

But the really terrific feature is what you’ll find on the left column an actual count of the number of people who have “CIO” in their profiles. When I searched on “CIO” I got an entire list of names beginning with people who are closest to me in my network.

Log into your LinkedIn account and start searching on typical job titles of your ideal customer – i.e. Ideal Customer Profile: Perhaps THE most important piece of market research info is profiling your ideal customer. The key to making it work is knowing where to find it and how to pull it out. No matter what your question, chances are LinkedIn has an answer. In other words – most LinkedIn participants just want to help you. LinkedIn now has over 80 million members! (I swear just 2 weeks ago it was 70 million!) This is an insane “sample” group of professionals that is eager to share information and answer your questions. In fact, a great place to do some exploratory research is LinkedIn. Not every research project requires a fancy survey or focus group.
