LinkedIn gives you access to more than 800 million business professionals worldwide. For free! I think we’d all agree that’s a great deal, but does it give you enough to take full advantage of the platform? Is moving to a Premium Business (hereafter referred to as Premium) account an investment that will pay dividends, or would you be wiser spending that money elsewhere? We’ll dive into these questions and more as we examine the pros and cons of moving to LinkedIn Premium.

Are you okay where you are?

If you’re so new to LinkedIn that add-ons or upgrades only add to your confusion, you may be better off staying with the standard account for a while.

The standard LinkedIn account comes with benefits of its own. It allows you to:
1.2Find and reconnect with colleagues.
2.2Request and provide recommendations.
3.2Search for and view profiles of other LinkedIn members.
4.2Receive unlimited InMail messages.
5.2Save up to three searches and get weekly alerts on those searches.

If you’re a LinkedIn novice, begin with perfecting your profile. That’s a more difficult task than you might think. Entire articles deal with how to write your “about” section. Choosing the best type of profile photo or background photo takes some thought. Optimizing your headline and “about” section to make sure your profile comes up in searches is another piece of the puzzle. Your LinkedIn profile is the centerpiece of your online personal brand, so it’s well worth taking the time and effort to get it just right.

Start making connections and engaging with others online. LinkedIn is all about forming relationships that can lead to business deals. Read and like posts and leave meaningful comments where it’s relevant. See how much you can grow your connections. Once you’ve gotten into the swing of things, revisit the idea of upgrading your account.

If you’re at the point where you feel you’ve maxed out your current capabilities, you may want to turn in another direction.

Should I steer toward a Premium page?

The five main features that come with a premium subscription are:
1.2Extended LinkedIn network access.
2.2InMail sending.
3.2Who’s Viewed My Profile.
4.2Open Profile and Gold Badge.
5.2LinkedIn Learning.

Extended access eliminates LinkedIn’s commercial use limits, which are limitations that can hold you back if you frequently use advanced search to find and connect with prospects. Activities such as searching for LinkedIn profiles on LinkedIn.com and the mobile app or browsing LinkedIn profiles using the People Also Viewed section also count toward these limits. Having no use limits is a significant benefit to most businesses.

The ability to send InMail is a big plus over the free account, which only lets you send to connections. Having 1900 characters to explain why you’d like to connect is more likely to succeed with someone you don’t know yet than the 300-character limit imposed on free-account connection requests. 

Who’s Viewed My Profile sounds like a vanity stat, but it’s much more. It can be a treasure trove of prospects if you work it correctly. Search for your ideal sales targets among your viewers, then send them a connection request with a personal touch. After all, they already know something about you from scoping out your profile. This feature also helps you analyze your profile views; you can see whether your page traffic increases or decreases and determine which of your activities raises interest in your page.

Open Profile lets you enable those outside your network to InMail you, thus opening you up to more connections. It also adds a gold badge to your profile, which can help attract views and enhance your credibility.

LinkedIn Learning provides access to more than 13,000 courses created by industry experts on LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com. There’s a wide variety of courses designed to hone your business skills and keep you up-to-date on the latest technology.

Now that we’ve gone through this list of extras, are you chomping at the bit to go Premium? If you aren’t bowled over, it may be that you don’t need a Premium account. Maybe your job duties don’t really necessitate its use.

However, if you’re in the business of generating leads, it’s worth your while to learn more about one other type of paid account. Let’s head to the next stop on our LinkedIn account tour.

Should you become a navigator?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Professional gives you Premium benefits, plus many additional features. Top added features include:

1.2Sales Navigator advanced search.
2.2Automatic leads and accounts recommendations.
3.2Notes and lead list features.
4.2Notification of job changes.

Sales Navigator advanced search adds a whopping 36 filters to the regular search! This allows you to pinpoint your searches to your exact criteria, saving you time and giving you the best possible search results.

Recommended leads and accounts are generated by Sales Navigator based upon their likeness to leads you have recently saved in your Navigator sales preference settings. In addition, you can also save these new recommended leads and accounts to your account.

Notes and lead lists functions allow you to organize your sales leads. You can add specific notes and add profiles to specific lead lists for various relevant categories. This is a big plus if you’re in the lead generation business.

Job Change Notifications can come in handy, too. If one of your contacts leaves their job, you will be alerted to find a new contact at that company. You can also see your contact’s new position, which might be an additional sales lead for you.

Which road should you take?

There’s no doubt that LinkedIn is the premier tool for B2B selling. Whether you use the standard version, the Premium version or Sales Navigator, your time on LinkedIn is time well spent in terms of business success.

The final decision all comes down to you and your needs. If you accomplish your goals with the standard service, that’s terrific! You can do many things with your account to gain credibility and followers.

If you get excited at the prospect of all you could do with a Premium account, give it a try! LinkedIn usually offers a free trial for a month to evaluate the service.

If your job involves business development, lead generation or sales, Sales Navigator is highly recommended. As with the Premium account, you can do a free trial for a month to decide if it’s worth keeping.

Please leave a comment below and let us know how you’re using LinkedIn and which type of account works best for you. If you have any additional questions about LinkedIn account types, leave your questions. We’d love to help.

Photos by Maximilian Weisbecker on Unsplash; Himesh Kumar Behera on Unsplash; Zhijian Lyu on Unsplash; Jamie Street on Unsplash; and Jordan Ladikos on Unsplash