If you're a content creator, you are no stranger to deadlines, and are most likely working on several projects at once. On average, content creators work on up to five projects simultaneously and will most likely have to manage numerous clients at once. In order to ensure effective project planning, writing a Scope of Work (SoW) is critical. The budget and timeline of your project is affected by its scope and, therefore, maintaining your project scope is crucial to project success. If done correctly, it may assist you in ensuring clear client communication, supervising your whole team, and managing the scope of your project.

Here at Indy, we want to help freelancers like us. In this article, we'll walk you through exactly what a scope of work document is, and the specific content creation divisions. Moreover, our free content creator scope of work template serves as a guide for writing your own.

What is a Project Scope of Work?

Typically written after closing a sale with a client, but before you begin the work, a scope of work is an agreement between yourself and the client detailing what must be done in order for the project to be considered successful and complete.

The typical requirements of an effective scope of work document include:

• An outline of the project goals and tasks
• A clear project management schedule that works for both parties
• A list of the project deliverables
• A list of the project's major stages

In summary, a scope of work is a formal document that clearly outlines the work you need to accomplish for a certain project.

Why You Should Use a Scope of Work for Your Next Project

Here are some of the reasons you should use a simple scope of work for your next project:

• It encourages collaboration between project members and clients on objectives, milestones, and schedules. This helps establish the project's tone from day one and guarantees openness, efficient communication, and‌ that all partners agree.
• It helps you effectively keep track of your project's timeline. This helps you keep on top of your project's progress, and prevent backlogs and conflicts with other ongoing projects.
• Allows all parties involved an opportunity to access all the project's information and clearly understand what is required from whom and when.

Should You Use a Scope of Work Template?

No matter your industry, there are many scope of work templates available. Having a scope of work template can guide you through the process and requirements, which is helpful for writing one yourself.

By using a template, most of the work is already done for you - all you need to do is fill out the sections with your project details. We've included a simple scope of work template for content creators at the bottom of this article.

Divisions of a Scope of Work Document for Content Creators

What information you include in your scope of work is dependent on the industry you work in. However, there are several important details that must be included no matter the freelance project. These are:

• Introduction
• Objectives
• Project scope
• Tasks
• Schedule
• Deliverables
• Adoption plan
• Management

Here, we'll go through each division separately to determine what must be included, and some examples for content creators.

Introduction

As with any report, your scope of work begins with an introduction. In this section, you want to provide a general overview of the project and its purpose. You also want to identify the parties involved (such as the client, the contractor, and the project team).

Some key points you may want to address include:

• What the project is - a brief overview of what the work entails (e.g. writing SEO content for a company) and job location.
• Problem statement - this is where you want to discuss what problem the project aims to address (e.g. attracting more readers or customers to the website of the company you are writing SEO content for)
• Defining any wording and terminologies that you feel are crucial for the project (e.g. in your objectives section, you decide to include KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Anyone who works in content creation may understand this terminology, but the company you are writing for may not). This will help prevent confusion.

In summary, this section of the document aims to focus on the problem that the project is meant to address. Additionally, it should explain how the undertaking of the project will lead to the problem's execution.

Since introductions often don't last longer than a paragraph, try to be as concise as possible when writing this section.

Objectives

The aim of this section is to briefly summarize the project's objective that aligns with the client's needs and expectations. The most important thing to consider when writing your project objectives is the problem statement. What will the project entail to address the problem?

Typically, this is only one line, and requires no explanation or solution - that's what the rest of the project scope is for.

Scope

This section lists all of the main tasks and activities required to deliver your project objectives. This includes milestones.

Milestones are important stages in your project's timeline, such as development, implementation, and testing (e.g. a content writer may want to include an editing stage, or videographer may include a filming stage).

Working from your project requirements, and your project goals and objectives, your main tasks should cover the most important stages of your projects development.

The second part of this section is to specify the required resources, skills, and tools for each task. You will also need to explain how the tasks will be executed, monitored, and controlled.

Some key points you may want to address include:

• Resources needed - the tools, equipment, and skills required for the project. You also want to include the estimated costs and fees with each resource.
• Methods - the procedures and strategies necessary to complete tasks and milestones (e.g. if you're writing SEO content, you may want to include your strategy for incorporating keywords into the article).