Can Research Guarantee Your Content's Success?

byAJTrimble1

9.1K followers

Updated 4 years ago

Would you like to know what content you should write before you even begin writing? Can research guarantee your content's success?

Of course not. Nothing in life is guaranteed. But there is a way that you can stack the odds in your favor.

Time is always one of the factors that we all struggle with. With only so much time available to work on our business, how should you prioritize your time? Today we’re going to discuss a simple method of validation. In other words, I’m going to share a few tips I use to determine whether I should work on a project.

Let’s get started…

Validation Technique Number 1: Amazon

It’s no secret that Amazon is perhaps the biggest player in the game when it comes to information. People search on Amazon nearly as much as they search Google, looking for books, videos, tools, etc. to help them solve a problem.

As such, Amazon is a great way to validate a topic before you begin writing. In fact, it’s even a good way to validate your entire niche before building a site.

What you do is go to the Amazon search bar, change the search parameter to “books”, and then just do keyword research similar to how we use Jaaxy.

By reviewing hot topics, best-selling books, and so forth, you can first find great topics to add to your potential content list; but more importantly, by reading the book description, checking out the reviews, or even using Amazon’s book preview tool, you can quickly identify a reader’s pain point. After all, the author is most likely writing the book to solve the reader’s problem… and now you can do the same.

Validation Technique Number 2: YouTube

YouTube is a DIY person’s dream. You can practically find instructions for doing anything. In many ways, YouTube can prove even more valuable than the Amazon technique, because while words are good, as the saying goes, a picture is worth 1000 words (does that make a video worth 10,000?)

This method is fairly straightforward. You just take the keywords you were searching for on Amazon and run them through YouTube’s search function. You may find some overlap here as a lot of YouTubers will post book reviews; but you will also find a ton of unique content as well.

For our purposes, pay particular attention to the number of videos, not necessarily the number of views. Naturally not all highly viewed videos are good, and not all limited view videos are bad. This is sometimes more of a reflection of the quality of the video or even how long it has been up. What you’re interested in is how “popular” a topic is. The more videos on a topic, the more likely there is a big audience out there searching for information on it.

Validation Technique Number 3: Google News

Google News is pretty on top of current events. If you learn to read between the lines, you will begin to see trends start forming in your niche.

Once you’ve found something that looks promising, it’s just a matter of a couple of clicks to set up a Google Alert. I have alerts set up for all of my niches, and even a few for specific keywords. Any time anything is published with those keywords, Google sends me an email with links to the articles. This helps me stay current with whatever is going on in that particular industry.

Validation Technique Number 4: Online Education

There are loads of online education sites out there. Masterclass, Udacity, Udemy, Skillshare, Lynda, and Khan Academy to name but a few.

Sites like these are wonderful places to see what your audience may be looking for. Having created online courses myself, I can assure you that no good instructor is going to invest days, weeks, and even months of their time creating a course that no one is interested in.

If you find a lot of courses available on a particular topic, you know there is an audience out there eager to learn it.

Validation Technique Number 5: Social Media

You knew this one was coming, didn’t you? :-)

Social media is one of the best validation methods because, well, people are talking about their problems and sharing solutions in pretty much real time.

Sites like Twitter, Reddit, Quora, and online groups like Facebook or LinkedIN, are great places to see what it on people’s minds right now. And if you find a discussion in your niche, and can act on it quickly enough, you just might receive a flood of traffic from those looking for an answer.

Conclusion

So, there you go. My top 5 favorite ways to validate your content before you even write a single word.

Now, I’ll admit, all this does take time. But how much time is it worth to you to improve your chances of success?

Besides, whatever time you invest in this process pales in comparison to how much pain you will feel at the time wasted creating content that no one is interested in, right?

Please share any other techniques you might use to validate your content.