How to draft a content brief

What is a content brief?

A content brief is a plan for one blog post, written before anyone starts writing. It tells you four things:

• The search phrase to aim for — the words a buyer would type when they have this problem.
• The title the post should run under.
• The questions the post should answer, in order, so it reads like a real article and not a list of keywords.
• The sources behind each question, so every section is backed by something real instead of guesswork.

A brief is a plan, not finished writing. It's the thing you hand to a writer — or to your own AI writing tool — so the draft starts from solid ground. You still write the post; the brief makes sure you're writing the right one.

What do I need before I start?

Three things:

1. A connected dist0 project. This is the project dist0 set up from your website, with the subreddits it watches for you.
2. The dist0 Slack bot in your workspace. Everything below happens by talking to it, the same way you'd message a teammate.
3. At least one buyer pain dist0 has found. dist0 reads Reddit for you and groups what people complain about into pains. A brief is built from one of those pains, so you want at least one waiting in your latest email or Slack summary.

If you have all three, you're ready to ask for a brief.

How do I ask for a brief?

Send the Slack bot a message naming the pain or topic you want a post about. Plain words are fine — you don't need to phrase it like a search term. For example:

Then give it a few minutes. While you wait, the bot is doing the work a careful writer would do first:

• It reads the actual Reddit posts behind that pain to see what people are really asking, in their own words.
• It picks a search phrase a buyer would type when they have this problem.
• It checks how hard that phrase is to rank for, so you aim at something you can realistically win.
• It researches each section across the web and pulls real sources for every point.

The bot tells you what it's doing step by step on the same message, so you can watch it work.

What's in the brief I get back?

The brief comes back as a single message with everything a writer needs:

• A recommended search phrase, plus a few alternatives — so you can swap if you'd rather aim somewhere else.
• A recommended title, plus a few alternatives.
• The related Reddit posts the brief was built from, so you can read the raw voices yourself.
• A section-by-section outline — each section is a question the post should answer, with the sources to back it up.

Here's the shape of a brief, trimmed down:

Recommended search phrase: how to onboard a new marketing team
Other options:
- new team onboarding checklist
- onboarding remote marketers

Recommended title: A calm first-week plan for onboarding your marketing team
Other options:
- The onboarding checklist that actually sticks

Related Reddit posts:
- reddit.com/r/marketing/...
- reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/...

## What makes the first week so hard?
New hires drown in tools and context. Cover the three things that
overwhelm them first.
  - Source: ...
  - Source: ...

## What should a first-week plan include?
...

Each section header is a question, and the note under it says what to cover and where the facts came from. That's the part a writer turns into real paragraphs.

How do I refine it?

You don't start over. If something's off, you reply to the Slack bot in plain words and it changes that one thing in place — the rest of the brief stays as it is. A few examples:

• Rename the title: "Use the second title instead" or "Call it something punchier."
• Tighten a section: "Shorten the second section" or "Reword the intro."
• Go deeper on one section: "Go deeper on the pricing section — it's thin."
• Try a different search phrase: "Aim for 'remote team onboarding' instead."
• Redo it from scratch: "Start over."

Most changes come back in seconds, because the bot only reworks the part you asked about. Going deeper on a section or switching the search phrase takes a little longer, since the bot does fresh research for that change.

How do I turn the brief into a post?

The brief is the prompt, not the article. When it's the way you want it, take the whole thing and either:

• Paste it into your AI writing tool as the instructions for the draft, or
• Hand it to a writer as their outline and source list.

Either way, the brief does the hard part — deciding what the post is about, who it's for, and what each section needs to prove. The writing is the easy part once that's settled.