Everyone should pay to upgrade their LinkedIn but …
In my opinion too many people rush into paying for LinkedIn thinking that it will unlock new functionality or enhance their experience in miraculous ways … but the truth is that whilst it does include some great enhancements they are just that, enhancements.
LinkedIn themselves are great at getting you to buy and upgrade your LinkedIn, but less good at helping you to convert your LinkedIn into results and sales, but that is what I do.
The common myths people tell me for why they upgraded:
“If you pay you will see the people who have hidden themselves away when looking at your profile”. This is not correct. But you can all hide when you view others profiles for free anyway, whether you pay or not but you can never find out who they are / if you viewed them.
“I need to upgrade to find the people who I want to meet”. Are you actually using the free tools to get LinkedIn to identify and email you easy to reach referrals? You can normally find all the clients you seek with free tools and then further refine with an upgrade for organisational size, Fortune, staff level on top of this.
One huge benefit of paying is that you see all the names of the (non-hidden people) for the last 30 days BUT (purposeful big but) if you are not doing what you should be doing on LinkedIn then your visibility may not be at the level that necessitates that.
“I need to pay to make it work”. YOU DON’T.
For free you get:
Three lists of referrals emailed to you.
The ability to search, identify and engage over 200 Million professionals.
Get your profile found (often even if they look for competitors!) by potential clients.
Create a company profile that morphs to suit your clients expectations.
Collect important recommendations for you and the company offerings.
And more …
To make LinkedIn work you need to take a holistic approach to address not just the process, your personal and company profile and platform but all of them to make it really work for you.
You can read more on this blog (from back in April 2012) and you also might want to take my profile test.
Don’t get me wrong everyone should pay for LinkedIn, but only when they have made the free stuff work, and if you’re ever not sure just ask me.
