Using LinkedIn for Product Management

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Market Research and Social Media

Ganesh KrishnanHead – LinkedIn India Tech Center

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a little about myself

• MS, Computer Science from Purdue University• Worked at various companies (Intel, Securify,

Yahoo, LinkedIn ..) over the last 15 years in Engineering, consulting, product and security .

• Now here setting up the LinkedIn India tech center, the first of its kind outside mountain view.

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Market Research then ..

Reactive Proactive

Discov

ery

Valid

ation

FocusGroups

Observation/Ethnography

Surveys - Mail - Internet

Lead User Analysis

In-depthInterviews

SalesCalls

Customer ServiceSupport/Maintenance

AdvisoryBoards

UsabilityStudies

CustomerComment Cards

RFPs

Win-Loss

Market Research now ..

Reactive Proactive

Discov

ery

Valid

ation

FocusGroups

Observation/Ethnography

Surveys - Mail - Internet

Lead User Analysis

In-depthInterviews

SalesCalls

Customer ServiceSupport/Maintenance

AdvisoryBoards

UsabilityStudies

CustomerComment Cards

Social Media

RFPs

Win-Loss

Market Research++

Reactive Proactive

Discov

ery

Valid

ation

FocusGroups

Observation/Ethnography

Surveys - Mail - Internet

Lead User Analysis

In-depthInterviews

SalesCalls

Customer ServiceSupport/Maintenance

AdvisoryBoards

UsabilityStudies

CustomerComment Cards

Social Media

RFPs

Win-Loss

Product Analytics

Social Media

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• Continuous Conversations• Sharing of Ideas and Opinion• Viral propagation and truly

borderless• Instant Access• Technology Enabled• Discontinuous engagement

with multiple stakeholders• Find influencers

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FacebookPeople on Facebook• More than 800 million active users• More than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day• Average user has 130 friendsActivity on Facebook• More than 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and

community pages)• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and eventsGlobal Reach• More than 70 languages available on the site• More than 75% of users are outside of the United StatesPlatform• On average, people on Facebook install apps more than 20 million times every day• Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience

Facebook Platform on other websites• More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook

=> Lots of interesting information to be gathered about a given product/market (just watch the likes!)

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Leveraging LinkedIn

for market research and beyond

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Build your own professional brand

• Complete your profile– Way to find and be found

– On LinkedIn• People search

• Recruiter search

• Recommendation products

– Off LinkedIn• Search engines

• Content sharing

– Key for all our recommendation based products (e.g. people you may know, groups you may like, jobs you may be interested in)

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Build your own professional brand

• Connect with colleagues and professionals you know– Way to increase your network and hence the network effect

– Use your connections to get introductions to prospective customers and hires• Avoid cold calling/emailing your customers

• Know what your connections are sharing and doing via – LinkedIn today

– Weekly summary emails

– Status updates

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Connect with your customers

• Use LinkedIn groups– Way to learn about an area and interact with experts

– Way to showcase your talent and expertise

– Create new groups, use LinkedIn polls to get a pulse on a given topic

• Showcase your products on company pages– Way to get the word out about a new launch

– Get a pulse on how customers feel about your product

• Use premium services like Ads and recruiter– Target your products and services to specific demographics

– Showcase your jobs and attract premium talent

Market Research - LinkedIn

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Qualitative and Quantitative Research

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Cisco uses LinkedIn

• Cisco sent 140k inMails containing a Video Ad promoting the human network campaign, a first of its kind– The campaign resulted in a huge increase in the number of people interacting

with cisco’s Linkedin company page

• In general Cisco is very active on all social media and uses LinkedIn for– Monitoring and contributing to relevant technology/business/cisco groups on LinkedIn

to keep a pulse on their market

– Polling specific audiences on topics to help with their marketing campaigns and customer service

– Promoting products and services on LinkedIn company pages

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How does LinkedIn improve its own products?

• In addition to traditional techniques, use social media to keep a pulse– LinkedIn product groups (e.g. LinkedIn groups product forum)

– LinkedIn company page, polls

– Twitter, Facebook and customer support channels

• Another big part is product analytics (i.e. build analytics support into the product from day 1)– Bucket test new features to get feedback, determine usage patterns, performance etc.

– Continuously collect and analyze data about product usage

– Provide analytics based products to directly to our users (e.g. people you may know)

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Summary

• Get social– Its big!, Its global and its here to stay

– Will help you and your company

– One of the better ways to do market research and get instant feedback no matter where you are

– Use all the social channels relevant to you

• Build analytics support into your product– Would be the best thing you ever did!

– Doesn’t matter if it is an Internet or Enterprise product

– Technology like Hadoop now readily available for analysis and insights

• Customer proximity isn’t as essential if you have the above