With each passing day, it seems, something new emerges in the social-media realm. Or, to be more accurate, a new tweak comes to my attention for the first time.
Two weeks ago, it was my discovery that you can create surveys on LinkedIn, the professional-networking site.
Immediately, I did what I suggest anyone do when they want to see if any given application is worthwhile: I gave the new discovery a test drive by setting up a survey.
Of all things, I created a poll about folks’ use of LinkedIn: “What do you primarily seek from your LinkedIn experience?”
The four choices I offered: Biz/employment opportunities, Receive Recommendations, A Social Outlet, and Innovative Ideas. (LinkedIn rotates the order in which those choices appear, by the way, to ensure I’m not steering people in any overwhelming fashion.)
So far, here are the results. As of this morning, 78 people had replied–certainly almost, if not, all from my own network, though you can enable, as I did, anyone on LinkedIn to answer your survey.
LinkedIn does all the work of categorizing the responses by gender, age, job title, job function and company size. In addition, 14 people have chimed in with supplemental comments.
As embryonic as the process has been for me, already I can see a variety of benefits flowing out of these surveys. Among them:
1. The collection of original data, tailored to your needs, for business or personal purposes.
2. Opening up a dialogue revolving around common interests.
3. Establishing your expertise, via the content contained in the questions as well as via your interpretation and commentary of the data flowing from the questions.
4. Expanding your network. Over the past two weeks, I have experienced a rise in the number of people seeking to LinkIn with me. Part of that increase, I suspect, is attributable to my survey question.
Want to take the survey? Get on LinkedIn, then click on the survey results link.
