LinkedIn Premium is LinkedIn’s paid subscription service that provides users with additional features and perks beyond the free basic account. Premium comes in three tiers – Career, Business, and Sales – each offering progressively more benefits tailored to different types of professionals. Premium subscriptions unlock valuable tools for networking, branding, recruiting, and gaining insights. Here’s an in-depth look at everything you get with a LinkedIn Premium membership.
Networking Features
LinkedIn Premium enhances your ability to build connections and relationships on the platform. Key networking features include:
Larger network and search filters
With Premium, you can grow your network beyond your first-degree connections. The Business and Sales tiers offer unlimited third-degree connections, allowing you to search across a wider pool of professionals. You also gain access to advanced filters for searching profiles, such as location, company, job function, skills, and more.
InMail messages
Premium members can directly contact anyone on LinkedIn, even if you’re not connected, through InMail messages. Each tier comes with a monthly allowance of InMails. This makes it easier to reach out to key influencers, prospects, potential hires, and other valuable contacts.
Profile highlighting in search
Your profile will be highlighted and ranked higher when people search on LinkedIn, boosting your visibility. Premium also lets you see who has viewed your profile.
Fee-free Open Profile access
Usually, sending connection requests to Open Profile members (those outside your network) requires paying a fee per message. With Premium, you get free access to send unlimited messages to Open Profile users you want to connect with.
Branding & Publishing Features
Premium provides useful tools for managing and enhancing your personal brand on LinkedIn. Core branding features include:
Profile statistics
Gain insights into who’s looking at your profile and how people find you, such as your top profile keywords. You can see more detailed viewer demographics like job title, industry, company size, location, and more.
Expanded LinkedIn newsfeed
Stay on top of news and content relevant to you and your industry with an expanded newsfeed. Premium users can follow up to 700 people, publications, and topics.
Advanced profile management
Manage your profile’s URL, customize public profile settings, alter your profile’s appearance, pin posts to the top of your profile, and showcase media content. Premium also provides profile translation services.
Creator mode
With Premium, you can easily create written posts, articles, and long-form multimedia content directly on LinkedIn to share with your network and establish thought leadership.
Analytics
Gain visual analytics on the impressions and engagement your posts receive. See how your content is performing over time.
Recruiting & Job Seeking Features
For recruiters and job seekers, LinkedIn Premium can be a valuable asset. Key features include:
Advanced job search filters
Narrow your job search with filters for date posted, company, location, job function, industry, experience level, and more. Easily save job searches as well.
Applicant insights
When applying for jobs, see how you match up against other candidates based on skills, experience, education, and other attributes.
Interview preparation
Research who will be interviewing you, including their background and work history, so you can be fully prepared.
Salary comparison
Unlock salary data to see the typical pay range for a given job title and get leverage when negotiating your income.
Talent recruiting tools
Recruiters can source, manage, and contact top talent more easily. Features include InMail, profile highlighting, advanced search filters, talent pool organization, and interview preparation tools.
Learning & Development Features
Premium provides features to help you learn new skills and advance your career. Key learning features include:
LinkedIn Learning access
The Business and Sales tiers include full access to LinkedIn Learning, offering thousands of expert-led courses across a vast range of business, technology, and creative topics to boost your skills.
Skills assessments
Assess and validate your proficiency across various skills to provide certifications on your profile and stand out to recruiters.
Skill recommendations
LinkedIn will recommend skills to add to your profile based on your experience, education, groups, and other activities on the platform.
Career coaching
The Career tier provides one-on-one career coaching sessions with a LinkedIn professional to get unbiased advice and insights on your career path.
Business & Sales Features
For sales professionals and businesses, LinkedIn Premium unlocks powerful tools for finding clients, promoting content, and generating leads. Key features include:
Lead & account targeting
Identify and engage your ideal prospects with tools to target leads and accounts by industry, company size, job title, and other attributes.
Contact targeting
Further target prospects by geography, company, relationship status, seniority level, and more to laser-focus your outreach.
Unlimited profile searches
The Sales tier removes search limits, so you can hunt for prospects without restrictions on the number of searches.
Premium content promotion
Promote posts, articles, and other content to a wider audience beyond just your connections to boost engagement.
Lead recommendations
LinkedIn will recommend potential leads tailored to you based on profile attributes, interests, groups, and more.
Comparing the Premium Tiers
LinkedIn offers three Premium options – Career, Business, and Sales. Here is a comparison of what each tier includes:
Feature | Career | Business | Sales |
---|---|---|---|
Profile visibility | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
InMail messages | 15/month | 25/month | 50/month |
Search filters | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Open Profile access | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Newsfeed size | 300 | 500 | 700 |
Profile branding | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Creator mode | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Job insights | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Learning courses | ✖️ | ✔️ | ✖️ |
Lead targeting | ✖️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Content promotion | ✖️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Salary insights | ✖️ | ✖️ | ✔️ |
The Career tier is best for job seekers looking to enhance their profile, find opportunities, and get career insights. Business adds more branding, content, and recruiting features for marketers, recruiters, and sales professionals. Sales unlocks lead gen tools and advanced search for identifying prospects.
Premium Pricing
LinkedIn Premium is paid on a monthly or annual subscription basis. Here are the current monthly prices as of October 2023:
- Career – $29.99/month
- Business – $59.99/month
- Sales – $79.99/month
Annual subscriptions offer savings compared to month-to-month pricing. For example, Career costs $359.88 annually versus $29.99 monthly. Volume and multi-user discounts are also available for larger businesses and teams.
Free Trial
LinkedIn offers one-month free trials so you can preview Premium features before committing to a paid subscription. Both monthly and annual memberships come with 30-day money back guarantees as well.
Who Should Upgrade to Premium?
Here are the types of users who tend to benefit most from upgrading to a Premium account:
- Active job seekers – Premium helps you stand out during your job search with an enhanced profile, networking tools, and job insights.
- Recruiters and HR professionals – Source, connect with, and manage candidates more efficiently.
- Marketing and sales specialists – Identify leads, promote your brand, and generate inbound interest.
- Entrepreneurs and small business owners – Grow your company’s presence and connect with your target audience.
- Freelancers and consultants – Showcase your expertise, skills, and work to attract clients.
- Professionals looking to network – Broaden your reach and build meaningful relationships.
- Thought leaders and content creators – Share your thought leadership content with more people.
Casual users who just want to maintain a basic profile and connect with some colleagues or friends likely don’t need Premium. But for those actively utilizing LinkedIn for business, career growth, and networking purposes, the Premium features can provide huge value.
Key Benefits of LinkedIn Premium
Why should you upgrade to Premium? Here are some of the top benefits:
- Grow your network – Expand your reach beyond first-degree connections.
- Build your brand – Promote your profile, showcase expertise, and publish content.
- Increase discoverability – Get found more easily with profile promotion.
- Find more jobs – Unlock additional filters and insights for your job search.
- Recruit top talent – Tap into new candidate sources and manage prospects.
- Make valuable connections – Directly contact people outside your network.
- Generate more leads – Identify, segment, and engage your ideal prospects.
- Stand out – Differentiate yourself from the LinkedIn masses.
- Gain insights – View profile analytics to inform your strategy.
- Improve skills – Access thousands of expert-led courses.
The bottom line is that Premium provides the tools you need to maximize your success on LinkedIn. The expanded capabilities allow you to turn LinkedIn from a passive online resume into an active platform for networking, branding, and generating opportunities.
Conclusion
A LinkedIn Premium subscription unlocks a robust set of features and functionality beyond the standard free account. Key benefits include networking with more professionals, enhancing your personal brand, gaining insights into your profile traffic, simplifying recruiting, and more. Premium comes in three tiers – Career, Business, and Sales – with each tier building on the previous one to provide progressively advanced tools tailored to your professional needs. To summarize, Premium gives you premium access to premium features for upgrading your LinkedIn presence and achieving your career or business goals through the world’s largest professional networking platform.