How to use an assignment brief to make any business writing project 10x easier
When I worked for a PR agency, I would occasionally get a writing "assignment" in the form of a one-line Slack message or a very short email. Sometimes, it would just be a brief mention in the midst of a client call. The PR team would be talking about some technical topic, say the importance of zero-trust cybersecurity strategies, and realize that there was a somewhat timely tie-in, like a government directive mentioning zero-trust that had come out the month before. It was too late to pitch the news media about the client's relevance to the directive, but it wasn't too late to comment on it, so the team asked me to write a byline – an opinion piece in the voice of the client's CEO that we could pitch to news outlets as a piece of commentary relevant to their audience's interests.
No problem, I always said. But the next step was tricky. If I jumped in and started to do research, outlining, and writing, there was a good chance I might go down the wrong track. I would only find out a week or two later when I delivered an outline or the first draft – and the client hit the roof. Or I might find out a month later, when we were deep into revisions, that the client wanted the article to include an important aspect they forgot to mention. These situations inevitably led to extra work and team angst. Sometimes the client would question whether I even knew their business. I did – but because they hadn't been clear about what they wanted, I didn't know which aspects to focus on. I might be a zero-trust cybersecurity expert, but I'm not a mind reader.
So I always asked for clarification with questions like these: Who is the audience we're writing for? What publication do you hope will publish this? What's your goal for the piece? What kind of outcome would make you thrilled?
If your job is to come up with written content to address your company's or your clients' needs, as mine was, you probably recognize this situation. Someone needs some content, and they ask you to do it for them. However, they may not be clear about the goals, audience, and other requirements. Even though they think you understand the assignment, and you think you do, too, there is always a possibility that each of you has a different, unspoken idea about what it is.
That is, unless you get explicit about exactly what you need to write, why, for whom, and what specific elements and details it needs to include.
The purpose of an assignment brief is to make things so clear that there's no room for misunderstanding. A good assignment brief will create alignment between you and the people requesting writing from you.
It's based on a tool that's ubiquitous in advertising and design: the “creative brief.” A creative brief is a core document that establishes the client's goals and design parameters, key elements to include, the story the team is trying to convey, how that story will be used, and so on.
An assignment brief is the same idea, but for written copy: It’s a document that specifies what we’re trying to produce and gives the writer or content team clear directions on what to write.
As it turns out, assignment briefs are astonishingly rare in the real world – at least the parts of the business writing world I've been part of. Maybe it's because the writing process seems so much less structured than creative design. Maybe it's because people aren't used to thinking of writing projects as requiring the same kind of collaborative complexity as design projects do. Whatever the reason, people sometimes find it a little odd that you're getting so formal and pedantic. Clients often bypass the assignment brief or fill them out only partially, leaving key aspects undefined.
That's okay. The point of an assignment brief is to put some structure around the conversation with a client. Even if your client never fills out briefs the way you've asked them to, you can still create one, then show it to them and confirm that it matches what they're expecting.
Here's how to create and use an assignment brief that will save you a tremendous amount of time and anxiety in any writing project.
The basic format of an assignment brief
An assignment brief can be formal, with a template and multiple boxes that someone needs to fill out before the writing can begin. However, it can also be as simple as a Google document with a short paragraph describing the assignment.
The degree of formality you’ll need will vary depending on your organization. Larger organizations with more complicated review processes and many stakeholders will benefit from an assignment template that spells out what the content team needs to deliver optimal results. A more informal assignment brief may be sufficient for smaller organizations or small content teams with good working relationships established with the internal customers of their content production.
Whatever form the brief takes, it’s indispensable to have something concrete that all stakeholders can refer to when creating, revising, and finalizing the content product.
If your clients don’t give you an assignment brief or are reluctant to work with you on creating one, don’t push it — make it for yourself instead. The idea here is not to force clients to fill out a form before working with you, but rather to create some structure for a conversation with the client. So, if you don’t like the idea of showing a brief to your client, set up a conversation instead. Ask them questions about what they want, and use their answers to fill out the brief as you listen to their responses. Then, show it to them later and ask for their feedback.
It’s useful for the brief to include a few key elements:
- Working title
- Short description of the content you’re going to create
- Purpose/goal of the piece
- Expected word count
- Target publication date
- Target publication channel (website, news site, social network, etc)
- Production timeline with key milestones
- Team members responsible for this assignment
- Supporting notes and links to resources
That last piece is crucial. The more resources the assignment brief contains, the more valuable it will be to the writing and editing team. But you don’t have to add everything all at once.
A brief often starts with a working title and a simple one-paragraph abstract. As the team discovers more details about the assignment and as they do research, they can add notes and links to the document. Eventually, it may even include the outline you'll create in the next major step of the POWERS process for content creation.
At that point, the assignment brief will have become a comprehensive resource for creating the content, a one-stop shop for kicking off, writing, and reviewing the draft. In this way, the assignment brief serves a dual purpose: It’s got the assignment at the top, but it’s also the shared notes document, with all relevant notes and links below.
It’s helpful if your assignment brief lives in a cloud-based, online document system, such as Google Docs, so the team can update it and add to it as the project evolves.
A shared cloud document is not always possible, for instance, when you are working with clients who want to receive Word documents attached to emails. In such cases, it’s okay for the assignment brief to be less dynamic. If you are in a situation where you need to get executive sign-off, having a static document can serve as a kind of permanent record.
Template
The assignment brief in action
Once you have an assignment brief or abstract, how do you use it? The first step is to circulate it among the stakeholders and subject matter experts whose support and buy-in are needed for the project. A well-crafted assignment is also a good description of the writing project and its goals, which means it’s just the thing you need to win approval.
Share it with your client stakeholders, adding a note explaining that the brief (or the abstract) outlines the content that you’re proposing to create. Explain that you’d like their input before proceeding so you can ensure that the draft you share with them later will be as close to their expectations as possible. Give them a clear deadline when you need to hear back from them about the assignment. And give them an idea of when to expect a draft from you.
You will probably need to incorporate their feedback into the assignment brief and revise it until your stakeholders are satisfied that it represents what they are looking for.
If your clients don't take the time to review or respond asynchronously, you can schedule a meeting with them or bring the brief to your next regularly scheduled meeting. Put the brief onscreen and walk through it with them in real time, collecting their feedback and getting their approval to move forward with the project as defined.
Once all the stakeholders are satisfied with the brief, you should be able to deliver it to a writer or begin working on the next stage of the process yourself.
If it’s been well crafted, the assignment brief will now include everything you will need to get started on the project, including background materials, the goal of the project, guidance on tone, the expected word length, and the deadline or deadlines you will need to meet.
What's next? Not the writing – don't start creating your first draft just yet. There's one more step before that: Organizing and outlining.