When a draft comes back covered in comments, the writing is rarely the real issue. Somebody expected a different page. The brief is where that gets settled, while it is still cheap to change.
Ours fits on half a page and has six parts. Anything longer stops being read, which defeats the purpose.
1. The reader, described specifically
Not 'decision makers in mid-market firms'. Something like: an operations manager who has been asked to fix this by Friday, has done it once before at another company, and is checking whether the approach they remember is still current.
Specific readers produce specific writing. A vague reader produces a page that addresses everyone in general and no one in particular, which is the definition of generic content.
2. The question, in their words
Write the question the way the reader would type it, not the way your industry phrases it. If the query is 'why is my site slow on mobile', the page should not be titled 'Optimising Core Web Vitals for enterprise stacks'.
3. The promise
One sentence stating what the reader will be able to do after reading. If you cannot write it, the page has no reason to exist yet. This line usually becomes the standfirst.
4. The thing only we can say
This is the line that separates a useful page from a competent summary. It might be a number from your own operations, a mistake you watched a client make three times, a rule of thumb from someone who has done this for fifteen years.
5. The shape
Four to seven headings, in order, each with a sentence saying what it establishes. This is where you catch the article that spends 600 words on background before reaching the point.
It is also where search work belongs: headings that use the phrasing readers search with, and the sub-questions worth covering because people ask them next.
6. The links, in and out
Which existing pages will link to this one and with what anchor text, and which pages this one should point at. Deciding it in the brief means the cluster gets wired up as it is built, rather than in an audit six months later that nobody schedules.
What the brief deliberately leaves out
Word count, beyond a rough range. Keyword density targets, entirely. A prescribed tone adjective list, which never survives contact with an actual sentence.
The brief settles what the page is for. How it sounds is the writer's job, checked against the house style rather than against a set of adjectives in a brief.
Worth remembering
- Six fields: reader, question, promise, the thing only you can say, shape, links.
- An empty 'only we can say' field predicts a generic article. Interview someone instead.
- Agree the shape before the prose — that is where the expensive disagreements live.
- Decide internal links in the brief, not in an audit later.
