Create Content Brief

Last updated: December 11, 2025

The Create Content Brief agent generates a complete, structured content brief tailored to your topic, audience, and brand. This brief includes recommended angles, headers, research insights, platform considerations, and editorial guidance—built using Profound’s full content research and analysis pipeline.

This agent uses the same intelligence that powers Profound’s Content Creation product. Behind the scenes, it performs multi-step research, citation analysis, AI-answer pattern detection, and outline generation to produce a brief that is both strategically sound and optimized for AEO.

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See this document for additional instructions on adding this node to a workflow, and this document for a full list of available nodes.

When to use this agent

Use Create Content Brief when you need:

  • A ready-to-use content brief for writers or downstream article generation

  • A deep understanding of how AI systems currently answer a topic or prompt

  • Strategic recommendations informed by real citation patterns

  • Structured guidance for content teams or LLM-driven article generation

  • AEO-optimized outlines that map to user intent and on-platform behavior

This agent is ideal for launching a new article, planning an editorial strategy, or building automated content pipelines.

Agent inputs

Configuring the agent presents the following fields:

Topic (required)

The primary subject of the article.

Examples:

  • “AI-driven supply chain optimization”

  • “What is programmatic SEO?”

  • “How to create an AEO content strategy”

This topic anchors the research and shapes the outline.

Company Name (optional)

Your company or client name.
Used to contextualize the brief (e.g., tone, positioning, or brand relevance).

Company Domain (required)

Your company’s website domain (e.g., https://example.com).
This is used for internal link recommendations and context alignment.

Article Title (optional)

If you’ve already generated a title—often via the Article Title Suggestion agent—you may provide it here.
If not provided, the agent will still generate a fully informed brief.

Audience Segment (optional)

The target audience for the content.

Examples:

  • “Marketing managers at B2B SaaS companies”

  • “Healthcare procurement teams”

  • “Small business owners”

This influences tone, examples, and depth.

Content Type (optional)

The category or format of content to produce.
Default is General, but other options include Listicle, Blog Post, and Thought Leadership.

Target Platforms (optional)

Select which AI platforms the content should optimize for.
Examples include ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, etc.

This ensures the analysis aligns with how specific platforms cite, structure, and present information.

Target Prompts (optional)

These are user prompts your content should aim to answer or optimize for.

Examples:

  • “What is AI visibility?”

  • “How does supply chain automation work?”

This field enhances intent alignment and platform-specific optimization.

Citations (optional)

List any manually provided sources you want the agent to incorporate into the research process.
This is helpful when working with proprietary or must-use sources.

Output Label (required)

Assign a descriptive label for the brief, such as:

  • content_brief

  • structured_brief

  • brief_output

How the agent works behind the scenes

Although it runs as a single step, the Create Content Brief agent executes a sophisticated, multi-stage workflow similar to the full Profound Content Creation pipeline. The internal process includes:

1. Input normalization and context setting

The agent prepares all user-provided inputs, including topic, audience, company context, title, prompts, and platforms.
It adapts the workflow based on what is or isn’t provided.

2. Target prompt and platform mapping

If target prompts or platforms are included, the agent tailors research and outline strategy toward:

  • How AI systems currently respond

  • Which sources they cite

  • Which answer patterns are most common

  • Where gaps or opportunities exist

3. Citation retrieval and aggregation

The agent fetches top citations across relevant platforms based on your topic, prompts, or keywords.
This includes:

  • Frequently cited sources

  • High-authority domains

  • Content types used in AI answers

  • Structural patterns (lists, definitions, frameworks)

These citations form the core research dataset.

4. Deep research analysis

Using the aggregated citations, the agent:

  • Extracts themes

  • Identifies recurring angles, frameworks, and definitions

  • Detects gaps between competitor content and user intent

  • Surfaces authoritative signals and trusted sources

  • Highlights common misconceptions or ambiguous areas

This ensures the brief is grounded in real-world informational ecosystems.

5. Content brief assembly

The agent synthesizes the research into a structured content brief, which typically includes:

  • Content summary — what the article should aim to communicate

  • Key angle recommendations — strategic viewpoints based on research

  • Suggested headers & structure — optimized for readability and AEO

  • Research highlights — distilled insights from citations

  • Target audience notes — tone, complexity, and messaging guidelines

  • Platform considerations — how to align with specific AI platforms

  • Target prompt alignment — ensuring user-intent match

  • Internal linking strategy — recommended internal pages from your domain

  • Call-to-action or conversion notes (when appropriate)

6. Final formatting and delivery

The agent formats the final deliverable as a clean, ready-to-use content brief.

Output

The output is a complete, polished, and AEO-ready content brief.
Writers, editors, and downstream workflow steps (e.g., Generate Article) can use it immediately.

The brief is designed to be:

  • Structurally sound

  • Research-backed

  • Optimized for AI answer engines

  • Tailored to your audience and brand

  • Ready for production workflows

Example usage

1. Full content creation pipeline

  1. Generate a title using Article Title Suggestion

  2. Pass title into Create Content Brief

  3. Feed the resulting brief into Generate Article

  4. Score the output with AEO Content Scorecard

2. Helpful for editorial workshops

Use the content brief to guide collaboration between strategists, writers, and SMEs.

3. Automated content operations

Run recurring workflows that generate briefs for:

  • Product categories

  • New topics in your SEO roadmap

  • Common user prompts

  • Competitor queries

Best practices

  • Provide a Company Domain to enable internal linking insights.

  • Use Target Prompts to boost alignment with AI-answer behavior.

  • Add Target Platforms to tailor the brief to specific citation ecosystems.

  • Pair with Answer Engine Insights for a data-driven pre-brief stage.

  • Use clear, consistent output labels to chain into downstream agents.