Briefing is essential in content marketing, especially when content writing relies on external contributors (whether or not they have a thorough understanding of the subject) or, internally, on colleagues who do understand the subject but lack the skill to write articles that meet readers’ needs.
A good brief helps to channel the contributor by giving them a clear framework on:
- the reason for the article;
- his goal;
- his target;
- the distribution channel;
- the content that will be covered and that which will not.
The brief is also very useful when it is the content special lead marketer himself who will write the article:
Increase the performance of your content?
It forces you to ask the right questions and to frame the article before starting (which avoids getting sidetracked);
- It allows other stakeholders (SEO, Editor, and, more broadly, anyone who will need to touch this content) to keep track of the idea behind the article. And to be able to refer to it in case of doubt.
The brief is a key step in the writing process. If you can’t formalize the reason for the article, the primary distribution channel, and the outline of the content, then the content isn’t ready for production .
Remember that your resources are limited: every What information could you shaky article you produce is a missed opportunity to improve your traffic, generate visits and attract potential customers.
A little data and analysis allows you to go beyond these fundamentals, and give better chances to the content that will be produced.
In practice
Let’s take a blog post whose primary distribution method will be SEO.
How will the content you produce be different? What value will your article add over what already exists?
Flops : Content that has neither traffic nor an interesting position in search results.
For some of them, it will be quite easy to effective graphics for social networks understand the reason for the failure (very little content, low added value information, the content does not correspond to any search intention, etc.).
Others may have failed despite a promising topic (perhaps the content was poorly executed). It’s up to you to decide whether it’s better to start from scratch or optimize what already exists.
People are interested in the topic, but the article fails to capture their attention and convert them. Look at each article to see if you can:
Improve the fluidity of the text;
- opt for a more captivating tone;
- make the introduction more eye-catching (for example by highlighting the concrete benefits of the article.
- supplement the available text services information (with statistics, testimonials, visuals, diagrams, etc.);
- modify the Call to Action (its subject, its wording, its location, etc.);
- add micro-conversions in the article (a model to download, a simulator to try, etc.).