Swipe viral ideas from your competition: Here's how...

There’s a pivotal mistake I see most brands make when generating ideas and bringing products to market:

They assume they know what their audience wants without doing the research to find out.

I know.

It’s hard not to believe that the brilliant, creative, amazing idea in our heads won’t succeed in the market.

— Only to realize the idea doesn’t sell nearly as well as we’d imagine.

It doesn’t get all the shares and likes you thought.

It doesn’t get the support you thought it would.

And if there are sales involved — the low sales numbers come as a complete shock.

Yet your biggest competitors seem to strike gold every time they have a major release.
😡😡😡

(I know because I have experienced this many times in the past)

That’s why me and my teams live by a strict mantra:

“Test. Don’t Guess.”

.
.

It’s easy to assume what our audience really wants rather than making decisions based on all the data freely available to us.

I almost fell into this same trap when building the Content Creators Core series.

I have a ton of “big ideas” I want to present to you and I was struggling to figure out how to pack these in a short series…

Then the voice of reason hit me:

“How do I know if they even care about THESE?”

The honest answer — I didn’t.

I had to put a pin in those ideas and do some quick market research.

What I’m about to show you is the “quick and dirty” way I do market research to find out what people REALLY want.

You can use this process ANYTIME you’re in doubt about an idea and ESPECIALLY when you are feeling over confident without any proof.

And the best part, you get to swipe the ideas directly from your competitors!

Here’s how to do it:

⚡Step 1: Make a list of the top content creators and influencers in your niche

Write them down in a simple google doc.

If there’s a lot of them, you can split them off into sub niches.

The more the merrier you want at least 20 — here’s screenshot of mines:

💡BONUS:

Some of the best ideas are going to come from those in your industry that you disagree with the most (or just flat out don’t like at all).

If they’re popular and get lots of engagement — then they’ve tapped into topic ideas that are relevant to your industry that you need to be exploring.

Rather than seeing them as competition, you should see them as a source of inspiration and ideas of how to attract new potential leads.

It’s a tough pill to swallow — but if they’d figured it out, surely you could learn a thing or 2 from him, if you’d simply pause and pay attention.

Now let’s leverage their ideas for your own content in the next step.

⚡Step 2: Find the top pieces of content for each content creator

For me, my go to sources at this step are YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.

With a little help from some chrome extensions, they tend to give me the most valuable data the fastest⚡

YouTube

1. Find YouTube Channels of the names in your list

2. Click the Videos tab

3. Click “Popular” sub-tab

YouTube will now sort all a channel’s videos with the most popular (most viewed) videos first.

Take note of the top 10 -15 videos that are relevant to your brand.

Pay closest attention to the actual title and the thumbnail.

I save the title and screenshot the thumbnail into my swipe file / second creative brain.

It’s quite common for you to also get ideas you’ve never thought about before.

💡NOTE: Don’t ignore the topics that you feel are completely wrong or incorrect.

Still save the topic and know that you can give your unique opposing opinion on the subject.

(More on this in the next step)

Twitter

1. Install Twemex: Sidebar for Twitter Chrome Extension and activate it

2. Go to any twitter profile from your list in Step 1

3. Take note of top tweets of all time for that profile

4. These indicate topics that you can probably create content around

Example: Tim Ferriss

TikTok

This is how I use TikTok (and I don’t even have a TikTok account)

1. Install “Sort for TikTok” Chrome Extension and activate it

2. Go to the TikTok profile page of any of the names on your list

3. Hit the “Sort for TikTok” extension icon

4. Hit “Start”

5. See Top Content from that Channel

Take Note of:

– the first words and imagery onscreen of the top videos

– what’s heard in the first 5 seconds of the video

You should end up with dozens of topic ideas.

Now onto the final step…

⚡Step 3: Create Lists of Viral Topic Ideas

Because you’ve swiped the top performing topics from the top performing brands in your niche, you’ve just taken a major shortcut to finding relevant content ideas for YOUR audience.

Chances are if THEIR audiences is interested in those topics, your audience will to (and it’s a sneaky way to attract some of THEIR audience to you also😉)

Now combine the lists into one document.

You’ll notice many of them can be grouped together under larger topics.

Group them together, this is going to come in handy later on down the line💪🏾

You’ll also notice some of the topics resonate the strongest to what’s important to YOU.

Highlight these and plan to make content on these topics first.

💡This is the process I used to figure out what Big Ideas to cover in the Content Creator Core series.

After going through the top names in my niche I gathered them into groups and highlighted the topics I felt the strongest about:

Online Digital Business – A Roadmap & Results
Online Passive Income
YouTube Passive Income
No Code Tools for Digital Business
Free / Affordable Ways to Learn

But isn’t this stealing / plagiarizing?

Nope.

You’re simply using the TOPICS to inform you on what topics YOU should pursue.

You’re not copying THEIR content and slapping your name on it.

You’re taking popular topics and putting your unique approach and viewpoint on it.

Quick example:

Back to the Tim Ferriss example — one of his top tweets is this:

I can easily use this as inspiration for my own content, but I won’t simply copy this tweet and repost it as my own.

I could use this as inspiration for several pieces of content:

– Jeff Bezos’ Unofficial guide to dealing with haters and critics
– How to avoid criticism and dislikes (and go broke in the process)
– The Boring Creative’s Guide to dodging the haters and the critics

Then I’d do some quick research on Jeff Bezos and find connections between his ideas on the topic and mine — and there’s my content!

No plagiarism involved.

I hoped this helped (but I’ve done my research — 9 times out of 10, it will help😉)

Peace and Love,
Jesse “Test. Don’t Guess” Young El

PS:

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Yet your biggest competitors seem to strike gold every time they have a major release. 😡😡😡