Content brief template

Whether you run a personal or small business website, creating engaging and interesting content is vital to engaging with your audience and hitting your goals.

Every page on your website will have content of some kind – from your homepage and about us page to product listings or articles. Creating that content requires structure and consistency, two things a content brief template can aid immensely.

In this article, you can read more about how to create a content brief and download our content brief template.

Download our free content briefs

Our content briefs can help you to craft content for your website and marketing efforts. Click the links below to begin the download process.

What is a content brief?

A content brief is a document that provides a content creator with the necessary guidelines to create a piece of content. Typically, a content brief will include a structure, essential details as well as pointers on things like tone of voice.

Whatever form of content is being created, a content brief acts as a roadmap for writers, designers, video creators or anyone else to ensure that everybody involved in the content creation process is aligned on a project’s goals, audience and key message.

By making use of a consistent content brief, organisations can ensure that their brand message is adhered to, while creating coherency between the various pieces of content being produced, no matter who is producing it.

Types of content brief

Just as there are a huge range of content types out there, there are a number of content brief types. Which brief you use will be obvious, depending on what sort of content you want created.

Take a look at the smaller sections below for a little bit of information on the type of content briefs you might encounter.

Article brief

An article brief provides specific guidelines and instructions to help a writer to create a well-structured, engaging and effective article.

An article brief acts as a blueprint for writers, making sure that their article matches your brand voice and goals, as well as your audience’s expectations. Typically, the brief will clarify the objective of an article, along with the key messagings, SEO keywords to use, as well as guidance on the desired tone of a piece.

Social media brief

A social media post brief outlines the key elements and guidelines for created targeted social media content.

A social media brief will ensure that any post created will align with a brand’s voice, its objectives, as well as with any platform-specific best practices.

Typically, a social media brief will set out a post’s objective, its target audience, the main messaging, any relevant hashtags, as well as requirements around multimedia content.

Additionally, a social media brief should include clear instructions on the call-to-action (CTA) being used.

Infographic brief

An infographic brief will outline the guidelines and elements required for a content creator – usually a designer – to create a compelling and informative infographic.

Your brief will act as a set of instructions for the designers you work with, ensuring that the infographic effectively communicates potentially complex information in a way that engages your audience, while being easy to understand.

Typically, an infographic brief will include the objective, target audience, key data points, design elements – including things like colour scheme – as well as any specific visual elements required.

Product page brief

A product page brief provides guidance on the elements needed to create an effective and persuasive product page.

Your brief will provide a guide for your writers to ensure that the product page demonstrates a product’s features, benefits and unique selling points. It will also help to ensure that the writer hits your brand guidelines and tone of voice, taking into account the target audience your product or brand has.

Typically, a product page brief will include information about a product’s key features, specifications, target market and value proposition. It will also provide information including the SEO keywords needed for the content, along with tone and style guidelines. The brief should also include any imagery or multimedia information.

Email brief

An email brief is a document that outlines the key components and guidelines required to create an effective email campaign.

Your email brief acts as a blueprint for your marketers, ensuring that the emails they send align with your campaign objectives, brand voice and audience expectations.

Typically, an email brief will include an objective, target audience, subject line, key messaging, call-to-action (CTA), tone and style guidelines, and also any visual elements or design requirements.

Video brief

A video brief provides an outline of the critical elements and guidelines for creating a well-targeted and engaging video.

It serves as a roadmap or instruction manual for anyone involved in the creation of your video content, whether they are a scriptwriter, director or videographer.

A video brief will also ensure that the final product aligns to your project objectives, brand voice and audience expectations.

The brief should include information covering your objective, audience and key message. It should also include a script or basic storyboard, along with guidance on your desired tone, the length of the video, as well as any technical requirements you might have.

Content Brief: Top Tip

If you're struggling with your content briefs, it might be time to go back a few steps. The more preparation you do, the easier it'll be to define what you're looking for. Make sure you've followed the steps laid out in our how to create a business plan page

Content brief: Key components

Content briefs can be created for a range of platforms. Different content briefs may even be used for different types of content across one platform.

This means that having one consistent form of brief with specific key components may not be possible. However, there are several components or features of a brief that are likely to be used whenever content needs to be created.

You can click on an item from the list below to skip ahead:

Objective
Key message
Call-to-action (CTA)
Location
Audience
SEO guidelines & keywords
Tone and style
Visuals
Resources

Objective

What are you trying to achieve with your content? Objectives often focus on raising brand awareness, generating sales or leads, or promoting products.

Whatever form of content you are creating, an objective will help to provide direction to the content creator. As a writer or videographer, your approach to content can vary considerably based on the objective.

Key message

What is the primary message you want conveyed? Unsurprisingly, this will be tied closely to your objective but should be distinct.

For example, if your goal is to increase sales, your key message will be focused on how you get there. Is your brand making changes or disrupting the market for the better? Is there a discount on your products that will draw customers in?

Outlining your key message in a content brief can cut out a lot of mess. A writer might create the best article you’ve ever read – but if they don’t hit your key message it won’t help you.

Call-to-action (CTA)

As well as defining the objective and key message, make sure to clearly define your call to action (CTA).

Whether your aim is to increase sign-ups to a newsletter, downloads of a resource or actual sales, it’s important to provide clarity around what users should be doing, and how they will do it.

When used correctly, a CTA can maximise the value delivered by a piece. But when added to a piece of content without the proper planning, it might just mean you’ve wasted effort.

Publication location

This might sound obvious, but knowing where an article will be published or a video will be posted is a vital piece of information for the person creating your content.

If you are asking a writer to create a new article for your website, let them know where on your website it will sit. This will mean that they can take a look for themselves to find examples of previous work.

Likewise, if you’re asking a freelancer to craft social media content, sharing your channels with them can help provide clarity around your brand and tone of voice.

As a website or business owner, these things are often obvious to you. That does not mean it’s obvious to your staff or freelancers though.

Target audience

Who will be reading, watching or listening to your content? Knowing the target audience can help to make sure that new content is tailored in a way that matches expectations.

Many businesses will have a clear target audience that they refer to across their website, though this is not always the case. Even when it is, it is always worth drilling down a little deeper to provide some extra context for who is likely to be engaging with the content you are creating.

For example, a healthcare company with a more senior audience will want to create very different content from a gaming company going after the younger demographics.

Structure

You can think of the structure as the meat of your content brief. It outlines the content’s format and running order.

For written content, your structure might lay out the headings you want to use, sub-headings to go with them, as well as images or features that will be present on a page.

For a video, your structure might be as detailed as a full script or may include a broader storyboard for a team to work from.

When it comes to structure, you can be as detailed as you want. However, make sure to bear in mind the experience of those creating the content – a less experienced content creator may need more guidance, whereas someone you’ve worked with before may be able to operate a little more independently.

SEO guidelines & keywords

If you’re creating an article or page to go live on your personal or business website, you’ll want to follow SEO best practices to make sure users can find your website from the search engine results.

You’ll want to provide keywords of phrases to be worked into your content, along with guidance on internal or external links that should be included.

If you are including images or features in the content, you’ll also want to provide guidance. For example, if you need images to be a certain file size, or if you need alternative text or metadata used for images or features.

Tone and style

To maintain your brand and to help with customer recognition, you’ll want to provide specific direction on tone and style in your content briefs.

Tone and style guidelines can help to maintain consistency across your website and other channels, including in any videos you might create or social media posts you might publish.

As well as providing guidance in your brief, you should share a few examples in your content brief so that the creator can see real-life examples.

Visual and multimedia requirements

Visual, video and audio elements can be an excellent addition to any page. If you are briefing an article for your site, providing guidance on multimedia content can help to improve user experience when the page is published.

If you are asking the content creator to design or produce the multimedia elements for you, you should provide design guidelines, colour schemes and branding options.

You should also make sure to provide any technical information that may be necessary, if images or videos need to be below a certain size, for example.

Deadlines

It might seem obvious that your content brief will need a deadline, but it’s easily overlooked and massively important.

As well as providing a final deadline, you may also want to provide timings for milestones. If, for example, you want to check an article or video before the final submission, it’s worth getting your requirements down in writing.

As well as helping you to plan your calendar appropriately, providing clear deadlines can also help staff, team members or freelancers to properly organise their time.

References and resources

If you want your content to include links to or data from specific research or resources, you need to make sure you provide access to that research or resource.

Or, if you don’t have a specific resource in mind, you might provide examples of the sort of resources you have used previously to help establish the level of citation you expect.

For example, you might want to provide examples of high-quality websites to reference in order to avoid information being pulled or referenced from low-quality sources.

If you have your own data that is informing a piece, you will also want to provide that to the content creator. Bear in mind that, depending on the size or complexity of the data, you may want to provide it in advance of the content creator getting started.

Why is a content brief important?

We’ve already covered the importance of a content brief in the sections above, but have summarised some of the key points in the list below.

Clarity: A content brief provides clarity and direction to a project. It ensures that everyone involved in a project will understand the goals and requirements.
Efficiency: A good content brief can streamline the content creation process. It can reduce the time it takes for you to plan content, while also making it quicker for your content creators to get to work.
Consistency: A content brief provides a blueprint for success that can be reused and recycled across projects. By using a consistent content brief, you can make sure that the same expectations are set across multiple projects.
Quality: By providing detailed guidelines and instructions, you can ensure that the content being created – whether as an article, video, audio file or something else – will hit the standards you expect.

Bryn Glover

Bryn is the founder and editor of WebsiteJumpStart. He has worked in the digital field for over a decade and was editor for Startups.co.uk - the UK's leading small business website - and for NerdWallet UK before launching WebsiteJumpStart to help people and businesses get online with ease.

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