How to Create a Content Brief ?

A content brief compiles all the information a content creator needs to produce a content piece. They help marketing teams scale content and also maintain quality. 

The best content briefs combine editorial direction with content strategy to ensure that every content piece is well-written and optimized to drive SEO results. Content briefs ensure you do not miss any critical information necessary for your target audiences. 

A well-made content brief cuts down on time spent making revisions or refocusing keywords. The key terms generated by our AI help you optimize your content as per the latest SEO practices. The content brief has parameters, such as SEO keywords, content grade, suggested word count, and any references. Scalenut allows you to create content briefs within minutes using the following steps:

Step 1 - Log in to your scalenut account and click on the ‘Article Writer’ option on your Scalenut Dashboard.

Step 2 - A pop-up window will appear on the screen where you have to enter the primary keywords and your target location, which can be the UK, US, India, or others. You will also have to enter the url for the content you want to optimize. For example, let us take our main keyword as ‘Content Marketing’ and the target location as the United States. 

Next, you can customize your competition benchmarking approach based on your content and marketing strategy. This feature empowers you to select between the top 10, 20, or 30 ranking pages to focus on, enabling you to tailor your competitive analysis according to your specific objectives and target market.

Step 3 - Scalenut uses its proprietary AI and ML algorithms to optimize the results. Once our tools process the data, the following screen will appear. The Scalenut platform will showcase different tabs for SEO analysis, such as -

Competition overview - Users can access different parameters of the top ranking pages around the main keyword. It covers top page statistics such as the word count, SEO score(using our proprietary marking scheme), number of H Tags (headings), and images. It covers general guidelines for the content brief too. Users can also get a metric overview of each of these aspects covered.

Please note: You can customize the competition overview as per your preference.

Let’s consider you have chosen to view your competition for top 30 URLs, this is how your screen will look like -

Step 4 - In addition, the ‘Outlines’ tab covers an overview of the content brief creation process. For example, the ‘Outlines’ section fetches the heading and subheading tags (H2s and H3s) used by the top 30 ranking pages on your main topic. You can click on any H2 or H3 to add it to your content brief and add notes along with the headings. 

Once you have added the headings, you can hover your cursor over the H tags in the guidelines to edit or delete them.

Step 5 - The ‘Questions’ tab helps you research the queries of your target audiences and help you in social listening. You can use these questions for creating the frequently asked questions (FAQs) section in your content. The tab lists all the questions fetched from different sources such as Quora, Google, and Reddit focused on the topic. It includes questions and other popular forums. You can select any of these questions and add them to your FAQ section.

Additionally, our powerful AI also generates questions based on the topic that you can answer in your content.

Step 6 - The "Statistics" tab on Scalenut streamlines the process of making your content more convincing and trustworthy. Whether you're trying to make a point or bolster your argument, including statistics is one of the most effective ways. With the ever-growing competition in content marketing, incorporating statistics into your work can help set your content apart and make it more valuable to your audience.

Scalenut offers a vast array of research-based statistics to incorporate into your content. With the ability to search through these statistics with the convenient search box, you can easily find the data you need to support your argument. Adding statistics to your content will not only increase your credibility, but it will also create a more engaging and enriching experience for your reader.

Step 7 - The next tab in the Scalenut Article Writer is the ‘Citations’ section. You can click on it to get a list of all the popular citation sources on Google used by the top 30 ranking pages. You can get the exact page URL hyperlinked by different content pieces, its anchor text, and the frequency of the occurrence in the competition pieces.

You can click on the cited URLs to visit the page to understand their content. The citations can help to understand the reason behind citing those particular pages.

Step 8 - You can add the most vital aspect of a content brief through the ‘Key Terms’ tab. It showcases all the terms extracted by NLP fetched by the Scalenut tool from the top-ranking pages focused on your primary keyword. The NLP results can be sorted based on their frequency of occurrence on the pages, importance, and presence in H Tags. In addition, you can also check the examples of the usage of each keyword listed in a separate pane in the same tab.

On the right side of your screen, there is a sidebar where our powerful AI creates your content brief. You can view all your selections with respect to the H Tags, the references, and the FAQs. 

In addition, our tool also showcases the suggested number of images, word count, and the number of headings based on an analysis of the top-ranked pages in the SERP. You can also add extra keywords, references, and notes that the writer needs to keep in mind while writing the content piece.

Once you have effectively created the Content Brief, you can share it with your content creators or start your content creation process with our AI editor. 

Quick Tip: Click on the ‘Back to Editor’ option on the upper right corner of your screen to get back to the editor. Here, you can paste your content outline and start developing it. You can also use our powerful ‘Cruise Mode’ to form the first draft of your content within minutes.