How to Create the Best Content Brief (Free Template)

Before Creating Any Custom Content, You Need a Content Brief to Guide the Project

Add bookmark

Philip Mandelbaum
06/13/2022

A silhouette of a young woman creating content (which she previously outlined in a content brief) holding a tripod with camera, in front of a fisheye orange background with colors lightening from the corners in toward the center

Content marketing is critical to any digital marketing strategy. Without content creation, you have no assets for your SEO strategy, social media marketing, email and SMS marketing or digital advertising. Plus, 86% of people skip video ads, 44% ignore direct mail, and 91% unsubscribe from company emails. But if that’s not enough to convince you, here are some stats that can’t be ignored: content marketing produces 300% more leads than traditional marketing and costs 62% less; nine in 10 consumers find custom content useful; and six in 10 seek out a product after reading about it. Sold? Then you’re like the 97% of marketers who consider content marketing integral to their overall marketing strategy. Of course, that’s not enough to create content that compels consumers to invest their money — or put their faith in — your brand; if you want to outperform 43% of your competitors, you need a content marketing strategy. And once you have your content marketing strategy, you have to ensure your content creators, publishers and marketers adhere to the established processes. That includes creating a content brief for each and every piece of custom content.

What is a Content Brief?

A content brief is a shared digital document that outlines every aspect of a piece of content — from user persona and funnel/lifecycle stage to suggested title and SEO keywords — and contains links to the actual content document as well as supporting internal and external articles or web pages.

While the majority of the top-ranking articles on the subject position the content brief as a document created by a brand for agencies or by some company manager for the company content creator(s), many times it’s the duty of content creators to produce the brief themselves. Why?

New content ideas do come from above, but they’re typically derived from the collective strategizing of the content marketing team, based on the overarching digital marketing strategy; ideally, you:

Develop the vast majority of your content proactively
Schedule start and completion times in advance
Load every last detail of each project into your project management software

The content brief can be created during the first stage of the content development process, when you’re brainstorming campaigns and their elements; or, it can be created as the first deliverable immediately following the project kickoff meeting.

A wall or floor plastered with open books (all text)

Everything You Need to Know Before Creating Your First Content Brief

No matter who’s creating your content briefs, make sure you’ve implemented a process for their development and distribution, including:

Who creates the content briefs
Who reviews and approves the content briefs
At what point during campaign and content development the content briefs will be created
How much time the content brief creator(s) will have to complete each brief
How the content brief creator(s) will inform reviewers and approvers of each brief’s completion
What app will be used to create the content briefs (e.g., Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, which works well with Jira)
What app will be used to store the content briefs (e.g., in the project folder within the campaign folder within the business area/product/service folder in the company Google Drive, and in a campaign- and project-specific folder within the resources/files section of your project management tool)
What app will be used to create the actual content documents, linked from the content briefs (hint: it should be the same app you use for your content briefs)
What app will be used to store the actual content documents (hint: they should be in the same folder as the brief)
What will be included in the content briefs (and who’s going to create the content brief template)

What You Need to Include in Your Content Brief

Everyone’s got their own ideas for what’s most important in a content brief. I’ve been creating content briefs since 2005, and here’s what I include. (Any row or section that is not applicable to a specific piece of content — like SEO keywords for a paid white paper landing/squeeze page — can always be removed from the copied version of the content brief template.)

Section 1: The Basics | Rows 1-3: Business Area, User Persona, and Funnel/Lifecycle Stage

For the purposes of easier organization, your content briefs should all start with the highest-level information. Dedicate the first row to the affected business area; the second row to the audience you’re targeting; and the third row to where in the funnel or lifecycle stage you should be serving the content.

Row 4: Campaign

Also top-level information but deserving of its own explanation, the campaign refers to the larger digital marketing initiative for which the content is being created. This information is critically important for reviewers to put the project in context, as well as for the content creators to develop the content in support of the goals of the campaign.

Row 5: Product/Service

Not every piece of content is tied directly to a specific product or service. Top-of-funnel (ToFu) content, for instance, should inform and inspire new users and prospects, with a call to action to move further down the funnel — for more information, before a sales or demo pitch is ever made. That, of course, leaves bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) content, which should always be tied to a product or service. This row is important for presenting to management, as it represents a potential revenue stream enhancement.

Row 6: Working Title

Titles change, a lot. And they should. This is how we know we’re not only focused on SEO keywords but also delivering transparency and authenticity in what we’re telling our readers, website users, prospects and customers they can expect from our content. This row is intended to summarize what the article is about.

Row 7: Project Summary

Your content brief isn’t merely a description of what you plan to create, it’s an internal promotional tool; often, the effectiveness of your content brief determines whether your project idea will be approved. Needless to say, sometimes the title isn’t enough. In the seventh row, the summary allows the content brief creator to explain in more detail what the content will include.

Row 8: Justification

While your summary explains ‘the what,’ your justification provides ‘the why.’ This is your opportunity to demonstrate the need for your project, whether it’s to close a gap or leverage an opportunity. Support your claims with data, such as the popularity of the topic (based on monthly volume of the most-related keyword) or its relationship to the company’s core values of value proposition.

Row 9: CTA

Every piece of content you create must serve two purposes: one for the user/prospect/customer, the other for the business. For the customer, you need to be consistent and authentic in what you highlight in your content’s SEO title and meta description, as well as what you promote via social media or email; the content must deliver what you promise. For the business, the same piece of content must also lead the user to take action — and that is the purpose of your CTA. Like the rest of your content, your CTA (a well known acronym for “call to action”) must target your user persona and funnel/lifecycle stage. Popular CTAs include directives to download content, request a demo, contact the company, make a reservation or make a purchase. When crafting yours, be sure to use active voice and “me”/”my” (e.g., “send me my white paper” or “schedule my demo”). To increase clicks, be dramatic and persuasive in the sentence(s) leading up to the CTA. Set the scene, bemoan the audience’s pain points, and instill a feeling of need. Then, to optimize the CTA itself, use a button instead of a hyperlink; or, create a graphic containing the CTA and an image of a button. Here’s an example:

If you have lead conversion optimization tools (like Optinmonster) installed on your site, you can also add secondary and tertiary CTAs for use in mid-content or below-content slide-in scroll boxes or other “campaign types.”

Row 10: Internal Links

Internal links are the URLs for the articles, web pages and other owned materials to which you’ll link from your content (or from which you’ll glean insights for your content). Internal linking remains an important component of SEO and can be incorporated into downloadable content, YouTube videos, and more. On landing pages designed to “squeeze” as many new prospects as possible, linking away is not advised.

Row 11: External Links

External links are the URLs to which you’ll link (or from which you’ll glean insights) for the articles, web pages or other materials owned by others. External linking remains an important component of SEO but should only be used in ungated on-site content like blog posts or articles.

Row 12: Working Document

Whether it’s for written content, video, graphics, augmented reality or anything else, your content brief needs to contain a link to the working document (or folder) — even if you haven’t started working on it. This is because your content brief won’t only be used to obtain project approval, it’ll also be used and updated throughout to keep management abreast of progress as well as guide — and reflect — your work.

Row 13: Images, Graphics and Embeds

If you’re creating written content of any kind, it should always be illustrated with graphics, images, videos or other visuals. For any video, as well as anything that might be shared via social media, you also need a thumbnail or featured image. In Row 13, add links to everything you’re going to use for ocular embellishment. First, post the link to the thumbnail/featured image (e.g., in your shared Drive or from Unsplash or another stock photo site); or, if you don’t already have it and need graphic assistance, post a description of what you want the thumbnail/featured image to include and look like. Then, post the links to (or descriptions of) all the other photos, gifs, charts and graphs you intend to include within the body of the content. To make the images easier to identify and track (and better for SEO), use descriptive file names; in your content brief, add a related image title above each link.

Section 2: SEO | Row 14: SEO Title

Like your working title, your SEO title is supposed to describe what your content is about. Unlike your working title, it should be definitive — and it must contain your target keyword(s) for the specific piece of content. For this article, for example, I used keyword and competitive SERP research to craft the title. Your SEO title should be 56 characters or fewer.

Row 15: Meta Description

Your meta description is the summary of your content you’ll use to inform those who Google related keywords or your brand name and find it in the search results. Like your SEO title, your meta description must include your target keyword(s). Like any social media post, email or text promoting your content, your meta description must also be empathic, authentic, transparent and ‘personalized’ to the user persona and funnel/lifecycle stage. Your meta description should be 154 characters or fewer.

Row 16: SEO URL

Upon project completion, your content brief will serve as a document of record (which is why using an app that allows tracking and offers version history is so important). To be complete, it must include the destination URL. If, as in the case of a gated guide or report, you’re creating downloadable content and a landing page, include the URL for the landing page, the ‘thank you’/download page, and the content’s media file in the CMS. And no matter what type of content the URL’s for, always include your SEO keyword(s), never include articles (like “the” and “a”), and carefully consider whether prepositions (like “to” or “before”) add value and should be included.

Row 17: SEO Keywords

SEO keywords are no longer the panacea they once were, but that definitely doesn’t mean they’re no longer needed. In fact, amid all the search engine updates of the last decade, one thing Google hasn’t done is downgrade the value of incorporating the right keywords into quality content that answers users’ questions, addresses their pain points and delivers products or services they seek, based on what consumers are actually searching for. In Row 17, add your primary keyword, followed by your secondary keywords. (Need help IDing them? No you don’t.)

Row 18: Image Alt Text

Google doesn’t care about image titles, but Google does care about image alt text, or the text that describes an image on a website, indexed by search engines, displayed if the image fails to load, and read aloud to users by screen reader software. For each of the images in Row 13, add the original image title (for organizational purposes; you will not use this in your CMS) and the image alt text beneath it. When creating your image alt text, do your best to describe in as much detail as possible everything you see in the photo or other image — and, whenever possible, incorporate your SEO keyword(s). (You will not need image alt text for videos or other elements embedded from other sources, such as YouTube.)

Row 19: Schema

One thing many content creators and publishers fail to leverage is structured data ‘markups’ (or microdata) from schema.org: HTML code — for articles, videos, FAQs, and more — that improves the way search engines read and display web pages. In other words, if you incorporate the appropriate schema on all of your web pages, unpaid landing pages and articles, your SEO rankings will inevitably improve. In your content brief, you can begin by listing the types of markups you intend to use, linking to their schema.org pages for ease of use. Once your content is completed and ready for publishing (or, for some schema markup types, already published), you can create your actual markups, add them to your website code, and copy and paste them into the 19th row of your content brief.

A collection of six oddly and differently shaped and colored mailboxes sitting, in an incorrect order, on an old wooden stand, nearly overrun by tropical plants from the back, left and right, symbolizing the recipients of the emails you’ll send to promote the content you created and, prior to creating, detailed in your content brief

Section 3: Distribution and Promotion | Rows 20-?

The final section of your content brief should cover how, where, when and with what you intend to distribute and promote the content. Is it a video you’re posting on YouTube, embedding in a short, search engine-optimized how-to article, and then sharing via the article link on LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as via email? Then you need rows for each type of promotional content (based on platform) as well as all the critical elements you intend to incorporate in each piece of promotional content. Here’s what I would include…

For email:

Distribution date
Distribution time
Audience/List
Subject line
Preview line
Banner image
Title
Greeting (e.g., “Hi, [Name]!”)
Body copy
CTA
Closing (e.g., “‘Til next time, your friends at [Brand Name]”)
Images, graphics and embeds
Web version URL

For Social Media, separated by platform and, when applicable, distribution dates/times:

Distribution date(s)
Distribution time(s)
Copy
Link to content
Hashtags (branded or trending)
Tagged accounts (within the tweet body or on an image)
Images/Videos/Gifs
Image alt text (as applicable)

Your Exclusive Free Content Brief Template (Google Docs)

Want to save some time? Start with our free content brief template in Google Docs. Simply make a copy and add it to your Google Drive; if you prefer Microsoft Word, download the template as a .docx file — and it will open in Word with the same formatting. (If you’re familiar with the creative brief template, this will look somewhat familiar.)

CTA banner/button: In a hurry? Use our exclusive free Content Brief Template (Download: Google Doc)

Want to see a real-life content brief example? Email me; I’d be happy to share.

Bonus: A New Content Outline Builder from Semrush

I don’t work for Semrush, but I love what they do. At CEI, we all do. So give the leading SEO tool provider’s Outline Builder a trial.

Here’s how it works:

Describe your business to find trending topics to write about
Pick a content opportunity from our high-searched suggestions
Review your outline and customize it for your site and your customers’ needs
Share your new outline with your reviewers and approvers for a more streamlined process