Customer Intuition Tool: Try A Photo Contest

Want to see how your customers use your product? Maybe get insight's into new solutions you can develop products for. Why not sponsor a photo contest and ask readers of your blog or email newsletter to to email photos of themselves or coworkers using your product, wearing your t-shirts, sporting your logo, etc. In these days were camera phones are becoming more and more common and most workspaces have access to at least one digital camera it's easy for people to capture imagery. These photos will not only give you great human content for your blog and e-newsletter, but a potentially great anthropological study into how your customers think about your products.

While you are thinking about that why not drop by the photo sharing service flickr and do a search for your product, customers, industry, competitor, keywords, etc. to see what pops up. You might find some surprising things. For extra credit try creating RSS feeds of your chosen search results so you can track new postings in your newsreader.