#68 Utilize your social media outlets for research. Ask your connections via LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. Also, think about Twitter as a search engine.

For some of you this will be old news. Or perhaps you have thought about it, but have yet to utilize your networking resources in this new way, as a research tool. Let’s say you’ve built a small (or large) army of connections on various social networking sites. Use them! Ask them a question or throw out an idea to see what kind of response you get. Your network will hopefully give back some honest opinions, insights, and other thoughts to consider. To make the most of it though, remember: be honest with what you’re looking for, participate if someone else asks you, and don’t get carried away. (No one wants to be your personal opinion survey).

Also, consider Twitter’s search function as a powerful tool to find live trends on any key word. To search, go to search.twitter.com. Type in your word and get ready for real time thoughts of what the masses are thinking. For more on this concept, read this article from Tech Crunch.

For more great Twitter thoughts, check out our last post on Twitter here.

How are you participating in your social networks? How are you using them? New business? Research? Or what else?