If you are planning an elaborate piece of content, you naturally want to know beforehand how good your idea actually is. And whether it's worth the effort. In this article, I'll show you how to do this. The good thing about it: you'll refine your content ideas and gain your first potential readers or viewers at the same time.

Maybe you've experienced it yourself: You create what you think is great content, you invest a lot of time and effort, you publish it and then ... nothing. Complete silence. Maybe a visitor will stray onto it once. But there is no sign of the hoped-for masses, the desired reach, the success you thought was certain. 

Or your content seems successful at first glance because your video has lots of views or your blog post has lots of hits. But in the end, you realize that it still hasn't paid off for you. This is because other key performance indicators are usually more important for measuring the success of your content: after all, you are more interested in metrics such as your turnover or the satisfaction of your customers.

There can be many reasons for this failure. Perhaps your content strategy isn't right. Then you need to fundamentally rethink who you want to reach - and how and with what you can achieve this. Or you may have completely forgotten to plan your content distribution from the outset so that your content doesn't even reach the potential target group.

Step 1: Basic questions

It therefore makes sense to check the idea at the planning stage, especially with complex content. With the following tips, you can at least better estimate the potential success. Of course, no one can give you a guarantee of success.

Through this preliminary research, you will also find out which questions, which perspectives and which content formats are most suitable. In other words, you optimize your content idea before you have even started the actual work. It is important that you approach your analysis objectively and soberly. After all, you may find a topic particularly interesting and be enthusiastic about it. But ultimately, of course, the decisive factor is how relevant it is for your target group. 

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself at the beginning before you start thinking further:

• Does this content idea help one of your business goals? And if so, is it an effective means of achieving it? How important is this goal?
• Does existing content give you an indication of whether the idea could be successful? Think about a content audit to gather such information. This could also show that you should perhaps improve and expand existing content. A look at your statistics tool is of course helpful here. SEO tools can also show you which content just needs a little push to get it out of the desert of search results page 2 and into the oasis on page 1.
• Will your planned content quickly become outdated? If yes: Is there a way to turn it into an "evergreen" that remains interesting in the long term or only needs to be updated occasionally? If not: Is it still worth the effort?
• Do you have the resources to implement the content idea and keep it up to date if necessary? This doesn't just include the time you have to invest. Also ask yourself who can create any necessary elements, such as an infographic. Or who can translate the article if necessary.

The answers to these questions may then show you that a topic is not worthwhile. Or they may at least give you an indication of how you could approach it better.

Step 2: Keyword research

The next step is to further refine your content idea. The first thing you need to do here is comprehensive keyword research. This will tell you two things:

1. How popular is my topic?
2. What exactly do people search for on Google & Co.

Point 1 gives you an estimate of how many users you could reach with your content. Point 2 gives you an indication of where you should develop your idea further. After all, it won't help you much if your content revolves around an obscure topic or only niche keywords in order to rank at the top of search engines, YouTube, etc. for a search term. An exception can be made here if this rare search actually fits 1:1 to your very specialized product or offer.

Also note the important point of "search intention": What goal are users probably pursuing? Are they primarily looking for information because they are still at the beginning of their research? Or do they already want to buy something? This will of course have a significant impact on your planned content.

Step 3: Competitor analysis

With your findings from the first two steps, it's now time to take a look at the competition in your subject area. Because normally you won't be the first to write or talk about something today.

Depending on the content format you are looking for, you can check Google, YouTube or Amazon Kindle, for example, to see what is already available there. A tool like Buzzsumo helps you to estimate the reach of an article or blog post (the search for German-language content is only available with a paid account).

During your research, also pay attention to how popular these topics are. If you see a lot of ads for it in the search results on Google, for example, it seems to be worthwhile. If, on the other hand, you don't see any at all, you have either made an incredible discovery or your topic is not as relevant as you thought.

Customize content idea

In any case, you should not be discouraged if you find a lot of search hits and the content already seems very successful. On the contrary, this can show you that you are on the right track. Above all, it means that you may have to invest in your planned content over the long term and that your success will not come overnight.

For example, you can look at the best search results on Google and ask yourself how much more comprehensive, helpful or multimedia your planned content could be. Bear in mind that you will most likely have to offer significantly more than your competitors. Experts use terms such as skyscraper content or 10x content to explain this: you need your content to stand out like a skyscraper.

At the same time, make sure that the existing content is actually implemented in such a way that it appeals to your target group. Because the same topic can be treated very differently - and this in turn will reach different people.

However, you may come to the conclusion that the topic of your content idea is already covered so well that there is nothing more you can add with your resources. Even in this case, there are several ways to adapt your content idea:

• Think about whether you can deal with a single question from this area or a subtopic instead. The aim here is to make your content more specialized.
• Take a look at the reactions and questions you see in comments under a blog post or under videos. Do you find other ideas there about what you could do differently or better?
• Check whether you can add a different perspective that is not present in the other content. Example: Your topic is often covered by marketers, but you are a web developer and therefore have a completely different background.
• Or you decide to change the medium and format: Instead of a blog post, switch to a video, for example.

So if there is already a lot of competition, your basic question should always be: Can I add something to the existing offerings that is either much better or different enough?

Step 4: Further approaches to improve your idea

At this point, you may need further inspiration for your content. Either because you want to break new ground with your idea. Or because you want to expand your idea to provide the best content for the question.

Forums and groups

For example, search for forums, Facebook groups, subreddits and other places where your target group talks about the topic. Ideally, this will give you more ideas and a good insight into which questions are actually the most pressing. You might even find new keywords and search phrases that you can use to go back to step 2.

Ask your customers, fans and followers

Another good option is to ask your existing customers, newsletter readers, website users and social media followers. This can take the form of a short survey on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Or you can make it easy for them and ask them if they are interested in content idea XYZ - they can then sign up to a suitable mailing list by clicking on "Yes".

You can also ask directly which problems you should address and explain there. This will also give you further insights into how your target group actually thinks and what concerns them. This will help you to answer the questions of your intended readership as precisely as possible.

Let the lean startup method inspire you

Or you can be inspired by the idea of the "minimum viable product" from the lean startup approach. Dropbox, for example, created a landing page with a video showing the planned functionality before launching its service. There was no product at the time. However, the start-up was able to use the reactions to test whether it was on the right track.

For example, if you are planning a comprehensive white paper, create a landing page for it on which you explain your idea and the possible content. Give users the chance to leave an email at the end. This way, you not only validate your idea, but also collect readers before you have even started writing.

Another bonus: You can ask these interested parties what information they would like to see in the white paper. This will give you more data to improve your idea. It may even make sense to advertise this landing page on a trial basis, for example with ads on Facebook or Google. You can also use an A/B test to see whether some formulations work better than others.

My conclusion

Content experts agree that good planning is more important today than ever before. The range of content on offer is simply overwhelming. You won't win any more flower pots (aka customers) with random texts, graphics or videos. Incidentally, it's not necessarily about writing the longest article of all. A series of shorter articles may be just right for your target group. Or a video series or a PDF download or an Instagram story...

Ultimately, you won't be able to avoid experimenting with your content ideas and formats. After all, it is usually not a good idea to simply copy the approach of others. After all, you never know exactly to what extent a competitor's approach is also suitable for you. In fact, you often don't even know whether your competitor has really been successful, because the key figures that really matter, such as the turnover achieved, are usually not public.

Experimenting here can also mean that you plan several formats for one and the same topic from the outset. If you have written a detailed article for your corporate blog, you can also turn it into a video for YouTube or a free webinar (and publish your slides on Slideshare afterwards). This way, you've not only repurposed your work. You've also made it more likely that your content will be discovered.