively, save yourself the trouble of adding these details, and share your content style guide (another must-have content production asset).
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Tone of voice
Do you prefer a casual, laid back voice? Or do you keep things professional but friendly? If you’ve separate notes on your brand voice – add them
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Content delivery format
It’s also important you highlight how you expect to receive the content. Will it be in a Google doc? Or do you prefer Microsoft Word?
A word of caution: Make sure you don’t ask the writer to upload content in your CMS as a delivery format. This takes time and is, therefore, chargeable.
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Visuals
Don’t forget to share who is responsible for visuals. Actionable content is incomplete without screenshots that writers, typically, add themselves. If you’re okay with external graphics, make sure you add a note for the writer to add the source to the image used.
One more thing – writers are best at writing, so you need a separate graphic team. However, clarify in advance if you need the writer to add comments for your designer within the content.
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Resources
Highlight the resources you’d expect from the writer and which ones you will be providing. Let’s say you’re doing customer success stories with a writer – in this case you’re responsible for sharing details of the customer, what they have achieved, their contact details should you want the writer to interview them, and so on.
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Competitor info
Let’s also not forget you need to highlight your competitors in your brief. Some of my clients specify they don’t want me to take any research or stats from their competitors. Others don’t have any such rules. Either way, this needs to be in the brief.
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Fees, rights, schedule
Lastly, dish out details related to the payment, payment procedure, timing, etc. Don’t forget to answer the following – What is the mutually agreed timeline? How much is the agreed pay? How will you pay? Who is going to bear the transfer fees? Is the work bylined or ghostwritten? For the latter, make sure you know the writer or sign an NDA to keep things confidential.
That’s a lot of things to add in your brief. But this doesn’t mean you write a novel-length brief, which brings us to our next question:
How long should a brief be?
A brief can be as short as a few bullet points or as go on to share details in 1-2 pages. Maximum 3 pages.
Duncan Milne writing in the Content Marketing Institute lays out the perfect plan. He elaborates,
“Describe the who and the why, but do not prescribe the how” because the ‘how’ is the writers’ job.”
Madhav also factors in your content’s need to explain how he prepares briefs. For instance, he shares examples of two content types – content for SEO and thought leadership pieces.
For SEO-optimized posts, Madhav details,
“My briefs can be as small as [sharing] the SEO keyword we want to target, what the potential title of the content piece could be, just a rough content structure – 4 or 5 sentence structure about how we can structure this content piece and then some examples (some great pieces of content) for that topic to take an inspiration from.”
(Psst! You’ll find this template useful here)
But his briefs for thought leadership content are entirely different. Those have less to do with keywords and structure explanation and with what they talk about. To meet this demand, Madhav focuses on outlining. He goes on to explain,
“I can write together a brief outline of a piece. Let’s say, create a video for 5-10 minutes talking about my experience about a particular topic, so the writer can take bits of it and then convert it into an article.”
So you know what you’ve got to do.
Cover all the necessary points to set up expectations and project scope without limiting your writer. This shouldn’t take more than 2-3 pages.
Any longer than that and you can bet the recipient would cringe while reading it (or maybe even skim read it only).
Wrapping it up
Writing briefs isn’t rocket science. You just need to be specific about your goal and what you expect the content piece to be like. Better yet, start with setting a time as Madhav suggests. Then, put down all the details in your brief template.
For your convenience, here are all the templates I shared in this post:
Feel free to drop me a message if you’ve any other questions about working with freelance writers.