Thinking of outsourcing your content writing to a professional? Fantastic! Hiring a professional content writer for your coaching business means that your content is about to become more engaging, generate new leads, and convert more sales. The best way to maximise the results a professional content writer can achieve is to write detailed content briefs. Here is how to write a content brief when hiring a content writer.
Oh, and if you haven’t yet hired a content writer for your coaching business, our content writing service page is right over here… just saying.
Why Do You Need a Content Brief?
A content brief gathers all the information a content writer needs so they can write effective content for your coaching business. While creating a content brief may seem like extra work, it actually helps you in two main ways:
- The content writer can get to work right away instead of having to contact you with questions.
- The content writer has a good picture of what you want from the piece of content, so you’ll spend less time revising the content.
Every coach has different goals for their content strategy, and every coach approaches their content in different ways. Content writers are not mind readers, so they won’t understand your idea of good content unless you tell them. A content brief gives them all the information they need to understand exactly what you want.
Information to Include in a Content Brief
The information to include in a content brief will vary depending on the inclusions of the service. We will cover all the information that may be necessary when hiring a content writer. Feel free to change or remove any sections that do not apply to your agreement with your content writer.
Article Title – Optional
Depending on the content writer you hire, you may want to include instructions for the title or title suggestions. Content writers are often good at creating titles that grab readers attention and meet additional requirements (SEO-friendly/reactionary/audience-specific, etc.) so this information is optional. It can be helpful if you have just started working with the content writer or you have specific requirements.
For example: The title needs to create interest in a topic that is often seen as dull. Feel free to use humour or intrigue to capture readers’ attention. Our brand does not want to use outrage, irreverent humour, or mocking as it is against our brand values. Please incorporate one of the following keywords in the article:
Article Topics
List the topics and information that you want the article to cover. Start by listing the overall article topic with a brief explanation of how the topic fits your overall content strategy. Then list the topics that you want the article to cover.
It can also be helpful to list topics or sources that you want to avoid. What you don’t want is often just as helpful as what you do want.
Approach/Tone
Provide information about how you want to approach the topic and any perspectives you want to add. Let’s say you’ve hired a content writer to write a thought leadership article on a trending topic. An article that stays neutral and reports on what is happening would be very different from an article that makes a case for either perspective. An article that introduces a new perspective would be a completely different article again.
Tell the content writer what you want the perspective to be and the tone you want to convey. Do you want to be compassionate or critical? Do you want to be humorous or serious? Do you want to focus on your feelings or communicate cold hard facts?
Target Audience
Your content writer needs to know a little bit about the people reading the article to make it useful and interesting for the reader. Start by telling the content writer a little bit about your ideal coaching clients in general. You can copy and paste sections from your branding guide if that is easier.
Then, tell your content writer about the audience for this specific article. Consider the following things:
- General demographic
- Knowledge of the topic
- Frustrations or problems with the topic
- Desires or needs regarding the topic
- Position in buyer journey/Sales funnel position
For example: The target audience for this article is new to lawn care. They’ve been Googling things like “how often do you need to water grass?” and “what kind of lawn mower is the best for the lawn?” They’re starting from the very start and don’t know what they don’t know about lawn care. I want this article to teach them the very basics so they can create a lawn maintenance routine and feel confident in looking after their yard. Product recommendations are encouraged so I can add affiliate links.
This would be a very different article than one written for people living in Australia who are frustrated that their lawn is dry and patchy. That article may focus on lawn care in dry weather.
SEO Information
The information in this section will vary depending on the inclusions of the content writer’s package. Some content writers include keyword research and SEO strategy in their packages, and some don’t.
Generally, in order to create an article that is optimised for search engines, your content writer will need the following information:
- Word count – What is the ideal word count range based on the top search results for your keywords? Give your content writer a range for the total article word count.
- Keywords – Provide a list of keywords and any preferences for the number of times you want the keyword used. You should provide 3-5 topic-specific keywords ranked in priority. Then, you should have a list of secondary keywords that you are targeting across your website. The content writer will pick a handful of these to use once or twice in the article.
- Link suggestions – At the minimum, provide your content writer with links to related articles or service pages on your website. Your content writer will be able to link to these at appropriate places in the article and create a compelling CTA. You can also provide suggestions for external links if you wish or a list of competitors you want to avoid linking to.
Article Purpose
List all of the purposes you want the article to perform and the priority of each. Articles can often serve multiple purposes for a business, so list all that apply to this piece of content. Here are some as examples:
- Generate new leads (SEO)
- Sell a specific coaching program or product
- Promote my book
- Nurture followers who need to learn X before they’re eligible for my coaching program
- Provide an actionable guide to solving a problem
- Sell affiliate products
The best way to communicate article purpose to your content writer is to organise the purposes into 3 categories:
- Primary
- Secondary
- Extra
Let’s take the “sell my coaching program” purpose as an example. If you tell the content writer that is the primary purpose of your article, then they are going to write a content marketing piece that pushes your coaching program as the ideal solution for the topic problem.
If you tell the content writer that selling your coaching program is a secondary purpose, then they’re going to write something like this article. The main focus is to provide useful information, but there are going to be some blatant nudges towards a service page. (Cough, cough, if you’re looking to hire a content writer, then this is a great place to start.)
If you tell your content writer that selling your coaching program is more of an extra, then they’ll include a link to your coaching program at an appropriate point or add it in the related links.
You should only have 1 primary purpose, a maximum of 3 secondary purposes (though 1 is ideal), and you can have as many extras as you want. This will help the content writer you hire to understand the jobs you want this piece of content to perform.
Content Guidelines
These are general guidelines that tell the content writer what you want your content to look and sound like. They are often a mixture of brand voice guidelines and content writing guidelines where you list some dos and don’ts.
For example, you may have guidelines like these:
- Use bullet points for lists instead of writing a list in paragraph
- Refer to our customers as “clients” or “BRAND devotees”
- Use humour and sarcasm throughout the article
A great way to help your content writer nail your tone is to provide links to your articles that you think nail what you are looking for in your content.
If you don’t already have content, then find some articles that you like (on any topic) and link those. In that situation, it is helpful to add bullet points of what you liked about it.
Research Links
This is an optional extra, but it can help your content writer to show them where to start their research. If you’ve read an article on the topic that you like, add a link and a brief summary of why you think the article is great. For example, you could say it does a good job of explaining the topic in an easy-to-understand way, or it raises a good argument about X.
Similarly, if you want your content writer to stay away from particular sources or particular topics/arguments, state that. You could just write what you don’t want or send links to an article that you think is terrible with an explanation of what you don’t like.
The more information you give your content writer, the more they will understand what you want from the piece of content.
Do I Need to Write a Content Brief for Every Piece of Content?
Yes, but the good news is a lot of the information won’t change. Once you’ve created your first content brief, you can save it as a template and update the article-specific information. You’ll have a guide on what to say that will make the process extremely quick.
The best way to look at your content brief is as a time-saving process. Sure, it may take you 10 minutes to write the content brief, but it means that your content writer will produce a more effective piece of content. They’ll know what you are looking for, so you’ll spend less time revising. They’ll also understand how this piece of content fits into your coaching business or marketing plan and write an article that fits that purpose. That means it will be more likely to convert if your goal is conversion, it will perform better in search engines if SEO is your goal, etc.
Need a content writer for your coaching business? We write weekly blog posts for coaching starting from £750 per month. Read more about our content writing services and view our portfolio here or contact us for a custom quote.