Five stages, and who does what at each

A brief is a short written agreement about one piece: which of the three kinds it is, the one question or one service it covers, the reader it is aimed at, and the running order it will follow. It also names the person who will be interviewed and says what they are expected to know.

Nothing is written until the brief is agreed, because a piece written against a vague idea has to be rewritten against the real one, and a rewrite is not a revision. The brief is also what a revision is measured against later: a change that the brief called for is a revision, and a change of mind about what the piece is for is a new brief.

You provide the expert. That is the part of this arrangement worth being clear about: I do not have your engineers, your surveyors or your account managers, and a page written without them reads like every other page written without them. The interview is where the material comes from, so the person you put in the call is the single biggest thing that decides how good the piece is.

The call is recorded so that I can quote it accurately, and the recording is used for that piece and kept no longer than the work needs. Each package allows a set amount of interview time, and the time is used for the interview itself, not for briefing or for reviewing drafts.

If the person you nominated cannot make the call, it is moved rather than replaced with guesswork. A piece written without the interview would be a piece written from what is already published elsewhere, which is exactly what the site is meant to be better than.

After the interview you get a short list: the claims the piece intends to make, the figures it intends to quote, and the names it intends to use. You confirm each one, correct it or strike it out. This is the second thing the arrangement depends on - I write the material, you stand behind what it asserts about your business.

Anything you do not confirm does not go in. It is not softened, hedged or replaced with a rounder number: it is left out, and the piece is written without it. That rule is why a case study can end up shorter than expected, and it is the reason the pieces are safe to publish.

Where a customer is written about, their agreement belongs in this stage as well. You arrange it; the draft goes to them before it goes live.

The draft follows the outline in the brief and uses the confirmed material. It is edited before you see it, so what arrives is a finished piece rather than a first pass - headings, structure, internal links where they belong, and a title and meta description written with it.

You approve it, or you send it back with the changes you want. Each package allows a set number of rounds of revision against the agreed brief, and those rounds are for the piece that was briefed. A change of subject, a change of reader or a new section that was not in the outline is a new brief and is quoted as one, which is said here rather than discovered halfway through.

The finished piece is sent to you by email, or through whatever shared drive you use, in a document you can edit and in a plain form that pastes into a content management system without carrying formatting with it.

If you would rather it went up directly, give me an account on your own site with the rights to draft and publish, and the piece is placed there instead: headings, internal links and the meta description set as agreed. Access is yours to grant and yours to withdraw, and nothing is published without your approval of the draft first.

What happens to the piece after that - how it ranks, how much traffic it draws, how many enquiries follow - is not something I undertake, because it is not something anybody can honestly undertake. What is undertaken is the piece: written to the brief, built on material you confirmed, delivered when it was agreed.

A turnaround is counted in working days from the last of three things: the invoice being paid, the interview having taken place, and the material you have to confirm having come back. Two of those are yours, which is the honest reason a date is not offered before a brief exists.

If any of the three is outstanding the clock has not started, and you are told which one it is waiting on rather than left to wonder. Where a piece is to be published rather than handed over, access to your site is a fourth condition on the publication step alone - the writing does not wait for it.

Interviews are recorded so that your expert can be quoted accurately rather than approximately. Everyone on the call is told at the start that it is being recorded. The recording and the notes taken from it are used for that piece, they are not published, and they are deleted when the work and the period for a complaint about it are over. What is kept and for how long is set out on the Privacy Policy.

Where you ask for a piece to be published rather than handed over, you grant an account on your own site with the rights needed to draft and publish, and nothing else. It is used for your work only, it is handed back or stopped when the work is done, and it is yours to withdraw at any point. Nothing goes live without your approval of the draft first.