{"id":3678,"date":"2010-11-10T08:10:55","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T08:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/?p=3678"},"modified":"2010-11-10T08:10:55","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T08:10:55","slug":"how-to-use-linkedin-for-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use LinkedIn as a Research Engine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 23px; font-size: 14px;\">Not every research project requires a fancy survey or focus group. \u00a0In fact, a great place to do some exploratory research is LinkedIn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>LinkedIn now has over 80 million members! \u00a0(I swear just 2 weeks ago it was 70 million!) \u00a0This is an insane &#8220;sample&#8221; group of professionals that is eager to share information and answer your questions. \u00a0In other words &#8211; most LinkedIn participants just want to help you. \u00a0So you should take advantage of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What Do You Want to Know?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>No matter what your question, chances are LinkedIn has an answer. \u00a0The key to making it work is knowing where to find it and how to pull it out.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; line-height: 23px; font-size: 14px;\"><strong>Ideal Customer Profile<\/strong>: \u00a0Perhaps THE most important piece of market research info is profiling your ideal customer. \u00a0Log into your LinkedIn account and start searching on typical job titles of your ideal customer &#8211; i.e. IT professional<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-3679 size-full\" title=\"LI profile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/li-profile.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"201\" height=\"532\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;\">When I searched on &#8220;CIO&#8221; I got an entire list of names beginning with people who are closest to me in my network. \u00a0But the really terrific feature is what you&#8217;ll find on the left column ; an actual count of the number of people who have &#8220;CIO&#8221; in their profiles. \u00a0Now you can read through those profiles or reach out to people that you know with your questions. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Simply click on one of the profiles that you find and scroll down to where you&#8217;ll find a list of the groups they belong to:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/li-groups\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3680\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3680\" title=\"li groups\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/li-groups.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"320\" height=\"469\" \/><\/a>Now you can go to those groups and take a look at the discussions that you&#8217;ll find there. \u00a0Click around the groups and find the groups that fit you best, then join the group and join the conversation and ask questions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Competitive Intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can search the &#8220;Question and Answer&#8221; categories on your industry keywords and see what people have been asking about and how others have been answering . \u00a0Here is an example of a search with the keyword &#8220;medical billing&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/indqa\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3685\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3685\" title=\"indqa\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/indqa.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"500\" height=\"229\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Company Pages Give Insight Into Industries<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Before there was the internet or LinkedIn, one of my favorite ways to do research for my marketing plan was to make a list of the top market share holders in a targeted market. \u00a0Then I would search articles and papers trying to decipher some kind of pattern or information. \u00a0But now there&#8217;s LinkedIn and now you can get a quick search of company pages, will give you the latest news stories AND the people in your network who are associated with that company.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/company-analysis\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3686\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3686\" title=\"company analysis\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/company-analysis.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"324\" height=\"253\" \/><\/a>If you haven&#8217;t explored the &#8220;insightful statistics&#8221; section of LinkedIn Company Pages &#8211; then you are missing a wonderful opportunity to get some insights into your customers. \u00a0This section takes information from your connections and compiles them across all the people who are affiliated with that company to give you some interesting information.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/similar\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3687\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3687\" title=\"similar\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/similar.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"500\" height=\"182\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;People also viewed&#8221; box will tell you what similar brands that are considered to be alternatives to your brand. \u00a0And then -all you have to do is search around those companies that are listed.<\/p>\n<p>Another terrific comparative chart compares the company you&#8217;re researching against other similar companies.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/10\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/grid\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3688\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3688\" title=\"grid\" src=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/grid.jpg\" alt=\"image\" width=\"500\" height=\"361\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There are many more research features that you can explore within LinkedIn that will give you ideas into what to include in your surveys and polls. \u00a0Not only that, but you&#8217;ll actually get a list of real people that you can reach out to for conversations and questions that you might have.<\/p>\n<p>Use LinkedIn to start your market research process and see how much more you can learn in a few hours that might take days or weeks to learn otherwise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Word of Warning<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>LinkedIn is NOT the end all of search or research, it&#8217;s a tool to help you get a head start on helping you create questions about strategies that you might be considering. \u00a0I wouldn&#8217;t go quoting any of the findings, but I would certainly use them to help be build a list of similar comparative brands.<\/p>\n<p>Have fun with this and see how much more you can learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not every research project requires a fancy survey or focus group. \u00a0In fact, a great place to do some exploratory [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":18412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[851,439,852],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to Use LinkedIn as a Research Engine | QuestionPro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Not every research project requires a fancy survey or focus group. \u00a0In fact, a great place to do some exploratory research is LinkedIn. LinkedIn now has\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.questionpro.com\/blog\/how-to-use-linkedin-for-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Use LinkedIn as a Research Engine | QuestionPro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Not every research project requires a fancy survey or focus group. \u00a0In fact, a great place to do some exploratory research is LinkedIn. 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