content brief

The Art Of Giving A Content Brief

Everything under the sun about giving a good content brief

By Abhishek Shridhar, Co-founder, Not Your Idea

A content brief is like a compass that points a writer in the ‘write’ direction. With the brief missing, creative executions are pretty much taking shots in the dark. To shine a light on what is expected from the writer, put enough thought and work into outlining a meticulous brief. It’s what helps build the foundations on which a brand’s key messaging lies. Read on and find out how you can go about establishing an irrevocable modus operandi to create an effective Content Brief.

5 Aspects To Include In Your Content Brief

A good content brief is a comprehensive document that contains vital information about the brand’s purpose, ethos, objective, and much more. It essentially captures the essence of the brand. It also serves a bigger purpose of getting the writer on the same page to better accomplish the brand’s objectives through content.

Before I dig deeper, just bear in mind that this brief structure does have room to incorporate any additional nuggets of information. Depending on the format or medium of content, your brief could include additional elements. However, these are the 5 commandments that you abide by come rain, hail, or shine!

Brand Introduction And Mission

To begin with, you can start by giving out a concise overview of what the brand is, what they value along with the short and long-term goals they aim to achieve. This overview should clearly communicate the brand’s purpose. While wrapping this section, keep it brief and ask yourself if it gives readers clarity on:

A) What does the brand do?

B) What impact does the brand wish to create?

Why Are You Creating This Content?

Ask yourself once and ask yourself again. Why, oh why!? is this content being created? It certainly is one of those questions to never stop asking till you work out the answer for it in your brief. Leave no stone unturned in providing your answer.

You can ask yourself, the following questions to frame this section:

• What is the brand trying to achieve with this piece of content?
• What are the key messages that you want to communicate with this piece of content?
• What’s the end goal of the content piece — to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales?
• What do you want the reader to take away from this article? (Be as specific as possible about what you want to achieve. This will help writers get some general sense of the direction to take and then be able to steer their content accordingly.)

Target Audience

If asked to put it simply then the target audience is groups of people who show the most interest in a brand’s product, service, or just the larger industry it is a part of. When you plan content briefs, it’s extremely important to go above and beyond to define the attributes of the target audience for the writer to do justice to the brand.

Here are a few questions that can help you determine the target audience:

• Which age bracket does your ideal target audience fall into?
• What’s the demography of your target audience?
• Which gender is your brand geared towards?
• Where does your target audience live?
• How does your target audience perceive the industry your brand is in?
• What are some of the challenges your target audience faces?

When defining the target audience you must explain their behavioral patterns, psyche, interests, needs, and a myriad of other factors. Dig in as deep as you can to define the target audience so your content writer knows who they are writing for and can create messaging that appeals to the brand’s audience. Don’t part ways with this section until you believe your writer can now develop some kind of telepathy with the target audience.

Understanding The Difference Between Customer And Consumer

Another key aspect to take into consideration is the distinction between a customer and a consumer. It matters that you clarify the differentiation between the two if any, so as to pull back the layers of your audience.

Take, for example, a kid’s cycle brand. In this case, you know that the parent is the customer and the child, a consumer. By clarifying this additional layer of an audience, you pave the way for your writer to personalize their messaging and create the desired impact for the brand.

To communicate your brand’s messaging in an effective way you must define your brand tone and language in the content brief

Brand Language And Tone Of Voice

The next aspect to include in your brief is certain guidelines to establish your brand’s tone of voice and maintain homogeneity across the board. It’s not about what you say, it’s how you say it. That’s what determines your brand’s persona, in turn how it will be perceived by your audience. Communicate your brand’s messaging in a manner that relates to your audience.

Be sure to clearly define whether the tone of voice would be formal/informal, quirky or anything else — your writer will thank you for it.

To determine language, ask yourself if the brand’s audience would relate better to short simple sentences or complex refined language? Does the language need to be understood by audiences from Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 cities? If you’re having difficulty with this, you can go back once again to imagining the persona of the target audience and you will get there.

Other Factors To Consider When Defining Language and Tone of Voice

To tighten the guidelines of your brief further, here are a couple of other things you must provide clarification on -

• Should the brand follow British or American English?
• Can the brand use colloquial phrases in their communication?
• The manner in which the brand name must be written across the board. (Example — the brand name IKEA is completely in upper case)
• If the brand doesn’t want a savior complex or patronizing tone seeping through the writing tone, do mention it.
• Give the writer a disclaimer on things to be sensitive about when writing if it can be detrimental to the brand image.
• Should the tone of voice have no room for playfulness or innuendos? Then ensure you communicate don’ts such as this too.
• Mention any phrases and ideologies that can have a negative connotation in the larger industry the brand must avoid.

Lay Down Brand Tidbits

Additional context is like desserts after dinner — you can’t say no to it. This is where you can share external article links or interesting background information on the brand. A couple of things you can mention in this section are -

• The brand’s history
• The brand’s positioning framework
• Are there any other nuggets of insider information about the brand’s products/services and its general perception in society?

If necessary, you can touch upon insights from the brand’s direct and indirect competitors. Any statistical information about how the brand’s business landscape is shifting as a result of technology or socioeconomic forces can also be included. Taking these other significant aspects into consideration ensures that nothing is left to chance and you’re being as specific as possible.

Final Thoughts

By including all of these elements in your content brief, you can be sure that you’re giving your writer a roadmap to accomplish the brand’s objectives. So there you have it! You now have a comprehensive brief on how to create a content brief. Before you go, some parting advice, don’t forget to proofread the brief!