Written content is the backbone of many digital marketing strategies, but it takes a lot of time to craft high-quality content that resonates with readers and search engine algorithms. While platforms such as Growth Hackers offer techniques to help you learn how to write content for your sales funnel and for other purposes, most business leaders don’t have the time to write all of the content they need for their websites and online presence. Whether it’s short blog posts or guest blog posts, product descriptions or email newsletters, your business needs content. That content also needs to be high-quality, and that means that it’s thoroughly proofread and written in the correct style and tone.
Content is King
Content is still king, as the saying goes, and while new types of media are rising swiftly in popularity, written articles remain essential for SEO and ongoing business growth. As this article on the biggest guest posting myth explains, content makes the online world go round, and as such, while it’s easy to think that guest posting and other content marketing techniques are old hat, they are, in fact, still vital. All of this means that your business needs to keep creating the quality content that readers, and search engines, want from you. When you’re helping your staff to manage their workloads, it’s easy for business leaders like you to take away certain time-consuming tasks, such as writing. If you do remove these tasks from your internal team, then you’ll need to find a content writing agency or freelancer to take on the work for you. That’s because, as a business leader, you probably won’t have the time or the writing skills to craft the perfect content for all aspects of your company’s marketing strategies.
Think About Outsourcing the Work
If you took a long break and don't want to get back into writing, one of the best ways to get great content for your business is to work with professional corporate copywriters. Bringing content writing in-house can be expensive, so if you have a small business or a busy digital marketing agency, then it’s understandable that you’d want to work with an outsourced agency or possibly a series of freelance writers. When working with an outsourced writer , either through an agency or a professional freelancer, you need to make sure that you provide the correct instructions so that they write the perfect content the first time around. As an experienced content writer and team leader for a writing agency, I know how difficult business leaders and even digital marketers find it to write relevant, complete briefs for content writing projects. I’ve often had to check up on instructions and still not received enough information to craft the perfect content. As such, I’m eager to help business owners and digital marketers to understand what writers want from content writing briefs. Keep reading, and I’ll share what a content writer needs from a brief to ensure that every writing project you outsource runs as smoothly as possible.
Gather Together All The Info You Need
One of the most significant issues that content writers face is the fact that clients often send over incomplete briefs. They might say they’ve sent over every instruction and resource, then suddenly remember something after the content is written. As such, you should make sure that you gather together everything you need. Consider every instruction and all of the resources that you need to give your writer before you start to put together your brief. Even if it was a small instruction or a short document, you should make sure that you have everything ready for your writer. Gathering together all of the information you need and considering the instructions that you need to give your writer might seem daunting, which is why I’ve added some additional tips below. It’s actually quite easy, especially if you create documents that provide a lot of instructions and information in one place. So, carry on reading, and we’ll explore the ways that you can create an ideal content brief and help your writer to craft perfect pieces of writing for your business.
Think About Your Target Audience
When you’re putting together your content brief, you need to have your target audience firmly at the forefront of your mind. If you recommend that your writers aim for the wrong audience, then the piece might not engage your actual target market. As the purveyor of services and products to your target clients, you know your market better than almost anyone else. So, when you’re writing your content brief, you need to have your audience in mind. If your business uses a customer persona, then you should provide this to your writer. Additionally, it would help if you tried to make sure that you give instructions to the writer that will help them to craft content your audience wants and enjoys. Use your own experience writing for your target market to inform your content brief. If you have data on which content works well in your past content marketing campaigns, then you can use this to guide your copywriter. By providing as much information as possible, you will make the project quicker and easier for your writer and reduce the number of edits required before the content can be sent to your target readers.
Send Over Style Guide For Your Brand If You Have One
The writing style that your writer uses will affect the engagement that your content receives from readers. As such, you need to make sure that you provide your content writer with insight into the writing style that you want them to use. Writing style includes everything from how you write out dates and numbers through to spelling your brand name and tone of voice. When combined together, all these factors form the unique voice of your brand. Having a coherent voice helps you to create a recognisable brand. One way to save yourself time when putting together your brief for each content writing project is to create a style guide. If you don’t already have a style guide for your brand, then you should consider making one. Creating cohesive content and a powerful brand voice can help even new businesses to win the trust of their customers. Writing a style guide will help you to save time when sending out briefs, as you will have all of the information in one handy document, ready to send to outside content providers. You can also provide your style guide to other relevant individuals, such as new internal staff and external advertisers. So, if you haven’t already done so, making a style guide is vital for your business, and when you’ve got one, you should send it to your outsourced writer or agency with every brief.
Provide Everything In One Document/ Folder
As mentioned above, you need to send over everything you need your content writer to use in one go, but you also need to make it easy to view. If you send over multiple emails, each one with a different instruction or document, then your writer could easily get confused and miss something. As such, you should make sure that you take the time to review your brief before you submit it and ensure that it contains everything you need and expect. Your writer will then have all the resources at their disposal to deliver the content that you need to further your business strategy. If you do miss something off, then you should resend everything, and include the new information and make it clear that this is the version of the folder/ email that the writer should now use. By being concise and providing everything at once, you will save your writer a lot of hassle and reduce the chances of them making a mistake. It will also benefit you, as you will know exactly what you said as part of the brief and won’t have to hunt through your inbox to check that you gave them every instruction.
Review The Content Thoroughly
Even after creating the perfect content brief, you need to make sure that you review the content thoroughly before you start using it. If you’re using a new content writer or agency, then you should be critical and check that every instruction has been followed correctly. You can then decide if it’s worth working with them on future projects or if you should shop around and find a new content writing agency. Alternatively, if you’re using your regular, trusted content writer or team, then you just need to check that the content is correct. There might be some small factual errors or areas that might not completely align with your goals. As such, you should check the content thoroughly before using it and approach the writer for support with changes if required. Once you’re satisfied with the content, you can start using it to enhance your content marketing strategy and boost your company’s success.
Write The Perfect Content Brief - The Keys Are in Your Hands
Writing an accurate content brief can save you time and effort liaising with your writer and checking their work. If you want to improve your writing skills, I recommend you always finish reading difficult content. It will also reduce the number of edits that they need to make, meaning that you can use your content quicker. Once you build a relationship with your content writer and start creating the briefs that work well for them, you can save yourself time writing your content briefs. I hope that this article helps you to create the best possible content writing briefs that save you time and effort in the long run. With a content marketing agency like Growth Hackers, we can help your business with SEO, social media, email marketing, paid aids, and of course, content marketing. Contact us at Growth Hackers if you're looking for an agency that can write the perfect content for your business.
Hannah Stevenson
I am the Content Marketing Manager at UK Linkology, the UK’s highest-ranking link building agency. I am an experienced content marketer and prolific Quora user, so I understand the platform and how it can benefit many businesses from across the corporate world.
