The Content Creation Guide: Making Copywriters’ Lives Easier
There are a lot of templates on the web to aid in the content strategy process. What I often see overlooked is a template for the content strategist to turn over to copywriters that has all the accumulated information they need to write the content.
While I have seen a version of this (with less emphasis on the messaging) called a “Content Template,” I have called my document a “Content Creation Guide” to distinguish it from CMS templates.
The content strategist has hopefully been active during all the phases of the content process and been privy to all the marketing and UX decisions that were made, as well as the research. The Content Creation Guide provides all the relevant info about content that has been identified for each page.
It can include: description of the page content, audience, primary message, key phrases, keywords, source content, word count and sample content. This has been used in ad agencies with digital arms and less so in digital agencies, probably because ad agencies focus more on the messaging in general.
Below is a link to the template I use and an example of a filled-out template.
A copywriter told me that this Guide made her 110% happier and 90% more efficient.
What are your thoughts?