This detailed blog post brief example is part of the Tech B2B Blog Post Guide series.
Briefs really are a sensational power-up for your tech B2B blogs and content creation. You can use variations for other content like testimonials, case studies, slide decks... all sorts! Build up your own brief library!
Questions to ask the team for the Brief
The best way to create the Brief is to ask the team questions like these:
What’s in it for us? What is the goal for this piece, and the bigger picture? Who is sponsoring this? Who will benefit downstream, like sales enablement or customer success?
Who is Dear Reader? What’s in it for them? What point do we want to make? What questions will they have? What’s their intent? What do we want them to do?
Meta tags, heywords, style guide… What’s the header outline? Keywords? Meta-tags? On-page links? On-site links?
What’s the workflow to website. What atomization/derivations will we make? Which channels?
Step-by-step brief checklist
As it’s a team effort to create a Brief, it’s not always a simple, linear, checklist exercise!
But a checklist is still really helpful to make sure everyone (a) can SEE the process, and (b) get a chance to contribute.
A useful way to use the Brief checklist is to share it via Google Docs (or whatever), and provide an example. Do this before you meet to go through it. Sometimes people won't "do their homework", but if they do, it makes the Brief meeting/workshop much better. Then you follow up and share the Brief to stakeholders and give them time to reply. No reply == acceptance!
Who is Dear Reader?
A focus on the audience first might seem a bit strange: surely we’re creating this blog post for our benefit? To sell something, for example?
But of course the blog posts are not written for us, it’s for Dear Reader. We need to serve their needs first which means we need to understand their needs, help them, and not annoy them.
Do you have one or more ideal customer profiles?
This is less about demographics, and more about their job, their challenges, what makes them tick — stuff like that.
Do you have a behaviour/needs model their their company?
I know we’re trying to address humans, but understanding their corporate context is part of the intel.
Do you have real examples of Dear Reader?
This often comes from the sales team, or customer success — from the front line. Real profiles of real people.
Can we place Dear Reader on a buyer's journey or a funnel?
Are they looking for education? Are they looking to buy? Are they looking to help their colleagues? What do they need now, and next?
What outcome do we want?
It’s super normal to tie a blog post into a specific campaign, but that’s not always the case.
There are some serious practitioners out there that consider blogs and great content as a brand strategy that has long term, almost benign, influence over people. It’s not obvious — or easy to measure — and see immediate impacts. But it is there over time (and you can measure it by asking prospects and customers where they heard about you / read about you).
What is important here is the internal outcome: people expecting a huge uptick in sales from one blog post need to have their expectations reset. But it’s fair to expect that blog posts will help sales enablement, or customer success, or improve a marketing campaign measured in MQLs.
So which is it? One, more or all of these?
- General brand improvement (make sure to ask prospects/customers “How you heard of us”)
- Tie to a specific marketing campaign, or an offer, Measure touch points and MQLs.
- Help your team mates: sales enablement, customer success, alliance manager, etc.
What are the blog mechanics?
We must always prioritise the human that is Dear Reader. But we can’t forget that the internet is software, algorithms, and machines: and we must play the game.
Blog Outline
Starting with the H1 and adding in H2 and H3 headers with a brief idea about what to put on each. This can just be a suggestion — try not to inhibit the writers research and writing.
Blog SEO
Keyword research should be done, but please don’t go mad with keyword stuffing — the focus is on the human. Google’s Helpful Content Update can detect “content written for search engines and not humans”. But a keyword, a slug, advice on alt text for images, and a meta-description are all helpful — even if just placeholders for now.
Content Direction
A catch-all, it usually includes a list of to do and what not to do guidelines. It’s also where existing information can be put forward, like offer pages, research papers, other blog posts — ideas to interlink this blog post with.
How will the content be distributed?
The most basic option is website only. Even then, the “How to post” instruction set is required so the correct placement is done, titles are set, meta/SEO is set, branding is done, image filenames and alt text — even with just website, there needs to be a checklist in the Brief.
Looking ahead to your channels -- e.g. using Buffer to schedule 10 tweets, and doing a LinkedIn carousel post -- drives your atomization approach. Because how you atomize your content, is how you feed your distribution channels.
The brief really helps the rest of the blog process if you can document any of these forward-looking ideas:
Channels
List your channels including
- X (specific tweet types inc. threads)
- LinkedIn posts, carousels, articles, and Q&A.
- Medium posts
- Partner websites
- Newsletter
Atomization
This is how you break down your blog post into “snippets” or atoms. The simplest way is to extract the key points, the headers, the graphics, each useful point. You can also provide different takes and insights.
Engagement
Who, and how, are you going to engage real people and companies? Are you going to promote your posts using tools? Are you going to have staff actually engage real people rather than “spam”? Could this blog be the start of a conversation?