The Skyscraper technique popularized by Bryan Dean involves finding and trying to emulate successful content (typically from the top search results on Google targeting a keyword, but also based on social popularity)
You then reverse engineer that contents success by looking at who linked to or shared it and what it contains and then creating something better and replicating its content distribution strategy by contacting those who linked to or shared the original, and letting them know about your “new” content.
Rand Fishkin of Moz has suggested you needed to create 10X content, by being creative and setting the bar far higher – I like his thinking!