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LinkedIn Premium Account Types – What to Choose?
Do you have an account on Linkedin? Not yet? Set up one as soon as possible!
Especially, if you run your own business, you are a manager or take any other decision-making position. A profile on this social medium is now a must have.
Linkedin is growing in strength and in the context of business development, it is a pretty neat tool. More and more people see Linkedin potential not only in recruitment, but also in sales and marketing.
The basic account on Linkedin is free and in recent months it did not differ much from the Premium account. Recently Linkedin has started to introduce changes aimed at reducing the features of the basic account (e.g. limiting the search range for contacts) and enriching the features of the Premium account (e.g. the option to check who and when viewed our profile).
How Much Does a LinkedIn Premium Account Cost?
Linkedin offers 4 Premium plans, depending on the purpose for which we want to use the platform, we can choose from:
- Career Account – for those who are looking for a job (the first month is free)
- Business Account – for professionals who want to expand their account with a few additional functions and thus expand their network of friends or manage their corporate reputation (first month is also free)
- Sales Account known as Sales Navigator – for those who want to find clients effectively. This plan can be purchased for one person, a team or the entire business (the price for one person includes a free month of subscription)
- Hiring Account – for companies whose goal is to find and hire new candidates faster (it is the most expensive package, which offers a free month of use as well)
In this post, we will focus on two Premium plans: Business and Sales (Sales Navigator).
Without doubt it is a large expense for a private person. However, if we plan our activities and the use of Premium account functions well, such an investment will certainly pay off. So how do you fully use the potential of Premium accounts on Linkedin?
Benefits of a LinkedIn Premium Profile
If, after reading the advantages listed and described below, you feel like YES, this is what I need on Linkedin to operate more efficiently, it means that you should invest in a Premium account.
- Possibility to search for 3rd degree connections
Previously, it was also available for basic accounts, now, after the changes in Linkedin, it is only available for Premium accounts.
3rd degree connections on Linkedin – who are they?
Let’s start with the fact that 1st degree connections are our friends with whom we are already connected on Linkedin. Connections of 2nd degree are the people who are in connection with those who are in connection with us, simply – friends of our friends (the more friends we have, the bigger is our 2nd degree network of contacts). Connections of 3rd degree are therefore completely unrelated. These are people, you could call “strangers” with whom we do not have mutual friends, but we often want to establish contact with them.
When will you need this extra feature?
Connections of 3rd degree are particularly important contacts in the sales context. Our friends usually include people from their own or a similar industry, with similar experience, etc. However, it often happens that in order to reach our target group, we will have to look for people in a completely different industry than we operate, with different experience. If this is the case for you, then you already know that this additional function will be useful to you!
- Additional search capabilities
Advanced search with additional filters is available in the Sales Navigator version. In addition to the filters we have in the basic version, there are more ways to search for people. So if we have a well-defined target group, Sales Navigator enables us to accurately search for people who meet the criteria.
Additionally, after searching, we can filter a given group of people and find only those who, e.g. changed jobs in the last 3 months, published something on Linkedin in the last month, people who have the same experience as us, or people who follow our company fanpage.
When Will You Need Additional Search Capabilities?
These additional options will allow you to target your audience better. And if you plan on sponsoring corporate content, it will allow you to better target ads on LinkedIn. A more detailed specification of a given audience also allows you to view the content that they publish and get engaged in, on the basis of which you can plan the content that you intend to use in your communication strategy.
- Ability to save searches / specific contacts
After searching for a given group of recipients that interests us, we can save the search. So we can create lists of leads that match the given criteria (e.g. a group of IT managers in the computers and software industry who were active on Linkedin in the last 30 days, are from London and their profiles contain keywords such as the SaaS system – quite specific targeting!) Linkedin suggests similar people to those we searched for before. In addition, we can track the activity of subscribers and engage in their publications on a regular basis.
- InMail included
InMail allows you to send messages to people who are not in our network of contacts. This is only possible for Premium profiles. If we want to send one, we have to pay extra. When buying a Premium profile, we have a certain number of InMail in the package, which is updated every month, so if we do not use the given number in the one month, it goes to the next month.
- Gold badge on your profile
According to Linkedin, the profiles of people with a premium account are visited more often (up to 6x in the case of Sales Navigator). And probably many of us will admit that the gold badge works! It improves the image of both the person and the company for which the person works.
Other benefits of the LinkedIn Premium gold badge
People with a fancy badge on their profile have paid for the premium account. It means that when contacting us (inviting to friends, writing an inmail) they probably know what they are doing and why they are doing it! From Verseo experience, we can say that the messages sent from someone with the premium account were opened more often, and the people invited were often very eager to make contact and were open to conversation.
If you think that you will need additional functionalities offered by Linkedin for Premium accounts – try them for free for the first 30 days and see if it’s something for you. For some it turns out to be completely useless, for others – mandatory.
Who Should Have a Premium Account?
If you are wondering who in your company should have a premium account, this is what we suggest. Not every person in the company has to have a premium account. It is important to fully use the potential of the tools available in the paid version, so the person who will have a premium account should know how to use it. The premium account will be perfect for managers and business owners who will appreciate the fact that it is easier to make valuable contacts. In addition, people responsible for sales or contact with the client, as well as recruiters will also benefit from the additional features.