Competitive Intelligence
and Social Media
Steve Duncan, May 2011
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Not about networking…
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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www.LinkedIn.com
• >100 million users
• Largest, best known
• The main topic for today
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Connections = Access
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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General procedure
1. Join or accept an invitation
2. Create a profile
3. Invite others to connect to you/
confirm your relationship
4. Your network grows
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Finding experts
• Current & ex-employees of
target companies
• Experts of all kinds
• The ability to contact them is
built in!
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Background information
• Resumes of target people
• Company size & organization
Personal bios
• History
• Photos!
• Extra curricular activities
• Interests – blogs, etc.
• Connections
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You are reading what the person
wrote about himself
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Engaging the community
• You can learn more by joining the
conversation
• Unexpected benefits
• Nobody works at a company forever
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Connections = Access
• Do what you’re comfortable with
• The connections are not unilateral –
you do have to “network” in order to
get a network
• Diminishing rate of returns at ~500
• Superconnectors provide good
visibility to work ratio
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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• Others can likely see who
you are connected to.
• You can shut this off in
some systems
• Also keep in mind
company IT/computer use
policies
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What about connecting to
competitors?
• Yes!
• A two-way street – a first-mover
strategy
• Give & get visibility
• “Follow” target companies
• Not to be undertaken against corporate
policies
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Experts
Good candidates:
•Have time
•Answer lots of questions
•They want to be heard
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=
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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Scans the web, news, blogs, groups, video and
emails you the new stuff it finds. It also creates an
RSS feed for each alert you create.
An RSS (
) Feed Reader.
An RSS feed “burner.” Can forward RSS as
email.
Alerts
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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The Instructions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Create alerts in Google Alerts.
For each alert, copy the RSS feed & add a subscription to it
in Google Reader.
As you read the items in Reader, share those that you want
to.
Go to the Shared Items page and copy the feed address.
Go to Feedburner.com, and “burn” that feed & create an
account.
“Publicize” that feed by activating email subscriptions.
Visit the feed by clicking the RSS logo in Feedburner, and
send the subscription link to everyone who wants to
subscribe.
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
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www.gist.com
Social Media Aggregation
www.pipl.com
Person lookup
www.searchsystems.net
Directory of public record sites
www.highbeam.com
Poor-man’s LexusNexus
www.reversephonedetective.com
Reverse phone # lookup
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www.jigsaw.com
Trade contact info, buy contact info
www.simplyhired.com,
www.indeed.com
Job postings – are your competitors
hiring?
Copernic Tracker
Great for monitoring websites
Google Earth
What’s at that address?
www.zoominfo.com
General company & person info
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
[email protected]
Copyright 2011 SWDuncan LLC
[email protected]