Intelegia is always seeking out ways to using social media applications to gather information on sectors, companies, products / services and individuals. LinkedIn is an efficient tool, if use correctly, to collect competitive intelligence data as seen in the posts, “Competitive Intelligence Research With LinkedIn – Who’s Hiring?” and “Using LinkedIn People Search To Profile A Company“. Here is a look at applying LinkedIn Answers to access strategic information.
LinkedIn Answers is a database of questions and answers by business experts that are on LinkedIn. The questions and answers are organized by topic however; users can conduct a basic or an advanced search query. Figure 1 is image of the index page of LinkedIn Answers.
Figure 1: LinkedIn Index Page
Case Scenario:
As a competitive intelligence researcher in the biopharmaceutical sector, you are asked to find the prevailing trends in the diagnostic kits market.
Solution:
As an alternative to conducting an extensive web search or purchasing a report, you may attempt a search using LinkedIn Answers to gather insights from industry experts.
Figure 2 captures the input process to query LinkedIn Answers using the Advanced Search function.
- Keywords entered:”diagnostic kits” and “trends”
- Keywords match in: Questions and Answers
- Category: “Marketing and Sales” -> “Business Development”
Figure 2: LinkedIn Answers Advanced Search Form With Keywords
Figure 3 is a screen shot of the result given by LinkedIn Answers.
Figure 3: Result For Keyword Search, “diagnostic kits” + “trends”
If the search application furnished more than one page of results, you are able to sort the results by:
- Degrees of separation away from the expert(s) answering the question
- Relevancy
- Date
Clicking on the results will allow you to access the full text of the question and the 10 related answers. Figure 4 is an image of the initial posted question and Figure 5 provides a look at two answers. (Please Note:For the purposes of this blog post, the names of the individuals that posted the question and answers are not revealed.)
Figure 4: Question Posted To LinkedIn Answers
Figure 5: Answers Posted By Experts
As seen in Figure 5, LinkedIn Answers will highlight the best answer in green. In the case above, the best answer was provided by a Business Manager, Sequencing and Microarrays, Roche Applied Science, Asia Pacific at Hoffmann-La Roche. Reading further down on the page, other experts tackle other trends in the diagnostic kit market.
LinkedIn Answers is available at www.linkedin.com/answers
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