LinkedIn Premium

LinkedIn Premium is an upgraded version of the popular free social media network for professionals. I've been on LinkedIn for several years and have made interesting and fruitful connections on this platform and was a premium member for a few months in that time. LinkedIn Premium goes beyond the normal set of features and allows you to select a paid plan based on your needs at the time. The InMail feature is what differentiates all of their paid plans thought the ability to search and contact people in networks other than your own is another feature to worth highlighting. InMail allows you to receive a very high response rate for email messages you send to people in your network for varied purposes. You can find a job with their basic plan and have three ongoing InMails at a time. Up to fifteen or thirty for their remaining plans. The two 15 InMail upgraded accounts are for prospecting with the latter featuring better analytics and real time insight into who you're contacting. I had the this LinkedIn Premium account which is currently priced at $69.99 per month billed annually. The most upgraded plan is mostly for HR departments and recruiters for large companies who can find and recruit serious talent using it. I liked having the ability to search and connect with unlimited profiles. I wasn't limited to my own network is has grown a lot but is a very small portion of the network overall. I found it easy to create and send email messages with their editor. The limit to InMails to suggests the best use of LinkedIn Premium is highly targeted. It's not a general prospecting tool in anyway. The best reason to upgrade is to have an opportunity to reach the exact people you need to with advanced filtering and search functionality. And discover information or news about the company you are contacting that is not available in their free company profile. This info is hugely useful to use when contacting warm leads. I had a list of the exact people I want to contact in the music industry and used this tool to seek them out and could reach out not with a certainty they would reply, but found a greater overall liklihood for sure.

LinkedIn Premium is not inexpensive. It can be pricey for some freelancers and start up business. The InMail's are a bit limited. I'm sure there is a fine line LinkedIn has drawn based on big data regarding essential touch points and overall strategy for their company. While I recognize it's not a prospecting tool for reaching wide in the market, there are instances when reaching more than 3, 15 or 30 people may not be enough. The InMail feature used to roll over InMail credits if the message was not opened or declined. I don't see this option available any longer and that is a loss of value with the LinkedIn Premium pricing roughly the same as it was when I had signed up a couple years ago.

If you have a list of people you want to contact for a highly targeted reason and the ROI possible by doing so is a no brainer than LinkedIn Premium in a worthwhile investment. Have your business plan prepared before you reach out to investors. They do have a free one month trial available from time to time and it's worth signing up with your credit card to do so. To learn if it's for you. But in your best interest if you have a specific list of people or companies to contact before you sign up. Take real advantage of LinkedIn Premium and you can reach people on a trusted platform that you would have a tough time doing with other social media platforms.