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. Then I would search articles and papers trying to decipher some kind of pattern or information. But now there’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.
You can search the “Question and Answer” categories on your industry keywords and see what people have been asking about and how others have been answering . Here is an example of a search with the keyword “medical billing”
If you haven’t explored the “insightful statistics” section of LinkedIn Company Pages – then you are missing a wonderful opportunity to get some insights into your customers. This 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.
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. Not only that, but you’ll actually get a list of real people that you can reach out to for conversations and questions that you might have.
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.
LinkedIn is NOT the end all of search or research, it’s a tool to help you get a head start on helping you create questions about strategies that you might be considering. I wouldn’t go quoting any of the findings, but I would certainly use them to help be build a list of similar comparative brands.
