Welcome to a new episode, this week I want to focus on attempting to answer one of the most common and complex questions I get about LinkedIn….Premium accounts – are they worth it?

More of that later……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• New Ways to Keep a Pulse on the Companies You Care About
• Five Things We Learned from Microsoft’s Earnings
• Introducing Interest Targeting
• LinkedIn Articles versus LinkedIn Posts/Updates
• Could it be that ‘Trending content in your area’ might actually be paid ads! Listener Mark Lee got in touch with this message “I saw a post on my home page yesterday. Linkedin was showing it to me allegedly because it was ‘Trending in London’. This was odd for two reasons. Firstly it contained a link to a newspaper article (so encouraged me to leave the Linkedin platform). The other reason it was odd was that the article was not able to be viewed by anyone outside the USA. So why was it trending in London? I don’t think it was. But equally, why would a foreign newspaper (or anyone else) sponsor a link to an article that can’t be viewed by the people who see the link? What is going on here?

Once again Andy Foote nails it with this, creative, educational and engaging post – great work!

This one is an interesting example of a ‘NOT post of the week’. I get what he is trying to do and the humour would work (a bit) if it wasn’t such an obvious, blatant sales pitch!

To be fair, he has attracted a decent amount of engagement, maybe he generated some business from it but I’m not sure this strategy works.

LinkedIn Premium – Do You Need To Upgrade?

This has to be one of the most common questions I get asked. The problem is that it has no simple, straightforward answer!

This week I saw this post from my friend and fellow LinkedIn Trainer Steve Phillip, he clearly has the same challenge so he put together this helpful video to explain his thoughts on the subject

It’s a great post and I’m not surprised it has received nearly 100 comments. This is clearly a question that many LinkedIn users battle with.

So I thought I would focus on that and share my thoughts this week.

Firstly it’s important to understand the basics of how LinkedIn is designed. LinkedIn has three different user interfaces, they all use the same data (input by users) but each one accesses it in different ways.

The three UI’s are as follows;

LinkedIn.com

Sales Navigator

Recruiter

Sales Navigator and Recruiter are both premium accounts, LinkedIn.com can be accessed for free but you can also purchase premium accounts – Career or Business.

So in effect, we have four upgrade options, all give you the following benefits;

• 90 days of Who viewed your profile rather than the last 5 you see on a free account
• Open Profile allows anyone to send you a free InMail
• Open Profile also means that you are visible in every search result, even if you are outside the network of the person conducting the search

In addition, each account provides the following features,

Career

• 3 InMails/month
• Featured applicant
• Applicant Insights
• Salary Insights
• Resume Builder
• Access to LinkedIn Learning

If purchased annually this will cost you £25/month ($30)

Business

• 15 InMails/month
• Unlimited people browsing. Commercial use limit on search is removed.
• 7 saved search alerts (as opposed to 3)
• Business insights
• Access to LinkedIn Learning
• Career Insights (Applicant + salary insights)
• Resume Builder

If purchased annually this will set you back £40/month ($60)

Sales Navigator

• 20 InMails/month
• A different user interface where your homepage feed only displays activity from people you have saved (Leads) or companies you have saved (Accounts), it also includes ‘suggested Leads’ from Accounts you have saved.
• The ability to change your feed to focus on just one account, allowing you to see, at a glance, all activity from employees within that company
• Sales insights. Similar to business insights but specifically for saved Accounts and Leads. Includes job change and company growth information
• Advanced search with Lead Builder plus Account searching. No commercial use limit restriction
• Lead builder includes 12 extra filters plus a further 5 secondary filters in the search result
• 9 saved search alerts
• Account searching allows for company and department headcount growth filtering, technologies used and revenue.
• Separate inbox (not an advantage!)
• The ability to tag Leads and include tags in search filters
• The ability to add information to profiles such as contact info, who they report to (linked to profile) and your notes.
• Access to a full Sales Navigator Learning platform

If purchased annually Sales Navigator starts at £50/month ($65)

There is also a higher level account called ‘Team’ edition which has the following extra features

• Out-of-Network profile unlocks (25/month)
• 30 InMails/month allocation and can be shared across all company licences
• 5000 saved Leads (as opposed to 1500)
• CRM sync & widgets
• TeamLink
• Usage reporting

Team edition costs £82/month ($99) when purchased annually

Recruiter Lite

• 30 InMails/month
• Advanced search with even more filters including recruitment specific items such as skills
• Saved search alerts (at least 9)
• Smart candidate suggestions
• Integrated hiring (shortlist management)
• Removal of commercial use limit
• Automatic candidate tracking

Recruiter Lite costs £80/month  ($120) when purchased annually

There is also a higher level called Recruiter, additional benefits include;

• Unlimited visibility of profiles (no ‘out of network’ results)
• 150 InMails/month which can be sent to a shortlist (1 message to multiple recipients)
• Search for people ‘Open to opportunities’
• Scheduler – allowing candidates to book time to discuss a role with you
• Team collaboration tools
• Talent pool management. Notifications when saved profiles update
• InMail and job ad analytics
• Integration with Applicant Tracking Systems

The price of Recruiter is not openly available but I believe it to be in the region of an eye-watering £650/month.

Conclusion

1. Upgrading to any premium account does not make LinkedIn easier to use
2. If you buy Recruiter or Sales Navigator you are NOT upgrading from Business or Career….you will be charged for both!
3. Always learn to use LinkedIn.com as a free user. Once competent you may find upgrading makes sense
4. For the extra £10/month, I would choose Sales Navigator over Business all day long! You don’t need both!
5. The  main benefit of Sales Navigator is it’s extensive search capabilities
6. Recruiter is for candidate shortlist construction and management, it is not suitable for business development so if you are working for a Recruitment company, Sales Navigator is almost certainly your best option.
7. InMail sounds better than it is because it’s still a ‘cold’ message to someone you don’t know so, whilst it may be more effective than email, don’t expect amazing results!
8. The best way to generate visibility is through posting and engaging on LinkedIn. By far the best UI for this is LinkedIn.com and the premium versions do not help with posting or engaging.

OK, that’s it for this week. Drop me a line or voicemail if you have any ideas for the show or questions you want to ask me.

Till next time…