Writing better research briefs with Eugenio Castro

Welcome to our edition #13 of "Uploading" Podcast, where we go behind the scenes with creators to learn about content strategy, creation, production, distribution, growth, platforms, tools, and more.

Each week, we'll shoot over 2 valuable ideas and 1 key learning from our weekly podcast that might just change the way you see your content game.

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Your Uploading co-hosts
Blaine Bolus & Ramon Berrios

THIS WEEK’S EPISODE

Eugenio Castro is joining us for this week’s episode of Uploading. He’s a researcher working with content creators and entrepreneurs such as Sam Parr, Colin & Samir, David Perell and more.

Join us as we discuss:

• How to get the most out of a single research.

• How to establish a better fact-finding process.

• And the secret to a great research outline.

2 IDEAS FROM THE PODCAST

Idea #1: Create a mental model of who you’re researching.

When researching someone, you need to create a mental model of both your client’s needs and who the person you’re looking into is. A practical way of doing this is to go from the general to the specific information.

Simply gather information from interviews on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google articles, etc. Afterward, use tools like Perplexity, Google, or ChatGPT to get information you might’ve missed.

Start reading headlines and subheadlines, and use that to get a very good idea of who the person is. While you do that, take notes of what is essential and what you believe will be important.

Once that’s done, you can specify the document for the specific needs. And be ruthless in cutting any irrelevant information.

For example, if you’re doing research for a finance podcast, anything that isn’t related to the financial state of the subject is not important to your research.

Idea #2: How to repurpose your research.

It’s no secret that we’re big believers in repurposing content, so the question arises, how can you get more out of that research?

Eugenio says that because of the nature of the document, and the conciseness of the brief, you can turn it into basically any type of content you need. But it’s best suited for things like:

1. An article.

2. A Twitter (or X) thread.

3. Content for a newsletter.

Using the bullet points with their citations, you can take it in any direction you need and create an omnichannel strategy, where every piece can fit together nicely into a web of content that refers to– and advertises the rest of– itself.

1 KEY LEARNING

Key Learning: What you take out is more important than what you leave in.

A very important thing to keep in mind as you near the end of your research process is that the briefness of your document is oftentimes more important than making it longer.

Remember, it’s called a research brief, not a research long.

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