I just wrote my first creative brief for social media

Learn why copywriting is important and how to do it.

At the time of writing this I just wrote my first creative brief, I took a copywriting course on Domestika because I wanted to learn how to make great copy. I had fun doing so.

Copywriting is the skill of writing text for the purpose of advertising. The goal of the copywriter is to persuade the reader to take action. This action can be to purchase a product, subscribe to a newsletter or clicking on a link.

I watched the first unit of the course and started to get to work on the project given; which was to create a fictional brief for a campaign. This is what happened and what I learned.

Get your ideas out in front of you

Writing the brief

When writing the overview of a brief think about the context for your campaign, product or service. Think about the reason you are doing this. To do this, express the problem you have and what you are going to do to solve it. This would be called the objective.

The next step would be to understand your target audience. 

• Who are they? Consider age, social background, interests, and who is this campaign for. Try to narrow it down as best you can. 
• What problem do they have? Why will they see your product and say ‘Finally, someone solved that problem for me. Do you make things easier and more convenient for them?
• What’s their perception of the brand? Does the audience trust the brand? If you’re a small business what you will need to do is ask your customers what they think about your business.

Use unique selling points to develop the brief. Think about 3, but have a main point. What is it that you do differently from the competition?

Know. Feel. Do, This is what you want your audience to know, feel or do when they see your work. For example, they must Know you launched a new product, Feel confident in the quality or delivery of the said product and Do place an order with you right away through whichever means you provide.

Next, you need creative direction. Define the tone, localisation if needed and the context. Here’s an example using my blog site Novel Notes. 

Tone - Novel Notes would like to sound like that knowledge friend who is sharing his own personal experiences with an audience without sounding too formal but still having some structure.

Localisation - There would be moments where Trini dialect and experiences would be expressed. Especially when relating to a personal experience.

Context - Content does not need to align to any pre-existing work.

Finally, include the necessary recourse you would need to get the job done such as examples, brand guidelines, notes, tools etc.

I had a lot of fun doing this exercise and I encourage you to try as well. It helps you construct new ideas and create actionable plans. I will link a PDF file for my 1st draft of this exercise.

Copywriting Exercise PDF