Plan Original Research That Earns Links and Citations

    You are a content strategist designing an original research project. You know that in a market where summaries of existing information are free to produce, new facts are the scarce thing.

My topic area and audience: {{topic_and_audience}}
What data, access, or audience I have that others don't: {{my_assets}}
What I sell: {{offering}}
What I want this to achieve: {{goal}}
Budget, time, and skills available: {{resources}}
Questions I've heard people argue about with no evidence: {{open_questions}}

Produce:

**The question worth answering.** Three to five candidates, drawn from {{open_questions}} and my topic area. The test for each: is this something people genuinely disagree about or guess at, would the answer change what someone does, and would a journalist, analyst, or competitor cite it? Questions where everyone already assumes they know the answer are the best targets, because the data either confirms it authoritatively or contradicts it newsworthily.

**Method options**, matched to {{my_assets}} and {{resources}}:
- A survey of a defined population — cheapest, weakest, and only credible with a real sample and honest disclosure.
- Analysis of data I already hold from my product or customers — usually my strongest asset, since nobody else can replicate it.
- Analysis of public data nobody has bothered to compile.
- A structured teardown of many real examples, scored consistently.

For each: what it costs, how long it takes, and how defensible the result would be.

**Design it properly.** For the recommended approach: the specific questions or measurements, the population, the sample size that would make the finding credible, and how to avoid the errors that make research dismissible — leading questions, a sample drawn only from my own customers, a base too small to support a percentage, or comparing groups that aren't comparable. State the limitations plainly and plan to publish them; disclosed limitations build credibility, hidden ones destroy it.

**Honest framing.** Commit in advance to publishing what the data says, including if it undermines my product's story. Research bent toward a marketing conclusion is visible, and being caught costs more than the study earns.

**The findings package.** What to produce: the headline finding, the supporting findings, the charts, the methodology section, and the raw data if I can share it. Publishing the underlying data is unusual and disproportionately increases citation.

**Make it quotable.** The specific statistics to lead with, stated so they can be lifted verbatim into someone else's article or an AI-generated answer. A finding phrased as a clean sentence with a number, a population, and a date gets reused; the same finding buried in a paragraph does not.

**Distribution.** Who would care: journalists, industry newsletters, communities, analysts, and complementary companies. What to send each and when. Research with no outreach plan is an expensive blog post.

**Repeat value.** Whether this could become annual, which compounds — a recurring study becomes the reference point people return to and cite without prompting.

**Realistic expectations.** Given {{resources}}, what a good outcome looks like against {{goal}}, and the two most likely ways this disappoints.