If you commission content, you need to understand the useful material already available before deciding what the new piece should add. Content Types finds existing material in your market by format: how-to guides, glossaries, industry reports, FAQs, resource lists and others. Use it to see what readers can already find before deciding what your page should contribute.
The report combines the selected content type with the campaign's market terms. Selecting a persona changes the market context. Search Engine Results, Prospect Index and News Index remain separate views.
Read for what the format requires
Each format serves a purpose. Check whether existing pages fulfill that purpose before planning yours.
- A how-to needs an executable sequence and the conditions that change it. Most published ones list steps without the conditions, which is where a better version is available.
- An industry report needs a defined dataset and a stated method. A report that does not say what it counted is an opinion piece with charts.
- A glossary needs precise definitions and the distinction most likely to cause confusion.
- A resource list needs selection criteria, or it is a link dump.
The gap between what a format requires and what the existing pages deliver is where your contribution goes.
What each view supplies
Search results show collected rankings for the campaign's queries, which tells you what currently performs. Indexed documents provide page text for closer inspection. News results identify recent treatment of a subject, within the index's two-month retention window.
That retention matters here: an absence in the news view means nothing recent, not nothing ever.
Build a brief with a specific purpose
Record three things: the reader's question, the answer your business can provide, and the evidence the writer must obtain.
The third is what most briefs omit and what decides whether the piece is worth publishing. "Write about maintenance contracts" produces a general article. "Explain what a maintenance contract should exclude, using the three exclusions that caused disputes for our customers last year" produces something nobody else can write.
Use Content FAQs for the related questions, and Content Optimizer once an actual draft exists.
The judgment this research supports
An existing page with a weak answer is a reason to investigate the topic. It is not sufficient reason to publish another version without better information.
Before commissioning, identify what you can add that existing pages lack. If the answer is a different arrangement of the same information, the piece will read that way.
When writing the brief, name the proposed contribution and the facts or experience that let your writer support it.
See Content FAQs, finding content ideas, or checking the draft.