How I Cut 80 Ideas Down to a Shortlist of Six

Alright so now we get into the validation phase. I normally end up with a ton of ideas which is fine because we can use them throughout the year but you need to make a short list because you can't really create all the pieces at once and you also have to select the ones where there's the strongest indication that these things can actually work. So here are some of the examples of questions you might want to ask. One of the things is for instance what does this idea going to look like? If you don't have a sort of clear idea of how you can make this idea come to life it's probably not one of the best ideas to start with.

You also need some indication that it could work so does it get a lot of attention in terms of traffic or links or social shares or is it tied into something that's going to be trending soon? Those are all indications that something can work and if you have all of them going for it well that's probably the linkable assets you want to start with first. Also do you have the resources and skills to make something? Do you have enough money? Do you have enough time? Do you actually know how to make something visually or code something? Also would this idea attract the right audience?

So you can make of course a lot of viral things but do they actually get the right people to your site or do they get the right link prospects to link to your site that have the right audience that you're trying to attract? Now the next question is not the main leading question I would follow it's about the conversion so can this help you sell your products? But this should really not be your number one reason to go with the linkable assets. Usually something that's clearly commercial doesn't really work well for unpaid links or natural passive links but it is something to keep in the back of your mind because something a linkable asset can help sell and the last thing and it's very important does this align with your brand just because something will work does it is it actually something that you really want to be aligned with?

There are a lot more other questions you can ask yourself but these are just some examples. So let's take a look at the sheet so normally I would do a really deep dive into these ideas to come up with a short list but right now that would turn into a really long boring video so I'm just going to share a little bit of my thought process. Let's take some of these ideas and take a closer look. So I really like this idea about having people with ADHD test a project management tool out and see how they use it and also if they use it in another way then it's it well then the developer originally intended but could be very useful.

So one of the things that you could do to somehow find some indication that this could work is to just look if something was created like that already or something similar. So maybe what you could do is for instance go to YouTube and then do something like ADHD project management or something like that right and then filter on something like views and here I can see that there are some videos around project management and ADHD and they have an okay number of views right so that could be an indication that this could work and I'm not saying that we're going to create something on YouTube but it needs to get a lot of views.

What I'm saying is that this is an indication that it could work to something to build links to so you would probably do the video as an embed on your own page on your site and then have some copy around it that has to do with project management and ADHD and the test of course and then build links with or get passive links and you could of course depending on how people use the tools you could do some press angle around it as well so maybe this tool was favored by all the subjects or something like that. So I do think that this is one of the indications that this could work.

I could of course very literally look for it ADHD people test project management tools, right? So there are also ADHD productivity software and tools, and this is actually from ClickUp. Oh yeah, so that's the next one. So I would probably also see if it already exists on the side. So this is not exactly the same, but it does already, well, something similar does already exist. So I could use this as a link building, a linkable asset already, instead of creating a whole new video series. We could opt for actually not creating new content and just using this for link building.

We could also make a video series and embed it on this. So I would definitely put this here, exist on client side, not exactly but close, something like that. But I think maybe enriching that article with maybe the video series, or creating another article or something like that, could really help. So this is my thought process with this validation for this idea. It doesn't just mean that I'm going exactly with this idea, but it does give me ideas for how we can implement the same notion in different ways. Okay, so let's go beyond the videos. Okay, so here, this is something that if it doesn't exist on your side and there is some indication that it could work, I would always go for a statistics and trends piece, because it's very low cost and very easy to make.

The thing is, you don't need your own data. You can just compile from whatever you find online, from reputable sources, into one article. And then when a journalist or a big publisher has to write about something that's related to stress or workplace stress or burnout, they have to do their homework. But you already did their homework for them, so they might use your article as a base for their story, and they might reference to a number that you've used in your stats and trends piece, and then a link back to you, even though that statistic is not your own data.

Even if it seems like the competition is really strong, I would always do this. I'm pretty sure this already exists on ClickUp, but I'm going to skip that step for this video. I'm just going to go to Ahrefs to show you what kind of indication I got that this could work. So here you can see that this article, I think it ranks for number one for workplace stress statistics, and it's getting quite a bit of backlinks. And there were other articles that were aiming at the same topic. They were also getting quite a bit of traffic and backlinks. This domain isn't like super strong when you look at dr, and when you look at the backlinks it's 263. But what I always would do is do a really quick and dirty check for quality.

So I'm not saying that this is the end all, beginning and end all of quality, but just to make sure. All right, so in this case you do see that the links aren't a whole lot. But let me see. Yeah, I'm not sure. It seems that some of these links are links from a list, so I would probably look into how these links are placed, because some of these links are great, but others I seem to recognize from, you know, where you can buy lists. So this would be a maybe. I would have to look into this further to find other sites to talk about these statistics.

At the same time, I don't know, this is maybe. I would, I would research this, this further. So let's go to the next one. So I really like this one, so I'm going to make this one green. And of course, you know, in the end you always talk to the client or content manager to settle down, yeah, to settle on, on a short list of things you want to create. So let's look at this one, self affirmation for work. Yeah, so let's look at some indication that it could work. So here, right, so this is the article. So one of the questions that I mentioned on my slide is, is it doable?

Is it doable to create something like this? And when I look at this article, I think yeah, it's very very doable, and it's doable to make something that's actually better. So I would probably, let me see if I can see how this article is doing. Hmm, it's getting okay traffic, backlinks. Let's do a quick domain, a quick quality check. Yeah, for backlinks I'm not sure. I do like it, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. But I did have some other ones that were more for employees, so let's look at this one. So that was this site that's 101 motivational quotes.

That's a lot, but you know, it's only text, and then they did these little memes, so that's really great. So that's something that you can always add. You could add something else too. So let's say if you wanted to make a similar thing but you want to make it better, you could have some sort of AI voice generator and then choose the voice. So you could have some of these quotes be said by Schwarzenegger or something like that, right? So that could be something to make it better, and that could get some links. Well, let's look at the Ahrefs. All right, so these backlinks, the traffic is okay.

So I know that there's a lot. I know there that that quotes and wishes often get a lot of traffic. So these are only four backlinks. Okay, what if I did all instead of dofollow? Seven. Not sure. Okay, so let's leave, leave these quotes here. I would, I kind of want to check this one because I think this one worked really well for CultureMonkey. And here we go. Yeah, it didn't work super well for backlinks, but it would be something easy to create, to build backlinks too. I'm not sure if it would get a lot of passive backlinks, but it's doing great in traffic.

So the traffic shows me that yeah, maybe this is something that people would really use a lot. So that could be, that could, that would be maybe a yes. Okay, I have a lot more ideas, but I don't want to make this a really long video. With the templates, I know the templates work really well. There is some cost of course associated with creating templates, so you do have to have the resources for it. And you can opt for going for a really big template hub, free template hub, or you could just start with one template and then just build links to that and then go from there.

The important thing of course is that every template that you make, I think, should be aligned to something that has to do with a commercial page, so you can support that. Although, you know, a good hub of templates could also strengthen your domain as a whole and get you, get you relevant traffic. And then on a template, a page itself, you can have some kind of a conversion thing installed. So if I look at this one, a feasibility, well, ClickUp already has the template thing. So this would be a really easy option for me to just give some recommendations based on what I find online, and then just start building links and make sure it internally links to a money page or some conversion thing on it.

Yeah, so I think this would definitely be a target page, because it would be a no-brainer. But yeah, I would want to check, for instance here, for the indication for each template, you know. Yeah, this looks pretty good, and here not a whole lot of backlinks. So if I dofollow in content, domain traffic, yeah, that's zero. But still the traffic is a good indicator, and it's a free thing, so it could be easy to build links too. Let me see if there was a more creative idea. Okay, so these ones are, I think they could work because they're getting a lot of traction.

I think it could be, people would be interested to see if it's applicable to the workplace, you know, like a toxic test or something, or a guide or something like that. But the, the question is here, does it align with my brand? So for instance for ClickUp, do they want to be associated with like negative content, like? So I would have to check that. So one thing that I could do for instance is I could search on the side, and I'm just gonna put in this word toxic to see. So I do, well, here's why Monday sucks. But I feel like I would probably do more checking, but I feel like they're not doing a lot of negative things.

Toxic does probably come up in these articles. So you might have to, if you do an article about gaslighting, you might have to angle it a little bit differently. So the gaslighting, they don't have anything on that. Maybe annoying, see if they, yeah, I, I think I'm not sure if this would align with the brand. So I do, I do think it's interesting to try, but I'm not sure. But let me look at a little bit more creative. So this one, the contest one, no, this one I actually don't like that much. Yeah, I like this one, the focus time optimizer. So in this case it was a, an idea from Bard, and I'm just gonna look if something like that already exists, well, as for a workplace or something like that.

So there are apps you can use, managing employees with ADHD. That could be interesting. Hmm, yeah, I don't know. When I'm looking at this, I do feel like there are tools and there are productivity tips, but there's not something, there's not something that specifically says this. I'm not sure, so I would have to look into this further. If I feel like there are already a lot of apps and people have written about them, so I'm not sure if this adds anything new to that. All right, so this is how I would go through the validation. Normally you would dive in a little bit deeper, but I usually end up with like three to six ideas for the shortlist, and then the client can choose one or more to start with, and then just see how it goes.

But there are also people that's actually like way more ideas from the list, and they pick like 30 or 40 and they just incorporate it in their own content creation system. Yeah, but like I said before, the most important thing is to first to the brainstorm without judgment, and then go to the second phase, the validation phase, and be a little bit more critical. But to come up with something that's creative, it's nice to have that brainstorm session first.