How to brief a content writer (a template that actually works)

The brief is the most important fifteen minutes of any content project. Get it right and the writer can do their job. Get it wrong and you’ll be stuck in revision loops for the next month, blaming the writer for something that was actually a briefing problem.

I’ve written briefs for everyone from solo electricians in Brisbane to ASX-listed software companies. The shape of a good brief barely changes. The shape of a bad brief is endlessly creative. And almost always the reason a content project goes off the rails.

This is the brief template we use at SEO Sandwich, with notes on why each field matters. Steal it, adapt it, or just send your writers to this page.

What a content brief is, and isn’t

A brief is the document that translates your business reality into something a writer can act on. It’s not a description of what you want the article to say (that’s the outline, and the shape of it depends on whether you’re building a single post or a silo). It’s not the SEO research (that’s the outline too). It’s the context that makes the outline possible.

If you don’t write a brief and skip straight to “write me 1,000 words on industrial coffee roasters,” what you’ll get back is a generic 1,000 words on industrial coffee roasters. The writer cannot tell you which specific roaster you sell, who you sell it to, what makes you different from the three other distributors in Brisbane, or what action you want the reader to take at the end. So they guess. And their guesses become your revisions.

The 9 fields a good brief needs

1. Target audience. Be specific

Bad: “small business owners”
Good: “Office managers at 20-50 person professional services firms in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, who are responsible for choosing the company’s commercial coffee machine, and who have probably never bought one before.”

The bad version could be anyone. The good version tells the writer the reader’s job title, the buying context, and their level of expertise. Tone, examples, depth. All of those flow from this one field.

2. What you actually sell, and what you don’t

Bad: “coffee equipment”
Good: “Commercial bean-to-cup coffee machines from Jura, plus the maintenance plans that go with them. We do NOT sell home machines, capsule machines, or barista-grade traditional espresso setups.”

The “what you don’t” part is more important than people realise. Writers fill in gaps with assumptions. If you don’t tell them what’s out of scope, they will write about it. Now your article is recommending products you don’t sell.

3. The action you want the reader to take

Bad: “get in touch”
Good: “Book a 15-minute consultation to discuss machine sizing. Secondary action: download the comparison guide PDF.”

Every piece of content needs an exit. If you don’t define it, the writer will end the article with a generic “contact us” and the conversion path will leak.

4. Tone of voice. With examples, not adjectives

Bad: “professional but friendly”
Good: “Read like a senior account manager explaining something to a smart client over coffee. Not a how-to guide. Not a sales pitch. The writers we like most: Bench Accounting’s blog, Basecamp’s old Signal v Noise, Anne Helen Petersen’s Substack.”

“Professional but friendly” describes 95% of business writing. Examples are way more useful. They tell the writer what to read and copy the rhythm of.

5. Search intent

If you’ve done the SEO work, list the target query and what type of search it is. (If you’re not sure how to figure this out, read our post on search intent first.): informational (the reader wants to know), commercial (the reader wants to compare or research before buying), or transactional (the reader wants to buy now).

This single field changes the whole shape of the article. Informational queries want long-form, comprehensive coverage. Commercial queries want comparison tables and pros/cons. Transactional queries want short copy and obvious CTAs.

6. Internal links you want included

List 3-5 URLs on your own site that you’d like the article to link to. The writer doesn’t know your site map. Without this, every article you commission becomes its own island, and your internal linking strategy never improves.

7. Examples to include. Or to avoid

Real customer stories you have permission to mention, product names you want featured, case study numbers you can cite. Also: competitors you’d rather not mention by name, controversial topics you don’t want to wade into, claims you’re not allowed to make for legal/regulatory reasons.

8. Brand voice quirks

“We never use em-dashes.” “We capitalise our product names.” “We never call ourselves a ‘leader’ or ‘best-in-class’ or ‘world-class’. Banned phrases.” “We always write Australian English (colour, not color).”

The quirks list is what stops a brief from being generic. Every brand has 5-10 of these. Write yours down once and copy-paste into every brief.

9. Deadline. But be realistic

Real timelines for a good 1,500-word article: 1-2 days for research, 1 day for the outline (with your sign-off), 2-3 days for drafting, 1-2 days for revisions, 1 day for SEO polish. So 6-9 working days end-to-end, for one piece.

If you brief on Friday and need it by Monday, you’ll get something. But you’re getting “anything I could plausibly type in 8 hours,” not “the article you’d be proud to publish.”

What we do with the brief at SEO Sandwich

When you buy a Sandwich package, you complete this brief inline at checkout. We’ve trimmed it to the essentials. Most fields take a sentence each. Then within one business day, we email you to confirm the brief, ask follow-up questions, and book a 30-minute kickoff call. That’s where edge cases get sorted out. The sprint clock only starts after the kickoff.

The reason we built that 3-business-day buffer is exactly what this post is about: bad briefs cause bad content. We’d rather take three days getting the brief right than three weeks getting the content wrong.

The shortest brief that works

If you only have five minutes:

1. Who is this for (specific reader)?
2. What do you want them to do at the end?
3. What’s the target search query?
4. 3 URLs to link to on your site.
5. 3 words you ban from your brand.

That’s it. Five questions. Better than 90% of the briefs we receive when we don’t ask.

Need help briefing a sprint? Book a call and we’ll walk through it with you.