How to write the perfect social media creative brief
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What is a social media brief?
A social media brief is a living document that details what’s involved in any given campaign, providing direction for creative teams and explaining the client’s vision and campaign goals. Seems straightforward, but is it necessary? We believe that it is essential to get one in place before campaign activity starts. It will help to ensure things run smoothly on both sides so that all of the deliverables are hit and KPIs can be reached. As a method of communication and a way of collecting information from both sides, a social media brief is designed to be clear and transparent, so that there are no inconsistencies in what is being delivered. A comprehensive brief should clearly define project deliverables, audiences, messaging and deadlines.
How important is a social media brief?
Not only does a social media brief save time in the short term, but it also saves time in the long term as it will help you avoid lengthy revisions and endless feedback rounds. A brief can greatly improve the relationship between agency and client by ensuring objectives are met and the campaign is set up for success. It helps to avoid confusion and can be delivered accurately against a given scope of work for complete agreement of what’s included.
Creative briefs are also essential to ensure you deliver exceptional work that fits within the brief, thus meeting client needs. With no brief, there are too many chances of straying from client expectations. Creative briefs also ensure everyone involved in the project is on the same page and working within the same parameters.
The importance of creative briefing for social assets
When it comes to social assets, which includes both still assets and video assets and may also include copy, a creative brief will help define exact deliverables. The brief will ensure that the creative is designed to meet specific channel and campaign objectives, as well as help the agency create assets that incorporate brand guidelines and TOV. What does this mean? That creative performance is more likely to succeed against KPIs and that the creative will accurately reflect a brand’s look and feel as well as deliver on brand messaging.
Should the creative brief be separate from the overall brief for campaigns?
Creative needs dedicated feedback from client and should be easy to respond to in a shared folder that both client and agency have access to. Revisions may need to be made, which is important to the overall success of the campaign and ensuring this is done correctly and in a timely manner can make or break a campaign. Creative should not sit alongside strategy and concepts, as these should inform the campaign and help define the deliverables.
How to write a creative brief
When writing a creative brief, one page should be sufficient making it easy to understand without overloading with too much information. This can vary depending on the scale of the project or campaign.
Step 1: Define the background and objective of the project. What is the main goal and objective for the campaign? Is there a problem that needs solving e.g. growing an audience on TikTok? This will establish a starting point for the project which leads nicely to step 2…
Step 2: Who is your target audience?
Step 3: Define messaging.
Step 4: Establish deliverables
Other questions to ask when writing a creative brief:
How are you measuring success?
What is the timeline?
How will the content be used?
Where will the content go? (Which channels will they be placed on?)
Does the content correspond with any other projects?
Are there any resources to be provided to aid the team?
Being as detailed as possible with a creative brief helps to avoid further questions down the line. The project should uncover the purpose, timeline and audience it’ll target. Whilst this can be outlined in a few sentences, it’s best to divide this information into sections.
By breaking it down, it helps your team align with the project's expectations and goals. To better understand what the client or company's objectives are for the project and what it should achieve in regards to success. Is it towards better awareness of the brand? Bettering a consumer's buyer's journey?
Being on top of current trends and knowing what your competitors are doing creates advantages for you and your team.
By referring to this data it allows you to test and learn from projects you’ve seen. Whether they’ve been a huge success or failed in design or strategy. By providing a list of competitors with similar services/products or offerings can allow your team to analyse ways on how they can reach the objectives of the project and identify quick wins to get ahead.
Step 5: Defining the TOV
Defining the tone of voice creates the overall attitude, and this needs to be consistent through every creative element that’s being formed.
Copywriters need to know any small details that will aid them to provide an appropriate voice for your audience. This could be as simply as defining whether the theme is based on a holiday or sale period. Providing these ‘small details’ helps graphic designers portray the tone and voice through colours and composition when it comes to producing any creative assets.
Within this section of the brief, it’s also crucial to describe how the audience currently responds to the brand. While some prefer more formal language, others may engage more in a friendly and approachable tone. If you’re struggling on how to illustrate this to your team, break it down and make sure to outline the basics such as “Our brand voice is casual and approachable as it speaks to Gen-z audiences within this campaign, it will be live during the Easter holidays.”
Here’s a quick how-to guide to write the perfect social media brief:
State exactly what the deliverables are
Include deadlines that take feedback and revisions into account
What is the messaging?
Who is the audience?
What channel will the creative go live on?
Is the copy provided? If yes, it’s best to include it in the brief.
Is there any inspiration / examples of content previously seen that might work for this campaign?
Are there any other considerations?
What other activity will this run alongside?
Getting the perfect social media brief in place before a campaign starts is crucial, both for the client and the agency. It may be difficult, but it can be done! Contact us if you need help creating this document and ensuring it meets your campaign structure needs.
Still having trouble with how to start a creative brief? Here’s our template to get you started. With this guide you’re able to adjust and tailor it as needed for your own projects.
