Are content briefs needed?

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I never used content briefs before. I usually send a .xlsx to the writers with the keyword and notes on what to do. The articles that resulted are just fine IMO. However, I see tons of stuff about content briefs now and think it's all a bunch of BS. It seems like busy work to create the first 20% of an article for a writer, who will then fill in the other 80%. What's your opinion on this? For me, I just need an article to be about a topic and the writer can write it anyway they wish, as long as it's about the topic and on-topic and meet the word count. That's all.
 
I think it depends on the keyword. If you want to write a round up review about “best web hosting 2022” I have a hard time imagining how a writer could write about such a topic without a content brief. For informational posts (What is...? How to...), I can image that a keyword without brief could be sufficient.

I was struggling with writing way too long content briefs (sometimes 1000-2000 words briefs) as my niche is quite technical, and I had the fear that the writer might miss important facts. However, I now reduce the content briefs to headlines and bullet points.
 
It depends.

If you work directly with writers (have your own writing team):

New hires: you should send content briefs as part of the training process.
Old writers: content briefs are unnecessary most times. They already know what you like, how to structure content, e.t.c.

If you work with a content agency: Content briefs are absolutely necessary.
 
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