A couple of more smart ways to use LinkedIn from the blogosphere:
Using LinkedIn for Market Research
Weblogs, Inc. co-founder Jason Calacanis is using LinkedIn Answers as a great source for market research for his new human-edited search project, Mahalo. Jason posed the following question(s) on LinkedIn Answers:
What would you do next if you were the CEO of Mahalo.com?
…
1. We’ve got a great team: tech, admin, research, and editorial.
2. We’ve got an amazing server setup and can handle massive traffic.
3. We’ve got 4,000 pages done and can do 500 per week.
4. The public is suggesting links already (do a search apple, iphone, a car or a tv show and you’ll fine some suggested links).
5. Folks are not chatting on message board yet.
6. We have a very stable and robust technology platform (MediaWiki).
…
So, given what we’ve got… what would you do next?!?!?
There are 88 answers and growing, ranging from the simple “Good luck!!” (cheap way to get answer credits – ugh!) to some very in-depth, insightful responses. And all for a lot less money than a focus group or market research study!
Hat tip to Eric Eggertson
Breaking the Ice at a Meeting with LinkedIn
Pete Johnson writes:
When you have a meeting with people you’ve never met before, those first couple of minutes when everyone is getting settled in can be extremely awkward. You want to be friendly and potentially build your network by engaging the people who are new to you, but gripping questions like “So, how’s the weather where you’re from?” or “How long have you been with Black Sun? Do you like that company?” don’t exactly spark interesting conversation.
He suggests using LinkedIn to get some background on the people you’re meeting – their school, their accomplishments, their professional interests, etc.:
You can come up with a lot more interesting questions based on that information than the normal pre-meeting chit-chat…and by extension be more memorable.
I’ve added these to the Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn page, where you can explore dozens more practical applications for LinkedIn.
