Tools, strategies and ideas that startups can use to gain customer understanding and do inexpensive market research.

1. T.A. McCann – create something great

3. Create Personas

4. Engage directly early and often

5. Use surveys to quantify and test

6. Create ongoing user interactions/perception

7. Find and nurture the new influencers

8. Social success and promotion on 1XUX2

9. A valuable target customer Business professional Places high value of relationships (>8/10) Has significant (>50%) of key relationships outside company >5 meetings/week with outside people (more/new is better) Uses technology to gain information advantage Actively builds and manages his network Pays monthly information service fees (mobile, CRM, wiki, contact manager… (more is better) Roles include (execs, sales, recruiter, PR, journalists, lawyers…) Influencer of others and/or small teams Technical, early but not bleeding edge adopter Often fits in GTD category as well Reads books like “never eat alone” or “4 hour work week” Attends “networking” events or activities 3 People like this include; T.A. Brad Buzz Kendall Brandt Miles Dave Thomas

10. 4 Friends of Gist (FOG)

11. 5 http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZTH5BJR

12. Kevin Spidel "I am the Managing Director of an international PR firm and am very active on the social web. Gist allows me to cut through the noise and manage my contacts directly. I am able to monitor what matters... the relationship." Managing Director Patriot Strategies http://patriotstrategies.com Washington, DC, USA 5300 contacts, 1279 companies Gist user since 11/03/09 – has invited 34 users

13. Copy the leaders (for some stuff) 7 Marketing Positioning User/market dataFeature priority Key thought leaders

14. The new influencer Usually has a day job, writing for passion Well connected and socially enabled Selling to other influencers as much as customers Easily co-opted with “first looks” and attention Leverage your own influence to gain theirs 8

15. Make someone else the champion 9

16. Jump on someone else’s message 10

17. Track your influencers 11

18. 1XUX Deliver value in seconds Tweet my success Build user communities Create regular interactions 12

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20. Set big goals Get connected Listen and learn Fail fast and iterate Persist Go make something great. T.A. McCann tam@gist.com www.gist.com/tamccann