Let me share with you a little story: I decided to upgrade to a Business Account on Linkedin basically because I had a business reason. I wanted to contact a freelance professional that I found on the site that was apparently available, to propose a really interesting business project as an interim professional.
The professional was not sharing contact info and was not open to contacts from anyone. This preference set-up is very common and is particularly not good if you are willing to be found (if you are contractor). I thought about not contacting him since his set-up does not seem very mindful of his environment and may speak very little about his attention to detail. On second thought, I decided to give him a second chance and consider that the professional was not really social network savvy and had just posted his profile but not really knowing what he was doing or why it was useful or could benefit him.
The only way for me to get in touch with him was via the mysterious – almost mystical – InMail. I didn’t think it over much (since I was very interested in contacting the freelancer) and upgraded my account.
This is what I received:
Benefits of a LinkedIn Premium Account
Hi Jordi,
Thank you for upgrading to a LinkedIn Premium Account! Your LinkedIn account now contains five benefits that aren’t available to free account holders.
As a premium subscriber, you get these perks:
- InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. No need to wait for an introduction: with InMails™, you can send a message to any of the 50 million members on LinkedIn.
- View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members. Be fully prepared with background information on potential clients, hires, and business partners.
- Find the right people, faster. Sharpen your ability to find decision makers, experts and leads with three times more search results. Try our advanced search.
- Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice. You can save important profiles into your Profile Organizer, a workspace that makes it easy for you to keep track of them, and stay up-to-date with notes and contact information. Get started with Profile Organizer.
- See who’s viewed your profile. Get more information on who’s interested in you from customers, to suppliers, to recruiters and more. View the complete list.
To see some of these services in action, sign-up for a complimentary training session on how to get the most out of your Premium Account.
We hope you enjoy your new powers on LinkedIn!
Sincerely,
The LinkedIn Team
After a little bit of trial and investigation of the benefits of the upgrade, here are some comments:
1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. – NOT
I have already used one of the three InMails to contact the professional, and it has been ignored. InMails are just e-mails. Basically you don’t need something with a new name that does exactly what e-mails do. There are several ways to get around not knowing the target professional’s address. Amongst them, you can always “Send him an Invite”. The target will get quite an odd message, that’s true, but with the right wording, you should overcome the initial awkward impression by including … “I thought it would be of professional value to be connected I’m also sending a Linkedin invite to stay in touch…”
2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members – NOT
Not True either. You can and will only see the professional profiles of those who make their profiles public. On top of that, a lot of people still have incomplete profiles, so this won’t allow you to see any more of them … since it’s just not there. Disappointing feature.
3. Find the right people, faster with advanced search
Honestly, I have to say that I cannot see “any “difference of value between the standard search and the premium search. Further disappointment.
4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice – Profile Organizer
Interesting feature for corporate accounts with more than two people looking at profiles, with specialised tasks (for instance ‘profile searcher’ and ‘approver-manager’) may be of certain value. Organizing the Prospecting in this sense is the only value that this new functionality may provide, and it is definitely not very valuable for the rest “not so complex” users.
5. See who’s viewed your profile – NOT
I have to admit that this was one of the most intriguing and fascinating features of the upgrade. Since I’ve had my Linkedin account I have been (I guess we all have … please admit it!) fantasizing about who and why someone was taking a look at my profile, with no rationale behind – you never know what’s on people’s mind but my guess, at this point, is that it would just be curiosity, after all. I was also fascinated by the intriguing message: “To see more people, upgrade your account”.
I felt that actually knowing the name of the people that has taken a look at my profile may give me a clue on why they would spend any time staring at my profile – a potential client? A potential provider? A potential job offer? ….
The report on this feature is that the information that you get is exactly the same as the one that you get with the free account, which nothing else than “Someone at Hewlett-Packard”, “Project Manager at Ericsson”, “Sales Manager at T-Systems” and so on. You get to see all the people, but only in those vague terms.
It is VERY disappointing … I radically support Linkedin (by itself or in comparison with the rest of tools out there), but this time I cannot help them make more money.
I will positively note that the look and feel of the premium account is better. It has a good lay-out, with the important tabs on top (the ones that the basic account has on its left-hand-side column: “Home”, “Groups”, “Profile”) and a better use of the screen space.
Overall my recommendation would be that small firms, independent recruiters, networkers, job seekers … need not to upgrade their account to a Premium service and just take full advantage of the potential of their basic account, which is, by the way, enormous.
Tags: Linkedin, Systems & tools
I had been debating a trial, thank you for the input, perhaps value will be increased down the road. It is suprising how some individuals view the possibilities of networking.
Hi Jordi
This is very interesting article. I’m a Business Plus user currenly reconsidering. To add further fuel to the “value” argument, have you noticed that you are restricted to a maximum number of searches (pertaining to your upgrade)? However a closer examination of the results shows contacts replicated across page refreshes (well it does for me and I wonder if you have this issue too).
On the subject of InMail I note that you can reach your contact if they are in the same group as you without using InMail (send a message). Potentially, one is permitted to join 50 groups, therefore in practice one can maximise any prospect reach without an upgrade.
Regards
Fred
Jordi,
I think that the new look and feel that you comment for the premium account it’s now for everyone. I think that yesterday changed for everyone. Sorry and thanks from others that were thinking in upgrading. For me the feature that most I like it is Profile Organizator.
Specific rss and trackballs are also functionalities that I miss it, but that’s what we have.
Regs
Jordi
Jordi,
This was extremely informative. I had been considering an upgrade and now I will just by my wife an Xmas gift instead. Your intuition is uncanny and I can’t wait to hear more about the perils of the internet that lie ahead. I hope you get a TV show out of this. If you are ever in NYC please let me know. Would love to talk to you about this in person.
Adios muchacho,
Josh
Thanks Jordi for your advise!!!!!
David
Hi Jordi,
I also upgraded my account for the same reason than you and it did not take me more than a couple of weeks to realize that it was a big mistake. I fully agree with you and can confirm all your comments. By the way, do you know if the account can be downgraded again? I do not see any instructions in that sense and I am afraid that the only way may be to cancel the whole subscription. But this means loosing all the contacts, groups and other data. Am I right?
Thanks!
Jordi
Excellent feedback on the benefits of upgrading to a premium account.
And yes you’re not alone, I too have wondered who has looked at my profile. Admittedly your discussion has made me realise LinkedIn provides prompts such as “People you may know”, “Profile Updates” and more to encourage us to look at someone else’s profile. And of course viewing a profile gets captured and recorded on “Who’s viewed my profile”.
I think LinkedIn need to review their service offering if they want to retain & grow upgraded accounts. There’s definitely a flaw in this model which could lead to other issues for LinkedIn.
Anyway thanks for the ‘heads up’ and I will continue to enjoy the benefits of LinkedIn without upgrading my account as there doesn’t appear to be any obvious benefit to do so.
Thank you
Jordi – Thanks for taking the time to provide us with details of the premium account. I’d heard that there was no good reason to upgrade, and you’ve confirmed it! Standard LinkedIn is powerful on its own!
As for your primary reason for upgrading (trying to contact someone who was not forthcoming), I’m not sure why people like that are even on LinkedIn. If they don’t want to network, why are they here? To suck information out of the system and not contribute? Play along!
Jordi
Yet another fascinating article. Thanks again for saving me time and money as was considering to upgrade too due to my biz development needs. I hope this feedback also reaches our dearest linkedin’s and are able to provide some really value adding features that justify a premium charge. Look forward to more of your insights in 2010
Happy Holidays and Happy Bloggin’
Marc
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
And you et an account on Twitter?
Hello Tom,
Really interesting to read. I am a student and looking for summer internship. I thought this feature will help me but short of dollars was the obstacle to make my decision. Now I am sure that I will not upgrade my account till Linkedin make change as desired and required for the money they are taking.
Sincerely,
Bhupendrasinh Thakre
Graduate Student
Industrial Engineering & Management
Oklahoma State University
Thanks Jordi:
I was contemplating upgrading, but now I am going to give it a miss. Your article is well written and though out. Again thanks for saving me the money.
Thanks for that, always ‘wondered’ what the percieved bens may be.
Nick Hill
Thank you for a thorough, thoughtful and professional summary of the “upgrade”.
What about Xing? Would appreciate if you can provide some article for Xing as well!!!
Thank you Jordi, you are confirming what I had supposed, I have been increasing my network up to more than 500 contacts without a Premium, and I have found some professionals that just want to keep a limited number of contacts and are not really open to be found, connected or visible, and that surprises me when they are service professionals. Great article!!
Mari Carmen
informative! and amusing
Thanks again for saving me time. I was was considering to upgrade but now…. I will most certainly reconsider everything and develop my own personal branding and marketing tools.