Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Memberships
Once you have decided to include the LinkedIn platform into your marketing strategy, you must study its features and plans before taking action. Many business owners and marketers settle down for free membership, not knowing the benefits of the premium ones. If you want to make the most of your LinkedIn presence, consider investing in the LinkedIn premium. On using one of the premium memberships strategically, significant results are guaranteed, making up for the premium fees.
At Social Receptionist, we can help you pick the best-suited plan for your needs and make use of your free membership. Below, we offer a guide that outlines LinkedIn's free membership and the four premium plans.
Free LinkedIn Membership
Everyone starts their LinkedIn presence with a free account, which allows them to set up their profile, post company updates, and establish their brand identity. Although the free LinkedIn membership offers limited features, there is a lot to love about this membership.
With free LinkedIn membership, you can:
- Boost your online presence
- Build your professional identity
- Connect with your colleagues and employees
- Publish relevant posts and company updates
- Message your 1st-degree connections
- View other LinkedIn members' profiles
- Receive unlimited InMail messages
- Engage your audience through likes, comments, and messages
- Turn your prospects into customers
- Save up to three searches and get weekly alerts concerning these searches
Even with the limited features, LinkedIn is considered the best social media platform for B2B businesses. For more information regarding LinkedIn marketing, refer to the Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn Advertising.
Before we dive into each type, let's have a look at some of the extra features offered by the premium subscriptions.
What are the features of premium subscriptions?
LinkedIn Premium memberships are advanced platforms to increase brand awareness, find new employees, and get more leads. They offer some improved features to users, whether they are recruiters, sales workers, or job seekers.
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InMail
LinkedIn InMail lets you share your content through LinkedIn messenger and communicate with someone you are not connected to. You can send anyone a message through InMail even if they aren't among your followers or if they haven't accepted your connection request. This feature can be accessed only with the premium subscription; Sales Navigator, Premium Business, or Recruiter Lite. You are given a certain number of InMail messages, according to your membership plan. According to LinkedIn, InMail messages are 2.6x more effective than emails alone.
First impressions matter, so you need to be friendly and responsive. You don't want to sound like a robot, and, you also don't want to appear as a salesman. People love to feel that they are connected to you, so better leverage this.
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LinkedIn Network access
You don't have to worry about the commercial use limits that are set on free accounts. You can freely search for LinkedIn profiles and check the people who viewed your profile. These features help you build your network and boost your leads. People who viewed your profile are actually interested in your products or services. You can follow them or send InMails to promote your business and build trust.
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Premium search filters
With a premium search feature, you get to sort your research according to various parameters. These parameters help you limit your candidates and ensure that you get the exact qualifications you need. Search according to company size, seniority level, years of experience, location, job description, and more.
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Profiles per search
Unlike free membership, there is no limit to the number of profiles you search on LinkedIn. With the free membership, you are notified whenever you approach your limit while searching on LinkedIn.
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Saved searches
The "saved searches" is a useful feature to leverage in the premium subscription. LinkedIn does the search for you and emails you with profiles that fit your description. Also, you get weekly alerts with new profiles that meet your search criteria.
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Training
Another feature that LinkedIn premium offers is the ability to take online courses from industry experts through this plan. You are offered up to 13,000 courses, and they are updated regularly. I guess that this feature is really beneficial, don't you?
What are the different Premium LinkedIn memberships?
LinkedIn provides various membership plans; Premium Career, Premium Business, Sales Navigator, and Recruiter Lite. At Social Receptionist, we can help you choose the convenient membership option according to your goals and budget.
LinkedIn offers plans that suit everyone. Here are the current monthly plans in USD:
Premium Career: $29.99/month
Premium Business: $59.99/month
Recruiter Lite: $119.99/month
Remember that you can pay less if you pay for your membership annually.
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Premium Career
With Premium Career, you have 3 InMail messages per month, as well as five saved searches. You can also learn new skills through the offered video courses. It allows you to find out who might be interested in your company by showing you a list of your viewers.
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Premium Business
At first, don't forget to make use of your free 30-days trial to have an extended reach on LinkedIn. Premium Business offers the same benefits as Premium Career with additional features. It gives you extra business information, as well as unlimited people search and viewers. With Premium Business, you have 15 InMail messages, and seven saved searches monthly.
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Sales Navigator
According to LinkedIn, "LinkedIn Sales Navigator taps into the power of LinkedIn's 560M+ member network to help sales professionals find and build relationships with prospects and customers through modern selling."
Similarly, Sales Navigator offers extra business information and search features. It is an essential plan for sales organisations to drive more traffic, build trust, and boost sales. Besides, it includes a lead-builder tool, lead recommendation, and detailed insights upon the existing leads and accounts. Use the "Change Job" feature to find out your leads' old and new job positions.
Sales Navigator helps you find the right prospects faster with customised insights through three levels of subscriptions; professional, team, and enterprise.
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Professional: It is an individual Sales Navigator that offers 20 free InMails and a maximum of 1500 leads that can be saved. The professional Sales Navigator costs $64.99 per month.
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Team: The team feature is suitable for sales teams so they can team up through a shared network. Through this version, you can access an unlimited number of Sales Navigator seats, with a maximum of 5000 leads and 30 InMails per seat. Ten users of the team get to enjoy free trials; just remember to add those users at the beginning of the 30-day trial period. Additionally, the team feature offers a detailed report to monitor your performance and the ability to import Salesforce account and lead data. The Team Sales Navigator costs $103.33 per month.
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Enterprise: This is LinkedIn's highest subscription tier, supporting sales organisations that want to maximise premium features to expand their network. Through the enterprise version, you get a monthly unlimited number of Sales Navigator seats and 50 free InMails per seat. It also gives access to TeamLink Extend, which allows the addition of more individuals without buying additional Sales Navigator seats. Similar to the Team version, you can obtain a detailed report to monitor your performance, with the ability to import Salesforce account and lead data. As per the advanced admin functionality, it provides Single sign-on and Employee Directory Integration.
With enterprise Sales Navigator, you get the maximum number of leads, about 10,000 leads. LinkedIn's website doesn't offer a specific price for this service. Instead, there is a "Contact Us" button. Apparently, the service fee varies according to what you want.
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Recruiter Lite: Recruiter Lite is of great advantage in finding the perfect candidate faster through searching tools. It offers 30 InMail messages to connect freely with your candidates. With this plan, you get access to automatic candidate tracking and integrated hiring, which is a compelling candidate search tool. Proving its success, 95% of companies started using Recruiter Liter in 2018. If you are looking for your next hire and skeptical about choosing this plan, request a free demo.
With all these different features, it is getting hard to decide which one you should upgrade to. Don't immediately go for the lower-priced plan to save money because each one serves different goals. At the same time, don't automatically choose the higher-priced one if you can't use all the provided features. Before upgrading, study the premium memberships and build your strategy before choosing the most convenient membership.
