Two ways a brief fails, and both look reasonable
Briefs fail short and they fail long. Writers see both, and the complaint is the same either way.
Here is the short one, as freelance writers describe it on their own forums: a brief that is precisely 1 sentence long, and the sentence is the article title. The same writers describe the other end: 100-plus pages of reading spread across slide decks, PDFs and links to blog posts, for a 1,000-word post, and a client who has to be told that nobody can read all that for the fee.
What both versions have in common, in the words of one of those writers: with a brief longer than the article, the writer has to make sacrifices, and the client never says which points matter most.
We found no survey measuring rework on B2B content briefs specifically, so we won’t quote one. What we’d bet on is that the draft that comes back “not quite right” almost always traces to 1 of 2 causes: the brief didn’t name the reader, or it changed after the draft started. Neither is a writing problem.
Below is what actually has to be in the brief. Five things. None of them take long.
One: the reader, named by job and by problem
“B2B decision makers” is not a reader. It’s a category, and it produces text written to nobody.
A reader is a job title with a problem attached. The maintenance manager at a plant who has been told to cut unplanned downtime by a fifth. The finance lead who has to approve a system nobody in finance will use. Those two want different articles about the same product.
Name the person and the pressure they’re under. One sentence does it, and you’re the only one who can write it.
“Reader: procurement lead at a 200 to 800 person manufacturer, told to consolidate 40 suppliers, no software budget approved yet.”
Two: the single question the piece answers
An article that answers one question well beats an article that gestures at six.
The question belongs in the brief in the reader’s words, not yours. Buyers don’t search for “digital transformation in procurement”. They search for what a supplier switch costs and how long it takes. If you have a target query, send it, and send it as a query rather than a theme. Which queries are worth writing for is a separate question, and it decides who arrives.
Say what the answer is, too, if you already know it. A writer who has to discover your position spends the first draft finding it, and you pay for that draft.
“Question: what does it cost us to keep the old system for another year? Our answer: less than the switch in year one, more by year three.”
Three: what you know that the internet doesn’t
This is the part clients skip, and it’s the part that decides whether the piece is worth publishing.
Public sources give a writer the same material your competitors have. The difference comes from your side: the failure you see in every deployment, the question every prospect asks on the second call, the number your engineers argue about. That material is not on any website.
Thirty minutes with one specialist is usually enough. For technical topics we ask for that call, we send the questions in advance, and we take the notes. If a call isn’t possible, a five-line email from the specialist still beats another public report. When the specialist is your customer rather than your colleague, the collection job is bigger.
“Ask our field engineer why the first commissioning always slips. Nobody writes about it.”
Four: the claims you can’t make
Every regulated or contested industry has lines the marketing team knows and the writer doesn’t.
Send them up front. Numbers you’re not allowed to publish. Competitors you don’t name. Certifications you can mention and the ones still in progress. Whether a customer can be identified at all, or only by sector and size.
This is cheaper as a constraint than as a correction. A claim removed at brief stage costs nothing. The same claim removed at review costs a round of edits, and on an article that round is the only one in the price.
“Don’t name the incumbent vendor. Don’t publish the 30% figure, it’s under NDA. ISO certification is in progress, so don’t say certified.”
Five: what done looks like
Format, length, where it publishes, and who signs it off. Four lines.
Length matters more than clients expect. A 1,200 word article and an 1,800 word article are different pieces, not the same piece at two sizes. Our own blog articles run 1,200 to 1,800 words, and we agree which end before the outline.
Say who approves the draft, and how many people that is. One reviewer and one revision round match each other. Four reviewers with veto rights is a different job for any writer, and it’s better named in the brief than discovered in the round.
“1,400 words, our blog, approved by me alone, live 12 September.”
If that date can move, say so. A writer plans around a live date, and a piece held for six weeks needs its numbers checked again before it goes out.
What to leave out
Two things make a brief worse.
The first is a pile of reading. A hundred pages attached to a 1,000 word job is not context, it’s an unpaid research assignment, and the writer will guess which parts matter. If material is genuinely required, mark the three pages that are.
The second is a paragraph of tone adjectives. “Authoritative but approachable, professional yet human” describes almost every B2B blog on the internet. Send two links instead: one piece you wish you’d published, one you think is bad. A writer can measure those. An adjective costs you the revision round, spent explaining what you meant by it.
What the brief buys you
The difference shows up in the revision round.
With it, the first draft argues your position, cites the sources, and gets the constraints right. The revision round then handles judgement calls: emphasis, an example that lands wrong, a section that should be shorter. That’s what one round is enough for.
Without it, the first draft is a proposal about what the article might be. The revision round gets spent discovering the brief, and the second draft is where the real work starts. On a fixed-scope article there is no second round, so the piece ships as whatever the first correction turned it into.
Our own brief is five questions by email, and it takes about ten minutes to answer. Send the format, topic and deadline through the contact page and the questions come back with the quote. The blog writing service page lists what comes back and when: an outline for approval, then 1,200 to 1,800 words in five working days, sources in the text, one revision round.
A ten-minute brief, in full
Copy this, fill it, send it. It’s shorter than the email most people write instead.
- Reader. Job title, company size, the pressure they’re under.
- Question. The one thing the piece answers, in their words. Target query if you have one.
- Our position. What we think the answer is, in a sentence.
- Inside knowledge. One specialist, thirty minutes, or five lines by email.
- Constraints. Claims we can’t make, names we can’t use, numbers under NDA.
- Done. Length, format, approver, publication date.
- Two links. One you admire, one you don’t.
Five things plus two optional lines, and the first five are the ones we ask. A writer who gets this back can start on the outline the same day.
Fill the seven lines above and send them with the topic. A price and a delivery date come back within one working day.