Anyone who has managed a team of writers knows the importance of providing clear directions before the writing begins. Too little direction and the finished work can end up very different from what you had intended.

Typically, writers are given a specific topic, or search query to focus on. While writers will (and should) spend time doing research, Frase Content Briefs give your writers a strategic head start. This translates into less time doing manual research and more time spent focused on quality and creativity.

Content briefs can be a powerful SEO tool. Unfortunately, being a good writer and ranking in search are not always correlated.  Well researched content briefs can provide your content creators with a strategic guide to create topically-optimized content.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8IJzMeIhnA

Step-by-Step Guide to Create Content Briefs in Frase:

1. Create new document

Create a document and select Content Brief (the third type).

Once you’ve selected Content Brief, there are 2 variables you can use to customize your brief:

(1) Web or News: you can choose to create a brief for the most relevant results in search engines (“Web”), or for recent news (“News”).

(2) Search query: the query you want your content brief to focus on.

2. Data processing

Frase will take about 10-12 seconds to analyze the top 10 search results for your query.

3. Automated content brief

Once Frase is done processing your query, you will land in the Frase editor, and the content brief will render in your document. On the right side, you will have access to complementary resources you can use to enrich your brief further (summaries, topics, headlines, etc).

Frase-generated content briefs have some predefined sections:

  • Overview
  • Sources
  • Topics
  • Highlights for Topics
  • Summaries
  • Links

Lets explain each section:

Overview:

High-level data points such as average word count, links per source, prominent title topics, and must-include topics.

Screenshot of the “Overview” brief section

Sources:

List of the top search results for your query.

Screenshot of the “Sources” brief section

Topics:

List of the 20 top most important topics. Frase analyzes the full text all search results, extract key topics, and sorts them appearance. The final result is a list of topics you should consider incorporating into your new content.

Highlights for Topics:

For each of the top topics, Frase highlights 2 paragraphs where the topic is mentioned.

Screenshot of the “Highlights for Topics” brief section

Statistics:

Frase identifies sentences that mention facts and statistics.

Screenshot of the “Statistics” brief section

Summaries:

Frase generates a bulleted summary for each source.

Screenshot of the “Summaries” brief section

Links:

Frase analyzes all the links referenced across top results.

Screenshot of the “Links” brief section

4. Enrich your content brief

To further enrich the content brief, you can browse sources available in the right panel and add information.

For example, you may want to add an outline by analyzing the headlines used by these sources. If you click “Headlines” in the right pane, you can quickly browse headlines and sub-headlines, and create your own list of headlines as an outline.

Screenshot of the “Headlines” feature

5. Export

To share the content brief with your team, click “Export” and then “Share Link”. You can also export the brief in various formats, such as Word, PDF, or HTML, among others.

Why should you use research-driven content briefs?

  • Get a quick high-level understanding of what top search results are saying for your query of interest.
  • Accelerate your content creation process by directly incorporating ideas from your brief.
  • If you are a content marketing manager or strategist, help your writers meet your expectations.