How do you write a brief for a page someone else will write?

How do you write a brief for a page someone else will write?

Give the writer the reader, the claim, the proof, and the structure, in that order. One page is enough. If your brief only contains a title, a word count, and some keywords, you have not written a brief, you have placed an order and you will get back whatever the internet already says.

I write briefs for work I hand over and I receive briefs from clients, and the difference between a good and bad one is visible in the first draft every time. A good brief removes guessing. A bad brief transfers your uncertainty to someone with less context than you.

Here is the format I use, written for the situation where you are commissioning one page from a freelancer, an agency, or an AI assisted process.

Why do most briefs fail?

Because they describe the artefact instead of the job. Word count, tone, and keyword list describe what the page should look like. None of them tell a writer what the reader is trying to decide, which is the only thing that determines whether the page works.

The second failure is hidden knowledge. You know why this page matters, which objection it settles, and which claim you are allowed to make. If that context stays in your head, the writer fills the gap with generic material, and you end up rewriting it yourself while paying someone else.

The third is too many goals. A brief asking one page to rank, convert, educate, and announce a launch produces a page that does none of them. One page, one job, and the brief should say which.

What does the brief need to say about the reader?

Name one reader in one sentence, with their situation and the decision in front of them. Not a persona with demographics, a situation. Someone who has just inherited a site they did not build, or someone comparing two tools with a deadline this week.

Then add what that reader already knows and what they are sceptical about. Those two lines save more rewriting than anything else in the brief, because they tell the writer where to start and which claims will bounce off.

I also include the exact question the reader would type or ask out loud. Having that sentence in the brief does two jobs. It anchors the writer on the real problem, and it becomes the page's opening question, which is the same discipline I use on my own pieces.

What does it need to say about the claim?

State the single thing the page asserts, and state what the writer may not say. Your claim is the reason the page exists, and your prohibitions are what keep it out of trouble. Both belong in writing.

The prohibition list is the part people skip and regret. No comparisons naming competitors, no statistics unless sourced, no implication that a feature exists before it ships, no customer names without permission. A writer who does not know your constraints will write something plausible and you will find it after publishing.

I go further and mark which sentences are allowed to be strong. If your position is genuinely contrarian, say so in the brief, because otherwise a careful writer will hedge it into mush. A brief that permits a strong opinion gets a page worth reading, and it is why a clear position on who you are for makes every downstream brief easier to write.

How specific should the structure guidance be?

Specify the questions, not the paragraphs. List the six to ten questions the page must answer, in the order a reader would ask them, and let the writer decide the sentences. Question level structure is the most useful constraint in a brief and the most commonly missing one.

This works because questions carry intent. Telling a writer to include a section on implementation produces filler. Telling them the section answers how long this takes on an existing site produces something a reader can use.

Say what shape the page is too. A step by step walkthrough, a decision guide, a comparison, or an opinion piece all imply different structures, and a mismatch between the shape you wanted and the shape you got is the most expensive kind of rewrite. For page types with established conventions, point at an example, as with what belongs on a services page rather than a homepage.

What source material do you have to supply?

Everything you would expect the page to reference. Product details, real numbers with their source, the customer quotes you have permission to use, and links to the internal pages you want referenced. A writer cannot verify your business for you.

This is where AI assisted writing goes wrong most often. Given no sources, a model produces confident sentences with plausible numbers, and those numbers are the fastest way to damage your own credibility. If a figure is not in the brief with a link, the brief should say the page must not contain a figure.

Include the internal links you want used, as URLs, with a note on what each one covers. Writers guess badly at internal linking because they cannot see your archive, and this one line turns a disconnected page into part of your site. It also stops the page repeating something you already published, which is worth checking with a content inventory before you hire a writer.

How do you brief for search and AI answers without keyword stuffing?

Give the target question, two or three real phrasings people use, and the consensus terms the topic requires. Then tell the writer to answer the question in the first forty to sixty words of each section. That structure does more for visibility than any density instruction.

Avoid keyword counts entirely. They produce awkward sentences and they optimise for a version of search that stopped existing years ago. What actually helps is using the words the industry uses, once, correctly, in a page that answers the question directly.

Also brief for the answer being quotable. A short, plain, self contained sentence that states the answer can be lifted into a search result or an AI answer, while a clever paragraph that depends on the previous three cannot. Ask for both, in that order.

What does the review step look like?

Review against the brief rather than against your taste. Check that the reader is addressed, the claim is made, every figure has its source, the questions are answered, and the links are present. Style feedback comes after those five, and only then.

Separating the two makes feedback usable. A writer who receives fifteen line edits and no structural note will produce the same structural problem next time. A writer told that section four does not answer its question will fix the thing that mattered.

I keep one hard rule at this stage. Any unsourced number comes out, no negotiation. It is the cheapest editorial policy there is and it prevents the single failure that costs the most trust, which is publishing a confident figure nobody can trace.

How long should the brief itself take?

Twenty to thirty minutes for a page you care about. If it takes longer, you are writing the page rather than briefing it. If it takes five, you are about to spend an hour rewriting a draft, and you will do that every time you commission something.

The economics are straightforward. A brief is the cheapest place to make decisions, because changing a sentence in a brief costs nothing and changing a published page costs a review cycle. Every decision you defer to the draft stage gets more expensive.

Reuse helps too. Keep your standing prohibitions, your brand vocabulary, and your source rules as a permanent block you paste into every brief, so the only per page work is the reader, the claim, and the questions.

What should you do next?

Take the next page you plan to commission and write four lines. The reader and their decision, the one claim, the questions in order, and the sources with links. Send that instead of a title and see how much better the first draft is.

If you want a second pair of eyes on a brief before you send it, or on a draft that came back wrong, that is a quick and useful conversation. Reach out with the brief and I will tell you what a writer will get stuck on.