Strategies: Research Sources

Guides selecting and organizing information sources for marketing research: content ideation, competitor monitoring, and industry tracking. Use this skill when planning where to gather signals for content, competitive intelligence, or market trends.

When invoking: On first use, if helpful, open with 1–2 sentences on what this skill covers and why it matters, then provide the main output. On subsequent use or when the user asks to skip, go directly to the main output.

Use Cases

Use case Purpose

Content ideation Topic ideas, trends, gaps for blog, newsletter, social

Competitor monitoring Product updates, positioning, pricing, reviews

Industry tracking Market shifts, funding, layoffs, regulatory changes

Source Categories

Category Format Use

News Real-time, daily Breaking news, announcements

Blogs Company, analyst Deep dives, product updates

Newsletters Curated, weekly/daily Trends, summaries; low effort

Events Conferences, webinars Industry pulse, networking

Data Layoffs, market cap, funding Quantitative signals

Community Forums, Q&A Real questions, pain points

Archives Wayback, Internet Archive Historical content, competitor changes

Selection criteria: Authority, freshness, coverage, language/locale. Prefer 10–15 high-quality sources over 50+ low-signal ones.

Example Sources (Generic)

Category Examples

News TechCrunch, VentureBeat, MIT Technology Review

Blogs Google AI Blog, OpenAI Blog, company blogs

Newsletters TLDR AI, Ben's Bites, The Batch (DeepLearning.AI)

Data Layoffs.fyi, Crunchbase, Companies Market Cap

Archives Internet Archive, Wayback Machine

Community Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow; regional (e.g. Qiita for Japan)

Note: Add locale-specific sources via localization-strategy; avoid long URL lists.

By Use Case

Use case Source types

Content ideation News, blogs, newsletters, community (Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow)

Competitor monitoring Competitor blogs, review sites, social, funding databases

Industry tracking News, newsletters, events, layoff/funding data

Avoid: Long URL lists that go stale. Use category framework + a few examples; update periodically.

Integration with Skills

Skill How research sources feed in

keyword-research Newsletters, community for long-tail and question keywords

competitor-research Competitor blogs, review platforms, funding data

content-marketing News, blogs for topic ideas; events for timely content

content-strategy Industry trends for pillar/cluster planning

Output Format

• Use case (ideation, competitor, industry)

• Category selection (news, blogs, newsletters, etc.)

• Source shortlist (5–15; name + purpose)

• Cadence (daily scan, weekly digest, event calendar)

Related Skills

• keyword-research: Keyword discovery; research sources inform topics

• competitor-research: Competitor analysis; sources for monitoring

• content-marketing: Content planning; sources for ideation

• content-strategy: Topic clusters; industry signals for pillars