By Jeane Hurlbert, PhD

We talk a lot about leveraging social media and surveys, because these two powerful tools explode when you bring them together.

So I wanted to give you specific tips today on how to do that, tips you can put to work right away, making MONEY.

1. Get impressions of products you THINK your customers want from conversations in Twitter, on your blog, on your fan page.  Then take those impressions and TEST them with surveys.  Social media will let you hone your ideas so that you can present a really clear idea in the survey, then the survey will let you know EXACTLY what they want in the product, how they want it delivered, and what they’ll pay.  We’re going to do a special training with a step-by-step guide on this process at the end of the month, so stay tuned!
2. Find surveys on hot topics that are being talked about in the national media.  It might be the recent survey that shows aging Baby Boomers are using alcohol and drugs more heavily than previous generations of older folks, or a survey saying that 28% of iPad users use it primarily for gaming, or results showing experts think cloud computing will surpass the Internet.  Do a blog poll of your readers, find out what THEY think.  You can tweet about the results, blog about them, post them in Facebook, comparing the results from YOUR readers with those of the national sample.  Remember, though:  Blog polls aren’t representative, so you have to note that when you talk about it, but it’s still interesting.
3. Do a survey of your readers or customers on some hot topic in your industry.  For example, we recently interviewed a minister named Brian Kluth, who did a survey about declining donations in churches.  He surveyed both clergy (“The State of the Plate”) and parishioners (“The View from the Pew”).  Results from something like that can create some buzz in social media:  Come up with 8-10 interesting findings or “nuggets” from your results and blog about them, tweet about them, etc.  Brian not only did that, he also got coverage in more than 130 media outlets, including MSNBC, Reuters, and ABC News!
4. Use Google Alerts to find surveys related to your business or industry that will be interesting or helpful to your customers, JV partners, and prospects.  Tweet about them, blog about them, pose questions on LinkedIn about whether people believe the results or not.
5. Use social media to encourage people to take your surveys.  If you are doing a survey (assuming you DON’T just want people who are in your database), you can use social media to drive traffic to the survey.  The results won’t be generalizable but they can give you some awesome insights–this is another good technique for the first stage of product creation.  NPR (National Public Radio) used this technique to drive listeners to one of their surveys and it worked beautifully.
6. Use social media to help design your surveys.  If you’re not sure how to word a particular question or you want to see what the response is likely to be, venues like Twitter provide an awesome place to get input.
7. Use surveys and social media, together, to find JV partners.  We have a new survey tool that lets people apply to take your survey; you can find out what their niche is, how big their list is, and what conversions are like quickly, easily, and inexpensively, so you pick winning JV partners.  You can then use social media to invite people to apply.  This is an awesome way to promote a new product AND build your list.  We’ll do a training program soon to show you exactly how to do this.

Our friend, Don Crowther, has some amazing ways to make money with social media.  He’s doing a big launch right now; you’ve probably seen some of the videos.

Don’s probably the smartest guy I know when it comes to making money with social media and he’s also one of the most careful and methodical; you can really trust his strategies.

We’re really lucky because he’s agreed to take time out from his launch to do a special webinar for us, to teach the MySurveyExpert community 5 KILLER strategies that will put money in your pocket.

You can sign up here.  Don’t miss this one!